Deformed fetuses at Ho Chi Minh City's Tu Du Hospital, where doctors blame the high incidence of deformities on the use of Agent Orange during the war.
By Martha Ann Overland | TIME
DA NANG, VIETNAM – This lonely section of the abandoned Da Nang airbase was once crawling with U.S. airmen and machines. It was here where giant orange drums were stored and the herbicides they contained were mixed and loaded onto waiting planes. Whatever sloshed out soaked into the soil and eventually seeped into the water supply. Thirty years later, the rare visitor to the former U.S. airbase is provided with rubber boots and protective clothing. Residue from Agent Orange, which was sprayed to deny enemy troops jungle cover, remains so toxic that this patch of land is considered one of the most contaminated pieces of real estate in the country. A recent study indicates that even three decades after the war ended, the cancer-causing dioxins are at levels 300 to 400 times higher than what is deemed to be safe.
After years of meetings, signings and photo ops, the U.S. held another ceremony in Vietnam on Wednesday to sign yet another memorandum of understanding as part of the continuing effort to manage Agent Orange’s dark legacy. Yet there are grumblings that little — if anything — has actually been done to clean up the most contaminated sites. Congress has allocated a total of $6 million to help address Agent Orange issues in Vietnam since 2007, but not only does the amount not begin to scratch the surface of the problem or get rid of the tons of toxic soil around the nation, there are questions about how the money is being spent. Several parties have noted with growing frustration that what money there is is primarily going to study the issue and hire consultants rather implementing measures to prevent new generations from being exposed.
“There is still risk to people living in those areas,” says Thomas Boivin, president of the Vancouver-based Hatfield Consultants, an environmental firm that has been identifying and measuring Agent Orange contamination in Vietnam since 1994. The good news is that Hatfield’s studies indicate that even though ten percent of southern Vietnam was sprayed with dioxins, only a handful of hotspots — all former U.S. military installations where the herbicide was mixed and stored — pose a danger to humans. The bad news? “If those were in Canada or in the U.S., they would require immediate clean up,” Boivin says.
Responding to complaints that America is dragging its feet, U.S. ambassador to Vietnam Michael Michalak said the $1.7 million most recently allocated to conduct an environmental assessment of the Da Nang airbase is being done to comply with both U.S. and Vietnamese law, and is a necessary step toward clean up. “We’re investigating many promising techniques,” Michalak said following Wednesday’s signing ceremony in Hanoi. Careful study is required if the job is to be done right, he said. “We know there is dioxin in the soil,” he added. “But what method do we use to remove it? Where do we tell the diggers to dig? It’s just another step on the road.”
But critics believe the U.S. is playing a grim waiting game: Waiting for people to die in order to avoid potentially costly lawsuits. For a country currently engaged in two wars, accepting comprehensive responsibility for wartime damages could set an expensive precedent. “They know what the problem is and where it is,” says Chuck Searcy, country representative of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. “Why do they now need an environmental impact assessment? They are studying this to death.”
Scientists have been raising the alarm about dioxins since the 1960s. After TCDD, the dioxin in Agent Orange, was found to cause cancer and birth defects, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency slapped an emergency ban on the herbicide in 1979. Dow and Monsanto, the chemical’s largest manufacturers, eventually shelled out millions in damages to U.S. troops exposed to it while it was being used as a wartime defoliant from 1961 to 1971. The U.S. government still spends billions every year on disability payments to those who served in Vietnam — including their children, many of whom are suffering from dioxin-associated cancers and birth defects. In October, the Department of Veterans Affairs added leukemia, Parkinson’s and a rare heart disease to the list of health problems associated with Agent Orange. Yet U.S. official policy maintains there is no conclusive evidence that the defoliant caused any health problems among the millions of exposed Vietnamese or their children.
Meanwhile, private foundations and individuals have taken the lead. Early efforts to identify and measure dioxin levels at Agent Orange hotspots were undertaken by the U.S.-based Ford Foundation in the 1990s. Later, with technical assistance from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Ford ‘capped’ the most contaminated section of what is now the Da Nang International Airport, installing a filtration system to stop dioxins flowing into the city’s water supply and building a wall to keep people from entering the area. At another abandoned U.S. airbase in the Aluoi Valley, a Vietnamese botanist raised $25,000 in donations to plant cactus-like bushes and thorn trees around contaminated areas to prevent villagers from entering to fish there. (Dioxins quickly accumulate in animal fat.) Though these are not long-term solutions, Hatfield found that after the simple barriers went up, dioxin levels in the blood and breast milk of nearby residents dropped dramatically.
Charities in Da Nang have also voiced concerns about how U.S. money is being spent when it comes to providing care to the disabled in the region. A portion of the $6 million allocated by Congress was awarded to humanitarian groups working with disabled residents around Da Nang. But it is difficult to find evidence of the money at work. Save the Children was given $400,000 to help people with disabilities find employment. The sole case the organization shared with a reporter was their work finding a job for a college graduate with a hair lip. Another chunk went to equip and refurbish a wing at Binh Dan hospital in Da Nang, which sits largely empty. Because the American Rehabilitation Center has virtually no medical equipment, it has a difficult time attracting patients. Meanwhile, the U.S. embassy in Hanoi is spending $500,000 for a health and remediation advisor.
Groups caring for children born with horrific deformities from Agent Orange — such as malformed limbs and no eyes — are wondering why they haven’t seen any of that money. Bedridden and unable to feed themselves, many patients need round-the-clock care. As they age, and parents die, who is going to look after them? asks Nguyen Thi Hien, director of the Da Nang Association of Victims of Agent Orange. She says donations to her group, which cares for 300 children, are down 50% because there is a belief that local charities are flush with cash since the U.S.’s latest allocation. “The one million [being spent by the Americans] is not for care, but mainly for conferences and training,” said Hien. “This money should go to caring for the victims.”
But determining who should benefit is a nightmare. Tests to establish dioxin levels in individuals run as high as $1,000 per person — a pricetag Vietnam says it can’t afford. U.S. negotiators and scientists are frustrated that Vietnam seems to blame all the population’s birth defects on the defoliants. Diplomats broke off talks several years ago complaining that Vietnam was unwilling to use accepted scientific methods because it may not support claims of widespread exposure and health damages. They have also complained that Vietnam itself could certainly do more to help its own. No one is stopping the Vietnamese from erecting fences around contaminated spots, points out one U.S. diplomat, suggesting the Vietnamese are simply milking the issue for more aid and sympathy.
Still, the Vietnamese people (and the government to a much quieter extent) think it’s the U.S. that should be doing more — much more. Some point out that the U.S. spends only a fraction on Agent Orange cleanup compared to the $50 million it spends every year on searching for the remains of American soldiers missing in action. Thao Griffiths, Country Director of the Vietnam Veterans of America, which works on lingering war issues, does not want to compare the budgets of the two efforts. But the legacy of each is equally painful. “The issue of MIAs for Americans holds the same importance that Agent Orange does for the Vietnamese,” she says. And until the issue is resolved the legacy of the war will continue to haunt both sides.
]]>
John Haley said he has asked his wife to collect newspaper clippings of how he shoved the fisherman into the water so that their 15-month-old boy can learn from his mistakes. (Sun-Times File)
‘I am at fault for Mr. Doan’s death’
By Rummana Hussain | Chicago Sun-Times
Although there’s an empty chair at the Doans’ dinner table every night, a full plate of food is always placed at an altar overflowing with bouquets, candles and a picture of the family’s deceased patriarch, Du Doan.
The ritual, Doan’s daughter Thao said, is performed so she and her relatives will never “forget.”
Thao Doan, however, is also haunted by another reminder: the “cold, dark, devilish” eyes and callousness of the heavily-tattooed man who pushed her 62-year-old father into Lake Michigan as a drunken prank.
That man — John Haley — finally apologized Friday for the Vietnamese immigrant’s drowning death before he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for involuntary manslaughter.
“I am at fault for Mr. Doan’s death and no one else. I take full responsibility for that,” Haley said of the Sept. 1, 2007, sneak attack at Montrose Harbor.
Haley, 33, said he has asked his wife to collect newspaper clippings of how he shoved the fisherman into the water so that their 15-month-old boy can learn from his mistakes.
“Even though it will be the hardest thing I’ll ever have to do, I will show all of this to my son when he gets older in hopes he won’t follow the wrong path,” Haley said. “A son should see his daddy as his hero, and I’m going to have to give that up.”
Haley, whom his own lawyer referred to as a drunken “jagoff” and “pea brain” when he was convicted in October, said he stopped drinking alcohol the day he learned Doan died. Jurors acquitted Haley of first-degree murder.
Involuntary manslaughter carries a sentence ranging from probation to five years in prison, but Cook County Judge John P. Kirby was allowed to extend Haley’s sentence because of his previous felony drug conviction.
Kirby also sentenced Haley on Friday to three years in prison on an aggravated battery charge related to a similar attack against another fisherman, Ronald Squires, who survived his fall into Lake Michigan. That three-year sentence will run concurrently with the longer sentence.
“What John Haley did to Mr. Doan and Mr. Squires was the height, the epitome of being a coward,” the judge said.
Earlier, Doan’s family talked about the pain of losing a man who suffered a mountain of hardships, including two layoffs, from his jobs as a janitor and a factory worker. Doan served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War and had discovered fishing as a hobby, they said.
“This murderer will still see his family. We can only see a tombstone. This murderer will live out his aspirations. Not my father,” Thao Doan said, tears in her eyes.
In a statement, Kevin Doan said that while his father miraculously survived the Communists, bombs, and bullets, “a young man full of arrogance and remorselessness took his life with a simple heartless push.”
Haley’s school teacher mother, Anna Marie Haley, tearfully told the judge how, at the age of 10, her son had found his alcoholic father dead. The death deeply affected Haley and contributed to his troubled life as an adult, she said.
“I wish there was some way to turn back the clock and erase what happened,” a distraught Anna Marie Haley said.
After the sentencing, Anna Marie Haley grabbed Thao Doan’s hand and repeatedly said, “I’m sorry.”
Thao Doan welcomed the gesture and nodded with acknowledgement, evidence that the young woman was raised, as she had said, believing in “second chances.”
]]>
Ngo Bau Chau
A mathematical proof by a young Vietnamese mathematician has been honored by TIME Magazine as one of the 10 scientific discoveries of 2009.
Ngo Bao Chau was chosen for proving the theory that connected two branches of mathematics, number theory and group theory.
The theory, developed in 1979 by the Canadian-American mathematician Robert Langlands and thus now known as the Langlands program or the fundamental lemma, captured deep symmetries associated with equations that involve whole numbers.
Chau came up with the proof over the past few years while working at Paris-Sud University and the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) at Princeton.
Mathematicians around the world “breathed a sigh of relief” when the proof was checked this year and confirmed to be correct, TIME said.
“It’s as if people were working on the far side of the river waiting for someone to throw this bridge across,” Peter Sarnak, a number theorist at IAS was quoted by TIME as saying on the fundamental lemma. “And now all of sudden everyone’s work on the other side of the river has been proven.”
Chau, Vietnam’s youngest professor, was the first Vietnamese mathematician to win Clay Award in 2004.
The 37-year-old has also received awards from France Academy in 2008 and the Oberwolfach Mathematical Research Institute in 2007.
In 2004, Chau was invited to be professor at Paris 6 and Paris 11, two major universities in Paris, but he went to Paris 11 to work with mathematicians Gérard Laumon and Laurent Lafforgue.
Chau now teaches at the Natural Sciences University and the University of Education in Hanoi.
Other top significant findings in 2009 include the oldest skeleton of a prehuman hominid, the decoding of the human epigenome, a gene therapy that cures color blindness and water on the moon.
The Top 10 Scientific Discoveries was among 50 wide-ranging lists ranked by TIME’s The Top 10 Everything of 2009, including those in arts and entertainment, business, technology, sports and pop culture.
]]>
Cmdr. H. B. Le heading to a welcoming ceremony over the weekend in Da Nang, Vietnam.
By Seth Mydans | New York Times
DA NANG, VIETNAM – Cmdr. H. B. Le, the first Vietnamese-American to command a United States Navy destroyer, had just stepped ashore on a formal port call, making an emotional return to Vietnam for the first time since he fled as a young boy on a fishing boat at the end of the war in 1975.
A youthful and smiling man of 39, he bore on his shoulders the weight of the symbolism of cautiously warming military ties between Vietnam and the United States in the visit over the weekend.
But the symbolism became more nuanced when his welcoming ceremony was delayed by a dispute over a request to display the red Vietnamese flag with its gold star aboard the U.S.S. Blue Ridge, the flagship of the Seventh Fleet, which had just pulled into port.
Two hours later, this past Saturday, the flag was finally raised high on the yardarm, seemingly in accord with the Vietnamese demand and contrary to American naval custom.
The waiting generals began to smile again, the red carpet was rolled out and Commander Le was free to proceed with his return.
“Stepping ashore was awesome,” he said after landing from his destroyer, the U.S.S. Lassen, which was anchored in Da Nang Harbor. “To be able to return to Vietnam after 35 years and to be able to do it as commander of a United States naval warship was an incredible honor and a privilege.”
Commander Le at the welcoming ceremony.
He was returning to a very different Vietnam from the one he fled at the age of 5 with his parents and three of his siblings. Most people in this young nation, like Commander Le himself, have no memory of the war.
In the last decade or more, Vietnam has opened its economy, increased trade with the United States and risen from postwar poverty even as the Communist government maintains control of the news media and political expression.
The city of Da Nang today, with four new bridges, broad streets and an emerging high-rise skyline, is almost unrecognizable to those who were here during the war years.
Commander Le greets the locals.
Despite the changes, the flag-raising dispute and the background of Commander Le’s own story illustrated the complexities of a relationship that remains shadowed by the war, even as it moves tentatively forward.
“Gradual and steady,” said Carlyle B. Thayer, an expert on the Vietnamese armed forces at the Australian Defense Force Academy, describing the evolving relationship. “The Americans see a glacier moving, and they call it progress.”
He said Vietnam had been slow to accept American overtures for closer military ties, hoping to balance Chinese influence in the region with an American presence, but stepping carefully to avoid offending Beijing.
“The two considerations that govern the Vietnamese are worries about China and deep suspicion of the United States,” said Mr. Thayer, a specialist on Vietnam at the Australian Defense Force Academy in Canberra, Australia. “Suspicion is the underlying feature that puts a brake on progress.”
The Vietnamese generals who greeted Commander Le — whose full name is Hung Ba Le — might have reason for mixed feelings.
Commander Le’s father, Thong Ba Le, who is now 68, was a commander in the wartime South Vietnamese Navy and for a time held a senior position here in Da Nang. In 1975 he fled the Communist military when his base came under attack by rocket and mortar fire. The family spent two days at sea before being rescued by a United States Navy vessel.
While he was able to take his wife and his four younger children when he fled, he was unable to rescue four older children, who were trapped in Hue, Commander Le said. Two of these sons spent several years in Communist re-education camps, he said.
Eight years later, the younger children were able to join the family in northern Virginia and the family became a model of the upward mobility achieved by some Vietnamese immigrants.
A standout scholar and athlete in high school, Commander Le graduated from the United States Naval Academy with a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1992 and was commissioned as a Navy officer. He is married with two children.
“I’m a lucky guy,” he said. “My dad got me out of the country. He did what he had to do. He gave us opportunities to have a good life in the United States.”Aboard the Vietnamese tug that brought Commander Le ashore was a man with quite a different set of memories: Chief Engineer Nguyen Van Ne, 50, said that as a child he had been terrified of American soldiers.
“They burned down my parents’ house,” he said. “They burned it down because they thought we were Communists.” But he said that those memories were in the past now, and that he would like to visit the United States “just to go and have a look.” He said that in the United States, people “get a good education and they get ahead, like Commander Le.”
Commander Le hugs a relative.
Commander Le learned only a little of the Vietnamese language and very little about his father’s past or his family’s history.
And so his visit on Sunday to his home city of Hue, 50 miles north of Da Nang, meeting the aunts and uncles who are his only relatives in Vietnam, was a voyage of discovery of his roots.
“Something I recently learned was that my dad was not the first Vietnamese naval officer,” he said. “Back in imperial times, my great-great-great-great — four or five greats — grandfather served with the emperor. He was like an admiral.”
Commander Le prayed at the family’s ancestral shrines, visited their graves and learned of what he said were his family’s royal connections in the old imperial capital.
“I had noodle soup by the Perfume River, sitting on little plastic stools,” he said. “I definitely felt like a Vietnamese, just enjoying that food and the company of my family.”
Although he hardly mentioned the war to his children, Commander Le’s father has written accounts of his escape, bitter at what he calls the abandonment and failure of ideals of the withdrawing American military.
He has refused to return to Communist Vietnam, saying he fears for his safety, although it is unlikely that he would face difficulties. Though he is proud to be an American, he said in a telephone interview, he still honors the red and yellow flag of the former South Vietnam as a symbol of freedom and democracy. The dispute over the raising of the Vietnamese flag on the Blue Ridge was a small, but telling glimpse into the relations between the two militaries.
According to United States Navy custom, the flag of the host nation is to be displayed only on the quarterdeck, beside the American flag, said a public affairs officer, Cmdr. Jeff Davis of the United States 7th Fleet.
The Vietnamese custom is to fly their flag high at a level equivalent to that of the visiting nation, he said.
In previous port calls, the Navy has bent its traditions in honor of Vietnamese custom, Commander Davis said. But this time the Blue Ridge held firmly to American custom.
After two hours of difficult discussions, the senior Vietnamese military and civilian officials began to walk off the pier, abandoning the welcoming ceremony. At just that moment, their flag inched its way upward and began to flutter side by side with the American flag.
“It’s beautiful,” a Vietnamese general said, looking up.
“Each country has its own customs.”
The next morning, though, reporters noticed that the Vietnamese flag was flying six inches lower than the Stars and Stripes.
]]>
Lam Luong is escorted into a courtroom on Jan. 15, 2008, in Mobile, Alabama. (Bill Starling/Press-Register/Associated Press)
Judge gives death sentence to coastal Alabama man who tossed 4 kids from bridge
By Garry Mitchell | Associated Press
A judge on Thursday ordered a death sentence for a coastal Alabama man who was convicted of murdering four young children by tossing them from a bridge to “torture” his wife.
Mobile County Circuit Judge Charles Graddick also ordered that prison officials show Lam Luong photos of the children each day he spends on death row awaiting lethal injection.
In handing down the sentence, Graddick rejected a defense bid for the optional penalty — life in prison without parole. An appeal of the death sentence is automatic and could last years.
The 38-year-old jobless shrimper was convicted of capital murder in March for killing the children on Jan. 7, 2008 in a dispute with his wife, Kieu Phan, who was 23 at the time. Jurors last month earlier voted 12-0 for the death penalty.
Luong, a Vietnamese refugee who came to the U.S. when he was 13, was convicted of dropping the children — Ryan Phan, 3; Hannah Luong, 2; Lindsey Luong, 1; and 4-month-old Danny Luong — from the top of an 80-foot-high span to Dauphin Island. The bodies were recovered from coastal waters.
Luong was the father of three of the children. His wife was pregnant with Ryan, the child of another man, when they met in 2004, according to testimony.
“Ryan was very bright, very protective of his siblings,” Assistant District Attorney Jo Beth Murphree told the judge. She said Ryan must have been aware of the “awful circumstances” when Luong drove the family van to the top of the bridge.
Asked if he had any final comment before sentencing, a bearded Luong looked at his wife, and, in a cracked voice, said, “I apologize to my wife,” a court translator quoted him saying. Phan, seated between her sister and mother, wiped away tears.
Defense attorney Greg Hughes claimed Luong, who had no history of violence, suffered from long-term crack cocaine use and was depressed about his life situation.
“He snapped,” Hughes told the judge, hoping for a sentence of life without parole.
But Murphree said Luong’s drug use was voluntary. She said he was raised by his grandparents in Vietnam and had many opportunities.
The judge pointed to testimony that showed Luong was competent at the time of the murders. Luong concocted a kidnapping story as a cover-up and finally gave police a confession. Graddick said Luong — the son of an American black soldier and a Vietnamese mother — killed the children to “torture” his wife and couldn’t blame his actions on his upbringing or ethnic background.
The judge said the children must have experienced “sheer unmitigated terror” during the fall into the Mississippi Sound. He said it appears the 4-month-old was tossed first. A passing motorist told police he thought Luong had tossed a bag of garbage from the bridge, according to trial testimony.
A duck hunter later found the infant’s body near a marsh near Bayou La Batre. Bodies of the other three also were recovered, the last off the Louisiana coast.
The judge also ordered that any proceeds from the sale of books, movies or TV deals resulting from this “vile criminal act” must be turned over to the court for distribution to the children’s mother, setting Luong’s restitution at $50 million for such an occurrence.
District Attorney John Tyson Jr. said he hopes the family finds “some peace.”
Luong’s attorneys had no comment.
A fake nun from Nghia Dong commune, Nghe An Province.
By Vuong Tran | VietNamNet Bridge
VIETNAM – Impersonating Buddhist monks is a “hereditary occupation” in Village 5, Nghia Dong commune, Tan Ky district, in the central province of Nghe An. Village 5 is called the village of “fake monks”.
These “fake monks”, who are farmers, travel throughout the country to collect money from Buddhist followers to put into their own purses. Some “monks” get rich from this job, but there are many others going to jail.
Why pretend to be monks?
Con River’s wharf is often crowded with “fake monks” in late afternoon. These people return their home village after a “working day”.
“These ‘monks’ often come home by waterway to dodge the public’s eyes. They don’t dare to go on the main road of our commune to avoid buffalo boys. Whenever these boys see fake monks, they always sing a folk song to jeer these people. Fake monks are ashamed so they have to choose another road,” said a boat man.
The boatman said his boat transports over 30 fake monks a day. “The recent Tet (lunar New Year), the pretend monks returned home from everywhere. All of them had modern cell phones. They looked quite rich!” he added.
Passing the Con River, all “monks” immediately take off “tools” like brown clothes, cloth bags, brown scarfs, etc. to become normal people with full heads of hair. Nobody could know that they had just been “monks”.
“There are many people in Nghia Dong commune who work as fake monks, but my village has the highest number of these monks,” said the owner of a small tea shop in Nghia Dong commune.
Village 5 has 180 households, totalling over 700 people. More than 200 people earn their living by disguising themselves as monks. There are some families all the members of which are fake monks.
There are two kinds of fake monks: those who do this “job” the whole year round and those who consider it a seasonal job during their leisure time after harvest. Most of them ride on motorbikes to go to far locations to ‘work’.
This “job” is said to have appeared 20 years ago and the “founder” is a very old man. This man previously returned to the village but recently nobody sees him anymore. At the beginning, several villagers followed the man to earn their living. Gradually, seeing that this “job” was a good one, many people become pretend monks. Many families in Village 5 have become rich thanks to this profession.
Fake nun named Dieu Linh.
Fake monks in the Central Highlands
A man named K who was born in Nghia Dong commune and now lives in the Central Highlands city of Buon Ma Thuot took us to meet fake monks there. He said: “These are professional fake monks. They only return home once a year to visit their families. The whole time they work as fake monks.”
He led us to Yok Don National Park and told us: “All fake monks stay here. They are workers on coffee farms and become monks during their leisure time. When I first came here and was unemployed, a fake monk from my home village saw me. He bought me a cup of coffee and asked me whether I would like to work as a fake monk, and that he would give me brown clothes.”
These “monks” often visit families to “sell incense for charity”. They often show buyers a very old book recording the name of incense buyers as “benefactors”. Thinking that they are doing act of charity, many people pay a lot for a bundle of incense. Some monks can earn up to one hundred USD per day from selling incense while they could would have been making VND70,000 ($4) working on a coffee farm.
Fake monks often live in tents. They work during the day and practice praying at night. They buy Buddhist prayer-books to read and learn. Whenever they sell incense, they talk about Buddhist theory to sell the scam.
“They are very quick. I just saw some men in coffee worker clothes. They just ran into a bush of coffee for one minute to become a monk,” K said.
One day in the central province of Nghe An, I saw two Buddhist nuns stop their motorbike in Village 9 in Xuan Thanh commune, Yen Thanh district. A nun went into a grocery offering incense for charity. The grocery owner, a woman, said she also sold incense so she didn’t want to buy more incense. But after the nun’s presentation, she bought two bundles of incense for VND40,000 while she sold a bundle of incense for just VND1,000. “I bought these bundles of incense for charity,” the woman said.
Seeing me taking her photo, the nun seemed to be frightened. I asked her: “What is your name and which pagoda do you come from?” She stammered: “My name is Dieu Linh, from Phap Linh pagoda in Quang Tri province.” “Why do you ride a motorbike with a licence number from Nghe An province?” She said: “I borrowed this motorbike.” When I asked her about her card, she said she forgot it and immediately left with the other nun.
Monks are still arrested!
Some unlucky “monks” were arrested while they were “working”. Recently, police in Vinh city, Nghe An province arrested Vu Thi Lan, 32, and Pham Thi Hoi, 38, from Nghia Dong commune for impersonating monks to cheat people. Police seized VND1.5 million (VND900) from the two fake monks. They said they took this amount of money from a person using a “charity trick”. They admitted that this “job” was so lucrative that they earned their living by this job.
In the southern province of Dong Nai, police arrested a fake monk named Nguyen Van Tu, 44, also from Nghia Dong commune. He has never been in a pagoda but he has travelled everywhere to raise funds for pagodas and sell incense.
Tu said that while he was working in Long Khanh district, Dong Nai province, he met a fellow-countryman who was a fake monk. This man gave Tu brown clothes and necessary tools and a letter of introduction of a pagoda named Buu Long (a false pagoda). Since then Tu has worked as a pretend monk.
Saying that he wanted to buy a statue for his pagoda, Tu had an invoice worth VND10 million ($600) from a sculpture shop. He took this invoice to many families in Dong Nai to raise money.
HCM City police also arrested four fake nuns from Nghia Dong commune, Duong Thi Thuy, 38, Duong Thi Nga, 39, Vo Thi Quynh, 29, and Nguyen Thi Phuong, 40.
The sheriff of Nghia Dong commune, Le Cong Hoi, said fake monks are a problem of Nghia Dong, but the local authorities have failed to prevent it because most of them have Buddhist cards.
“We have warned some provinces about fake monks. We hope competent agencies will take action to help Nghia Dong commune rid itself of fake monks,” he said.
]]>
Linda Nguyen, 17, was named David Douglas High School's 2009 Rose Festival princess. She plays violin, is in the National Honor Society and hopes to study pharmacology. (Photo by Doug Beghtel)
By Lisa Grace Lednicer | OregonLive
PORTLAND, OREGON – A raucous reception greeted senior Linda Nguyen, 17, as she was crowned David Douglas High School’s Rose Festival princess Tuesday.
“I just wanted to say thank you to David Douglas,” Nguyen said, slightly breathless, as she clutched a bouquet of roses after the announcement. “I’m so excited to have this wonderful, crazy adventure.”
Nguyen, who speaks fluent Vietnamese, is the only daughter of Nho Nguyen and Hoa Bang and came to the United States when she was 4.
“This moment is still very, very surreal,” she said, describing her emotions after her name was called. “It’s so amazing.” She said she’s wanted to try for Rose Festival princess since her freshman year at David Douglas.
Her hobbies include playing the violin, Scottish fiddling, jazz and teaching Vietnamese traditional dance.
She’s been a student research assistant at Oregon Health Sciences University and is senior class president at David Douglas. As for her future, Nguyen is waiting to hear if she’s been accepted to Oregon State University, where she wants to pursue a degree in pharmacology.
Age she’d like to be: “I really like the age I am now. You’re mature because you’re going to step into college, but you’re still a kid and still have fun.”
Place in Oregon she loves: Heppner, which she visited on a class trip. “The town is so friendly and everyone is so connected. All the students know each other and look out for each other.”
Advice to a younger sibling, if she had one: “Come to high school and be yourself, and look for things that interest you. David Douglas is so huge, it’s really important to be passionate.”
Class that surprised her: Psychology. “I thought the ’soft sciences’ weren’t intellectual, but after taking it I was wowed by it.”
Her most valued possession: Her violin.
Her secret vice: Procrastination.
What every person her age should know: How to be happy.
What’s next: A queen will be crowned June 6 before the Grand Floral Parade.
]]>
Mr. Teo Boon Teck, Miss Dinh's husband-to-be, refuses to leave her side. (Photo by Hedy Khoo)
By Tay Shi’an | AsiaOne
SINGAPORE – She lies in a coma, oblivious to a three-way tussle over mounting hospital bills and her future.
Vietnamese bride Dinh Thi Thom was knocked down by a lorry less than 30 minutes before she was to be married to a Singaporean, on Christmas Eve last year.
She suffered a brain hemorrhage and has been in a coma ever since.
The tussle:
- Stay, which is what her husband-to-be wants.
- Stay, then go, because her family wants her to be better before they take her home to Vietnam.
- Go, because the hospital feels nothing more can be done for her.
The National University Hospital’s stand is that Miss Dinh, 21, no longer needs acute hospital care in Singapore and is fit to return to Vietnam for rehabilitation.
She has been warded at NUH for two months. The hospital has yet to receive any payment of her $73,000 medical bill so far.
But Miss Dinh’s parents want NUH to perform one more operation on her before taking her back to Vietnam.
The surgery, estimated to cost thousands of dollars, is to replace a portion of her skull back into her head.
The skull portion was removed in an earlier surgery after the accident and has since been stored in her abdomen.
But an NUH spokesman said: ‘The surgery will not change the medical condition that Miss Dinh is in as it is purely a cosmetic procedure.
‘As the hospital does not want to add to the financial burden of Miss Dinh’s family, we have advised her mother to focus on improving Miss Dinh’s condition before doing this surgery much later.’
However, her family feels the lorry driver’s insurer must pay for her treatment, including this operation.
The spokesman said the hospital’s clinical team has conducted a family conference with a translator to explain MissDinh’s condition and future care to her mother, Madam Nguyen Thi-Dum, 51, a farmer.
Asking for help
NUH doctors are also contacting a hospital in Vietnam to take care of Miss Dinh and its medical social worker is exploring possible financial avenues for their trip back.
The family had to borrow money to fly to Singapore. They arrived last Wednesday.
Miss Dinh’s relative, Madam Mac Thi Hai, 72, who accompanied Madam Nguyen to Singapore, said they are adamant about the second surgery, which they believe will make Miss Dinh better.
She said in Mandarin: ‘How can we go back with her like this? They should finish what they started.’
Meanwhile, Miss Dinh’s medical bill continues to mount.
Her stay in the Class C ward costs $165.85 each day. That’s more than $1,100 a week, excluding medication and other procedures.
Miss Dinh’s mother has sought help from the Vietnamese Embassy.
Mr Bui Tan Long, the embassy’s first secretary, said they have put Madam Nguyen in touch with a local lawyer to explore their options.
Madam Mac said: ‘We are leaving it to the lawyers to contact the insurance company and the hospital. It’s out of our hands now.’
Meanwhile, Miss Dinh’s husband-to-be, Mr Teo Boon Teck, 30, a newspaper vendor, is sticking to his stand that she remain in his care.
He said that if Miss Dinh’s parents insist on taking her back to Vietnam, that’s as good as declaring their relationship null and void.
In that case, he wants them to pay the $73,000 hospital bill, plus $30,000 compensation for what he spent on her in the four months she has been in Singapore.
He said: ‘If, after the operation, she signs the marriage certificate, then I’ll let them take her back to Vietnam.
‘If she wants to go back, but we are not married, then I want them to return the money.’
No legal basis
However, it is unlikely that he has any legal basis to make such a claim.
Mr Teo had previously claimed that if Miss Dinh’s parents are willing to leave her here with him, he is willing to sell his flat to pay for the medical bills.
NUH’s stand is that Miss Dinh’s mother, as her next-of-kin, will be making medical decisions on her behalf. And her ‘immediate family’ is liable for her bills.
Mr Long said the Vietnamese Embassy was thankful to NUH doctors for saving Miss Dinh’s life.
He also appealed to Singaporeans for financial help.
He said: ‘Please ask your readers if they can help her. They can send (the money) directly to the hospital. In Vietnam, we often do that. As you know, her family is very poor.
‘We hope that after the article, someone with money will help her case.’
]]>
Binh Nguyen Rybacki, with some of the Vietnamese girls associated with Children of Peace International.
By Claire Martin | Denver Post
LOVELAND, COLORADO – In 1975, at age 18, Binh Nguyen escaped from Saigon, barely avoiding the approaching North Vietnamese army.
Nearly two decades later, married and the mother of two, returning to serve as a translator for a medical team, she was shocked at the plight of children locally dismissed as buo doi, “dust of life.”
Most of the children were girls. Many had been sold into prostitution or abandoned. They suffered from health problems virtually unknown in North America, eliminated by vaccines, medicine, and preventive care.
In 1996, after years of working with a Vietnamese friend caring for 27 orphaned children, she established Children of Peace International, a nonprofit charity.
With the agreement of her husband, Jack Rybacki, and sons Preston and Spencer, the family moved from their home into more modest quarters, and devoted Binh Rybacki’s salary from Hewlett-Packard to COPI.
“Everything in our organization is simple,” said Binh Rybacki.
“Is it legal? Is it godly? If it’s legal and not godly, I won’t do it. If it’s godly but not legal, I won’t do it. It has to satisfy the law of man and the law of God.”
The Rybackis and COPI volunteers travel four to six times a year between Loveland and Vietnam. Preston Rybacki now lives in Vietnam. He helps coordinate COPI’s medical- and dental-care trips, and sustains COPI’s ties with 14 schools and orphanages serving approximately 6,000 of the bui doi children.
Over the past 15 years, COPI has created scholarships for basic education — tuition at primary schools is $35 per child, and uniforms are required — and vocational training, including micro-loans to single mothers interested in cottage industries. COPI built Ho Chi Minh City’s first pediatric HIV/AIDS hospital, and clean-water wells in rural Vietnam, and established an adoption program.
“One thing we liked about COPI is that Binh has foster families, so the orphanage babies aren’t warehoused — they’re well cared for by a foster mom every night,” Dianne Kersting said. Her son, Sam, was 6 months old when the Kerstings brought him to their Denver home in 1998.
Another COPI supporter: Cherry Creek High School’s Key Club members, who helped the Rocky Mountain Key Club raise more than $50,000 to build a school for 900 students in Phu Tho, in northern Vietnam.
“Once the children can manage to care for one another, then and only then we will have true peace,” Binh Rybacki said.
“None of us could ever imagine the fathers and grandfathers of these children were enemies on the battlefields just 35 years ago. Now the children are picking up the pieces and have begun their mending for peace.”
]]>
Vuong Nguyen, 66-year-old co-founder of the country's only Vietnamese gay and lesbian program, Song That, left, helps Duc Le record his voice at her home in San Jose, California on Wednesday, February 18, 2009. (Photo by Nhat V. Meyer)
By Jessie Mangaliman | San Jose Mercury News
SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA – As a young college student studying Oriental philosophy in Saigon during the early part of the Vietnam War, Vuong Nguyen was hired by the American military to be a radio news writer and reader.
“My job was to communicate to Communist Hanoi,” she said, “to tell them to disarm and come to the South.”
Nguyen, now 66, is communicating to a different kind of audience in America today but using the same quiet, but determined, tactic against an unseen enemy: homophobia.
Known as “Chi Vuong,” or “Older Sister Vuong,” Nguyen is founder of Song That — Vietnamese for “live truthfully” — the country’s first Vietnamese gay and lesbian radio program, which she started 10 years ago in March. Broadcast every Sunday night on San Jose’s KSJX-AM (1500) and streamed online at www.songthat.com, the hourlong program seeks to battle ignorance about homosexuality in the Vietnamese community. There is no Vietnamese word for homosexuality, and gays and lesbians are unflatteringly referred to as half-man, half-woman, or worse, as having “sick lives.”
“We can’t let people treat us as bad people,” said Nguyen, a petite woman with shiny henna-red hair that falls past her shoulder. “We need to speak out and make them understand. To know us!”
Vuong Nguyen, 66-year-old co-founder of the country's only Vietnamese gay and lesbian program, Song That, at her home in San Jose, California on Wednesday, February 18, 2009. (Photo by Nhat V. Meyer)
The show she founded is recorded digitally in one corner of her cramped living room, the rosewood furniture hidden behind and under stacks of CDs of past radio programs and photo albums of past gay pride parades. A wide desk is shoved in one corner by the front door, illuminated by a dim glass lamp. A wireless microphone is propped up inside a black ceramic coffee mug. A sign above the desk reads: “Song That Radio.”
As she has done for the past decade, Nguyen writes the program. Long hand. “I can’t type,” she said apologetically. Then she lines up her readers, whom she coaches firmly as they read.
Her longtime friends describe her as selfless, courageous and a tireless advocate who has spent thousands of dollars of her own money to pay for the radio’s operation.
The program is a Vietnamese-style broadcasting mix of news, contemporary music, poetry and letters from readers.
At a recording session one recent Wednesday, there was news about continuing work on same-sex marriage in California; a first-ever lesbian wedding scene in the soap opera “All My Children”; a poem from listener Jason Tran, whose lover committed suicide after being disowned by his family for being gay.
Vuong Nguyen, far left, helps Duc Le, second from left, record at her home in San Jose, California on Wednesday, February 18, 2009. At right are Ngo Huy, second from right, and Chuong Bui, far right. (Photo by Nhat V. Meyer)
Duc Le, the radio’s board secretary, read an e-mail from a man in his late 20s. It’s an open letter to parents, from a closeted son.
“I don’t blame you for not understanding my personal life,” Le read, “a life that’s filled with sorrow and oppression.”
Le, 39, met Nguyen almost 14 years ago at one of the monthly get-togethers that Nguyen hosted at her Evergreen home. Many in the group were closeted, but Nguyen, Le said, led by example. She was out and she had a partner.
“She is the heart of the queer LGBT Viet community,” said Kim Loan Nguyen, 34, of San Jose.
She is not related to Vuong Nguyen, who she said is “a humble woman who has single-handedly gone out there gathering and welcoming alienated, isolated, lost, closeted souls “… eventually giving birth to a very much needed new family.”
At the Tet parade this month, the newly out and proud family led by Nguyen — lesbian mothers with their children, straight allies and non-Vietnamese supporters — marched in downtown San Jose. It was a watershed for the Vietnamese gay and lesbian community and, some say, testament to Nguyen’s years of hard work.
Vuong Nguyen was born in Hanoi, but when she was 12, the Communist occupation forced her family to flee to Saigon. Her father, a high school teacher, crusaded against the Communists.
Nguyen said she knew she was a lesbian in high school and college, but for fear of bringing shame to her family, she was closeted. She came out when she came to the United States. In the late 1980s, she founded one of the country’s first Vietnamese gay and lesbian groups in San Jose. From this small group emerged the idea for the radio program.
“I felt like I had a second family,” Nguyen said. “I felt comfortable.”
But the conservative Vietnamese community that Nguyen addressed did not return the feeling. Hate callers left messages on her phone. Hate mail and letters came.
“Go to hell,” one listener wrote. Another accused Song That of trying to recruit young people into “sick lives.”
Nguyen was undeterred, leaders in the South Bay’s gay and lesbian community said.
“I see her as a dedicated individual who has had to work hard to get the message to a shy, reluctant or resistant community,” said Judy Rickard, a longtime activist in the South Bay’s gay and lesbian community.
As big as the war that she fought in her own way as a young person in Vietnam, Nguyen has her eye on perhaps an even larger goal for the radio show.
“Parents will open their hearts to their kids,” she wrote in a grant proposal seeking funds for the radio program. “There will be no more broken families, no more tragedies in families.
]]>