Newsgroups: bit.listserv.seasia-l
Date:         Tue, 29 Sep 1992 10:37:01 -0400
From:         Nhan Tran <tran@PEORA.SDC.CCUR.COM>
Subject:      OP-ED/VN: Surf's up, but human rights wiped out in VN

Surf's up, but human rights wiped out in Vietnam

Some people, no doubt, see the Hanoi regime's permitting an
international surfing tournament to take place near Da Nang as evidence
of Vietnam's "liberalization." I see it as an old Vietnamese communist
strategy dressed in surfer clothes.

The strategy works like this: Make your adversary believe that he has
already de facto accepted a communist demand, so as to cause the
adversary to accede to the demand without requiring concession or
reciprocation.

This strategy was extremely effective in 1973, in the Paris Peace
Accord, when North Vietnam was allowed to maintain troops in South
Vietnam, in areas of "de facto communist control."

Many South Vietnamese leaders, including President Nguyen Van Thieu,
foresaw the disastrous consequences of not requiring North Vietnam to
withdraw completely from the south (which it was invading in abrogation
of the 1954 Geneva Accords); but of course South Vietnam was forced to
swallow all the conditions that the United States saw fit to negotiate
in its own interests, no matter how untenable they were in terms of
South Vietnamese Security.

The North's all-out invasion of the South after the Paris Accords --
which was a complete abrogation of the accords -- was successful in no
small part because of the North's strategic troop concentrations in the
South that had been allowed in the accords.

Now the Hanoi regime is looking for foreign investment, outright aid and
tourist spending without having to make any concession to world outrage
over communist Vietnam's having never abide by treaties (Geneva 1954,
Paris 1973), and continuing to be an unrepentant police state and human-rights
 abuser.

I can imagine Vietnamese communist negotiating with U.S. officials:
"Look, even the surfers are going to Vietnam. That shows that there is a
de facto normalization of relations; so go ahead and normalize
diplomatic relations and start giving us foreign aid."

I hope the administration and Congress don't fall for the communist "de
facto" strategy again. It would be a mistake to normalize diplomatic
relations with the Hanoi regime or to lift the trade embargo.

The Hanoi dictatorship is a criminal regime that will only use foreign
exchange to strengthen its grip on power and continue to use brutal
tactics to silence dissent.

Hanoi's attempts to convince the West that it is "liberalizing" are
merely cosmetic. Hanoi's allowing nude nightclub dancing and loosening
up on prosecution of black marketeers is not the kind of "freedom" that
defines human rights and human dignity. These "liberalizations," which
Hanoi has implemented to give Vietnam a better image with Westerners,
simply show the communists' moral bankruptcy and utter contempt for
democracy.

What we pro-democracy Vietnamese and American supporters are looking for
is the release of the hundreds of prisoners of conscience in Hanoi'
gulags and transition to a legal, elected government in Vietnam. To
achieve this goal, we urge the administration, Congress and the American
people to support the "Freedom First for Vietnam Act of 1992,"
introduced to Congress on April 30, barring the lifting of the U.S.
embargo against Vietnam until it becomes a free nation.

Nguyen Thi Nghiem
Falls Church, Virginia - USA
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