Organization: Vietnam Insight
Editor: Chan Tran
Address: PO Box 7826, San Jose, CA 95150, USA
Phone: (408) 226-2261
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11]
Newsgroups: soc.culture.vietnamese
Date:         Thu, 24 Dec 1992 07:52:02 PST
              USENET." <VIETNET@USCVM.BITNET>
From:         Vietnam Insight <vinsight@NETCOM.COM>
Subject:      VI: News Brief

****************
Vietnamese Singer Escaped to Freedom
****************

He is no ordinary Vietnamese singer by all means.

This favorite male singer, also a lawyer, journalist and political
activist of South Vietnam had defied the system that imprisoned and
tortured him for 12 years until the end.

Khuat Duy Trac, the beloved Vietnamese vocalist prior to 1975, was
brutally silenced in Hanoi's prisons for his unyielding stance against
oppression. He had been through 7 prisons camps all together, beaten
severely and starved nearly to death several times before he was
released in 1988.

For the past four years outside of prison cells but facing a larger
prison of Vietnam and under constant surveillance, Duy Trac had to
struggle to survive and seek his way out of the country. He finally made
it to the United States last August. From this land of freedom, Duy Trac
has vowed to continue working for Vietnam's democracy.

**************
Vietnam's Forbidden Objects Found
**************

Security police of Vinh Loc (Binh Chanh province), in a raid against
five local eateries early September, seized five wine bottles bearing
pictures of the former South Vietnam's flag - the yellow flag with three
horizontal red stripes.  Early in October, the same "reactionary"
material was uncovered in a bar in hamlet 4 of Hung Long village.

The two types of bottles were used at the bottling plants: "The Queen"
of Tan Thoi Hiep (Hoc Mon province) and the Phu Nhuan (district) plant.


*****************
Hanoi Cancels Trial of Dissident Under International Pressure
****************

Hanoi planned to bring to trial on November 12-13 a dissident who
hijacked an airplane on September 4, dropped leaflets over Ho Chi Minh
City calling for a general uprising against the communist government,
then parachuted into the outskirts of the city and was arrested. Hanoi
official media has speculated the man would face the death penalty.

News of the trial has sparked fierce reaction from the Vietnamese and
international community. Hundreds of thousands of letters, fax and phone
calls from overseas Vietnamese have reportedly reached government
representatives of various nations urging their pressure on Hanoi for a
fair trial for Ly Tong, the 44 year old freedom advocate who escaped
Hanoi's vast prison system and made it to the US in 1983.

The France-based International Federation of Human Rights called on
Vietnamese authorities November 10 "to respect fundamental rights and
allow Ly Tong a fair and public hearing before an independent and
impartial court."

The FIDH said in a press statement that it asked Vietnamese authorities
to allow foreign observers at the trial and that it was ready to send
its own delegates to the hearing. The group, which monitors human rights
violations by both right-wing and leftist regimes, said its request was
because of the "haste of recent trials leading to unjustifiably heavy
sentences conducted in Vietnam against religious personalities and human
rights activists".

Under this mounting pressure, the regime has postponed the trial without
mentioning when it will be held.


--
Vietnam Insight (vinsight@netcom.com)
Chan Tran, editor