**DONOTDELETE**
08-24-2002, 02:56 PM
From the Firebase Network's News Group.
-----Original Message-----
Subj: Support Boston rally for Human rights
From: BEn
Please forward this to all on your email lists, especially to anyone in the Boston area. Please get out and support this demonstration against Senator Kerry's blocking of the Vietnam Human Rights act. Senator Kerry has the audacity to say that he and Senator Johh McCain speak on behalf of all veterans. I can assure you that neither speaks for me, and I doubt if you have conceded this right to them.
We all went to Vietnam for a noble cause-fighting for the freedom of the Vietnamese people. History has proven that we were right for tens of thousands of Vietnamese have been murdered, and the hundreds of thousands incarcerated in concentration camps by the brutal communist fascist regime in Hanoi. The Vietnamese communists' brutality has not ceased. Hundreds of notable Vietnamese have been incarcerated, and more recently Hanoi's wave of terrorism against the Montagnards with thousands killed, tortured, imprisoned or simply "disappeared."
There will be no honest accounting for our MIA/POWs until there is a change toward democracy in Vietnam. The passage of the Vietnam Human Rights Act is the first step on that long path. Ironically, Senator Kerry has aspirations of being President -- God save us all from this charade, yet he is violating a very principal of democracy by not allowing the Vietnam Human Rights act to come to the floor of the Senate for a vote by your senators and mine.
Please turn in droves to stand alongside the Vietnamese in Boston this Sunday (see below) to show to Kerry that he doesn't speak for us in this sacred matter.
Sincerely, Mike Benge, former VN POW '68-73, and advisor to the Montagnard Human Rights Organization.
Kerry stand upsets some Vietnamese
By Quynh-Giang Tran, Globe Correspondent, 8/14/2002
Organizers say that more than 200 Vietnamese expatriates and their
supporters from around the country will gather at Senator John Kerry's
office starting Sunday to protest his efforts to prevent US aid from being
tied to Vietnam's human rights record.
The Vietnam Human Rights Act, a bill passed in the House of Representatives
last September by a vote of 410 to 1, would restrict nonhumanitarian aid
such as economic and agricultural development unless President Bush and the
US Department of State certifies that Vietnam is making progress on human
rights.
Kerry and Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican, have used
parliamentary maneuvers to prevent the full Senate from considering the
measure. The pair, veterans of the Vietnam War and visitors since then, say
the bill undermines the US government's ability to promote economic
reforms. Kerry said that ongoing relations with Vietnam will promote
greater political freedom.
''John McCain and I ... fear it may hinder rather than advance the cause of
human rights in Vietnam,'' Kerry said in a letter. ''We are concerned that
denying aid to Vietnam would actually slow human-rights improvements.''
But Vietnamese expatriates, including several elderly Boston-area
protesters vowing to fast up to 48 hours, as well as some US veterans
groups, say they are baffled by Kerry's refusal to allow a vote in the
Senate. The weeklong protest starting in Dorchester, an area with a large
Vietnamese population, will feature leaders of Vietnamese Buddhist,
Catholic, and Cao Dao religious groups and Vietnamese-Americans from
California, Arizona, and Pennsylvania, as well as local political leaders
and veterans.
'' The weight that Kerry has on this makes other senators defer to him,''
said John Petersen, assistant director of the American Legion's national
security and foreign relations division. Petersen said he believes that
Kerry supports reestablishing ties with Vietnam.
The bill's strongest supporter - Senator Bob Smith, a New Hampshire
Republican who also has visited Vietnam - says that Vietnam should not get
any of the $1.3 billion in US aid it received last year.
Critics say Vietnam's human rights violations include its block on
transmission of Radio Free Asia, a private journalistic organization with
US government funding.
''We should expect Vietnam to improve its record on human rights if we are
trying to trade with them,'' Smith said. ''Why doesn't the Senate do what
the House did and pass the Vietnam Human Rights Act?''
In addition, Smith, who chaired the Select Committee on POW-MIA Affairs
with Kerry, staunchly believes that the issue of American POWs in Vietnam
must be resolved before relations change.
Discussion of the bill has dominated Vietnamese-language radio and
newspapers around the country over the past year, prompting almost 30
demonstrations, including ones in California; Tampa; Washington, D.C.;
Austin, Texas; Seattle; and Lincoln, Neb.
''Senator Kerry has good connection with the Hanoi government,'' said Hien
thi Ngo, chairwoman of the Committee for Religious Freedom in Vietnam,
based in Washington, D.C., who will attend the protest. ''He wants their
trust and they don't want this bill.''
One criticism of the bill is that it hurts the people of Vietnam, a
population of 80 million that ranks their nation as the world's 13th-most
populous, though it is still among the poorest in the world.
But the protesters disagree. ''We have many friends and family in
Vietnam,'' said Nam Pham, a vice president at Citizens Bank in Boston.
''Nonhumanitarian aid doesn't affect the local population.''
The bill would also establish an intergovernmental monitoring commission
similar to one in China to report human rights violations and release
political and religious prisoners.
For expatriates such as Ngo, a 55-year-old real estate agent in Bethesda,
Md., the bill represents recognition that the government controls religious
and political freedoms in Vietman. ''As I sat in the House [during the
vote], I cried with joy. Every vote was `Yes, yes','' Ngo said. ''But Kerry
refuses to let it pass to vote.''
This story ran on page A4 of the Boston Globe on 8/14/2002.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Boston Herald (Wednesday, August 14 2002)
Allies no more: Vietnamese war veterans protest Sen. John Kerry's aid
policy
by Christopher Cox
Wednesday, August 14, 2002
As he contemplates a presidential run, Sen. John F. Kerry has been reaching
out to American veterans. But Kerry, a highly decorated combat veteran who
commanded a Navy river-patrol boat in the Mekong Delta during the Vietnam
War, hasn't impressed local Vietnamese veterans of that conflict.
Several of these vets plan to take part in an upcoming two-day hunger
strike to protest Kerry's pro-engagement policy with the Socialist Republic
of Vietnam, particularly his non-support of a congressional bill that would
link further foreign aid to Hanoi's human-rights performance. The fast is
part of a weeklong series of demonstrations, set to begin on Sunday,
organized by members of Boston's large Vietnamese immigrant community.
``I'm very surprised he has not approached us,'' said Tai Le, 60, of
Brockton, a former captain in the South Vietnamese army who spent a decade
in re-education camps following the 1975 Communist victory.
``We were his former allies. He has totally ignored our concerns, our life
here.''
What chafes the veterans, as well as Vietnamese refugees who have settled
here, is the legislative limbo of the Viet Nam Human Rights Act. Submitted
by Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.), H.R. 2833 passed in the House last
Sept. 6 by an overwhelming 410-1 vote. The bill would support efforts to
promote democracy in the one-party state and push for progress in religious
and human rights.
``We feel the bill will increase pressure on the Vietnamese government to
improve its human-rights record,'' said Nam Van Pham, 46, a protest
organizer and the former executive director of the Massachusetts Office for
Refugees and Immigrants, who estimates about 40,000 ethnic Vietnamese live
in Massachusetts. In a 2001 survey by Transparency International of
corruption in 91 countries, Vietnam ranked a woeful 75th.
Activists such as Pham accuse Kerry, who chairs the Senate Subcommittee on
East Asian and Pacific Affairs, of delaying Senate action on the bill.
A Kerry aide said the bill was never referred to the Foreign Relations
Committee, but added that the Senator opposes the legislation because he
fears it may hinder human-rights reforms.
In a statement to the Herald, Kerry said ``We're very concerned that
denying aid to Vietnam would actually slow human-rights improvements while
cutting off humanitarian relief already going to some of the neediest
people on the planet.''
The bill, which also authorizes funding for dissident groups, is ``designed
to provoke'' Hanoi, said the Kerry aide, and could jeopardize the current
work of humanitarian groups in country.
But Tien Tran, 60, of Dorchester, who spent 10 years in labor camps for
serving as a South Vietnamese police officer, wants a more aggressive
policy.
``In Vietnam now, there are no human rights,'' said Tran. ``. . .We just
really want him to move it along.''
The 2002 State Department report on human rights paints a bleak picture of
Vietnam.
``The Government's poor human rights record worsened in some respects and
it continued to commit numerous, serious abuses,'' the report stated.
Nowhere was abuse of power more pronounced than in the Central Highlands,
the home of fiercely independent hill tribes collectively known as
Montagnards. During the Vietnam War, U.S. Special Forces commanded
Montagnards for a decade in successful guerrilla-warfare operations against
the Viet Cong.
``I came away from Vietnam probably owing my life to them,'' said James
MacIntyre III, 61, of Essex Junction, Vt., who spent 1964 in the Central
Highlands as a Green Beret medic.
With the defeat of South Vietnam, however, the Montagnards paid dearly for
their opposition to the Viet Cong. Thousands spent long years in
re-education camps. Many others have been persecuted for practicing
Christianity. The government policy of settling ethnic Vietnamese in the
Highlands, often on the most productive land, has rendered the hill people
a malnourished minority in their homeland.
``It's a slow genocide,'' said Carl Regan, 62, of Key Biscayne, Fla., a
former Green Beret now active in a humanitarian group, Save the Montagnard
People. ``They don't take them out and shoot them every day. They
marginalize them, they don't give them enough land. They're starving.''
In early 2001, Montagnard discontent finally erupted in widespread public
protests. The government responded with a massive military crackdown,
prompting more than 1,000 Montagnards to flee to neighboring Cambodia.
Four months ago, Human Rights Watch issued a scathing, 194-page report
documenting Vietnamese repression of the Montagnards, including police
torture, destruction of churches and forcible repatriation of refugees. In
a
June interview in Phnom Penh, a 16-year-old Montagnard girl described to
the Herald how she and several family members walked for 15 days to escape
Vietnam, where their land had been confiscated and they were punished for
being evangelical Protestants.
``Now it's very difficult for my people,'' said the girl, who spoke
anonymously because of fear of reprisal against relatives still living in
Vietnam. ``A lot of people are in prison and many people are missing . .
.My family life is very dangerous.''
After a diplomatic dustup, the girl and 900 other Montagnard refugees were
resettled in North Carolina in June with the help of the State Department,
the United Nations, STMP and other humanitarian groups.
And in a remarkable mea culpa, the Vietnamese government admitted that same
month that its social, religious and economic policies were largely to
blame for the unrest in the Central Highlands.
Tai Le expressed disappointment that Kerry had not spoken out against the
harsh Vietnamese treatment of the Montagnards. ``I've been very surprised
and very disappointed. We hope that John Kerry would stick up for another
former ally on behalf of reason and conscience,'' he said.
Pham said the upcoming protests, which he expects will draw hundreds of
demonstrators, are not designed to embarrass Kerry.
``We hope he won't lose any face,'' said Pham. ``We are not protesting John
Kerry; we are not anti-John Kerry. We just try to urge him to let the bill
be debated in September, when Congress is back in session. Let democracy
work. That's what this country is all about.''
-----Original Message-----
Subj: Support Boston rally for Human rights
From: BEn
Please forward this to all on your email lists, especially to anyone in the Boston area. Please get out and support this demonstration against Senator Kerry's blocking of the Vietnam Human Rights act. Senator Kerry has the audacity to say that he and Senator Johh McCain speak on behalf of all veterans. I can assure you that neither speaks for me, and I doubt if you have conceded this right to them.
We all went to Vietnam for a noble cause-fighting for the freedom of the Vietnamese people. History has proven that we were right for tens of thousands of Vietnamese have been murdered, and the hundreds of thousands incarcerated in concentration camps by the brutal communist fascist regime in Hanoi. The Vietnamese communists' brutality has not ceased. Hundreds of notable Vietnamese have been incarcerated, and more recently Hanoi's wave of terrorism against the Montagnards with thousands killed, tortured, imprisoned or simply "disappeared."
There will be no honest accounting for our MIA/POWs until there is a change toward democracy in Vietnam. The passage of the Vietnam Human Rights Act is the first step on that long path. Ironically, Senator Kerry has aspirations of being President -- God save us all from this charade, yet he is violating a very principal of democracy by not allowing the Vietnam Human Rights act to come to the floor of the Senate for a vote by your senators and mine.
Please turn in droves to stand alongside the Vietnamese in Boston this Sunday (see below) to show to Kerry that he doesn't speak for us in this sacred matter.
Sincerely, Mike Benge, former VN POW '68-73, and advisor to the Montagnard Human Rights Organization.
Kerry stand upsets some Vietnamese
By Quynh-Giang Tran, Globe Correspondent, 8/14/2002
Organizers say that more than 200 Vietnamese expatriates and their
supporters from around the country will gather at Senator John Kerry's
office starting Sunday to protest his efforts to prevent US aid from being
tied to Vietnam's human rights record.
The Vietnam Human Rights Act, a bill passed in the House of Representatives
last September by a vote of 410 to 1, would restrict nonhumanitarian aid
such as economic and agricultural development unless President Bush and the
US Department of State certifies that Vietnam is making progress on human
rights.
Kerry and Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican, have used
parliamentary maneuvers to prevent the full Senate from considering the
measure. The pair, veterans of the Vietnam War and visitors since then, say
the bill undermines the US government's ability to promote economic
reforms. Kerry said that ongoing relations with Vietnam will promote
greater political freedom.
''John McCain and I ... fear it may hinder rather than advance the cause of
human rights in Vietnam,'' Kerry said in a letter. ''We are concerned that
denying aid to Vietnam would actually slow human-rights improvements.''
But Vietnamese expatriates, including several elderly Boston-area
protesters vowing to fast up to 48 hours, as well as some US veterans
groups, say they are baffled by Kerry's refusal to allow a vote in the
Senate. The weeklong protest starting in Dorchester, an area with a large
Vietnamese population, will feature leaders of Vietnamese Buddhist,
Catholic, and Cao Dao religious groups and Vietnamese-Americans from
California, Arizona, and Pennsylvania, as well as local political leaders
and veterans.
'' The weight that Kerry has on this makes other senators defer to him,''
said John Petersen, assistant director of the American Legion's national
security and foreign relations division. Petersen said he believes that
Kerry supports reestablishing ties with Vietnam.
The bill's strongest supporter - Senator Bob Smith, a New Hampshire
Republican who also has visited Vietnam - says that Vietnam should not get
any of the $1.3 billion in US aid it received last year.
Critics say Vietnam's human rights violations include its block on
transmission of Radio Free Asia, a private journalistic organization with
US government funding.
''We should expect Vietnam to improve its record on human rights if we are
trying to trade with them,'' Smith said. ''Why doesn't the Senate do what
the House did and pass the Vietnam Human Rights Act?''
In addition, Smith, who chaired the Select Committee on POW-MIA Affairs
with Kerry, staunchly believes that the issue of American POWs in Vietnam
must be resolved before relations change.
Discussion of the bill has dominated Vietnamese-language radio and
newspapers around the country over the past year, prompting almost 30
demonstrations, including ones in California; Tampa; Washington, D.C.;
Austin, Texas; Seattle; and Lincoln, Neb.
''Senator Kerry has good connection with the Hanoi government,'' said Hien
thi Ngo, chairwoman of the Committee for Religious Freedom in Vietnam,
based in Washington, D.C., who will attend the protest. ''He wants their
trust and they don't want this bill.''
One criticism of the bill is that it hurts the people of Vietnam, a
population of 80 million that ranks their nation as the world's 13th-most
populous, though it is still among the poorest in the world.
But the protesters disagree. ''We have many friends and family in
Vietnam,'' said Nam Pham, a vice president at Citizens Bank in Boston.
''Nonhumanitarian aid doesn't affect the local population.''
The bill would also establish an intergovernmental monitoring commission
similar to one in China to report human rights violations and release
political and religious prisoners.
For expatriates such as Ngo, a 55-year-old real estate agent in Bethesda,
Md., the bill represents recognition that the government controls religious
and political freedoms in Vietman. ''As I sat in the House [during the
vote], I cried with joy. Every vote was `Yes, yes','' Ngo said. ''But Kerry
refuses to let it pass to vote.''
This story ran on page A4 of the Boston Globe on 8/14/2002.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Boston Herald (Wednesday, August 14 2002)
Allies no more: Vietnamese war veterans protest Sen. John Kerry's aid
policy
by Christopher Cox
Wednesday, August 14, 2002
As he contemplates a presidential run, Sen. John F. Kerry has been reaching
out to American veterans. But Kerry, a highly decorated combat veteran who
commanded a Navy river-patrol boat in the Mekong Delta during the Vietnam
War, hasn't impressed local Vietnamese veterans of that conflict.
Several of these vets plan to take part in an upcoming two-day hunger
strike to protest Kerry's pro-engagement policy with the Socialist Republic
of Vietnam, particularly his non-support of a congressional bill that would
link further foreign aid to Hanoi's human-rights performance. The fast is
part of a weeklong series of demonstrations, set to begin on Sunday,
organized by members of Boston's large Vietnamese immigrant community.
``I'm very surprised he has not approached us,'' said Tai Le, 60, of
Brockton, a former captain in the South Vietnamese army who spent a decade
in re-education camps following the 1975 Communist victory.
``We were his former allies. He has totally ignored our concerns, our life
here.''
What chafes the veterans, as well as Vietnamese refugees who have settled
here, is the legislative limbo of the Viet Nam Human Rights Act. Submitted
by Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.), H.R. 2833 passed in the House last
Sept. 6 by an overwhelming 410-1 vote. The bill would support efforts to
promote democracy in the one-party state and push for progress in religious
and human rights.
``We feel the bill will increase pressure on the Vietnamese government to
improve its human-rights record,'' said Nam Van Pham, 46, a protest
organizer and the former executive director of the Massachusetts Office for
Refugees and Immigrants, who estimates about 40,000 ethnic Vietnamese live
in Massachusetts. In a 2001 survey by Transparency International of
corruption in 91 countries, Vietnam ranked a woeful 75th.
Activists such as Pham accuse Kerry, who chairs the Senate Subcommittee on
East Asian and Pacific Affairs, of delaying Senate action on the bill.
A Kerry aide said the bill was never referred to the Foreign Relations
Committee, but added that the Senator opposes the legislation because he
fears it may hinder human-rights reforms.
In a statement to the Herald, Kerry said ``We're very concerned that
denying aid to Vietnam would actually slow human-rights improvements while
cutting off humanitarian relief already going to some of the neediest
people on the planet.''
The bill, which also authorizes funding for dissident groups, is ``designed
to provoke'' Hanoi, said the Kerry aide, and could jeopardize the current
work of humanitarian groups in country.
But Tien Tran, 60, of Dorchester, who spent 10 years in labor camps for
serving as a South Vietnamese police officer, wants a more aggressive
policy.
``In Vietnam now, there are no human rights,'' said Tran. ``. . .We just
really want him to move it along.''
The 2002 State Department report on human rights paints a bleak picture of
Vietnam.
``The Government's poor human rights record worsened in some respects and
it continued to commit numerous, serious abuses,'' the report stated.
Nowhere was abuse of power more pronounced than in the Central Highlands,
the home of fiercely independent hill tribes collectively known as
Montagnards. During the Vietnam War, U.S. Special Forces commanded
Montagnards for a decade in successful guerrilla-warfare operations against
the Viet Cong.
``I came away from Vietnam probably owing my life to them,'' said James
MacIntyre III, 61, of Essex Junction, Vt., who spent 1964 in the Central
Highlands as a Green Beret medic.
With the defeat of South Vietnam, however, the Montagnards paid dearly for
their opposition to the Viet Cong. Thousands spent long years in
re-education camps. Many others have been persecuted for practicing
Christianity. The government policy of settling ethnic Vietnamese in the
Highlands, often on the most productive land, has rendered the hill people
a malnourished minority in their homeland.
``It's a slow genocide,'' said Carl Regan, 62, of Key Biscayne, Fla., a
former Green Beret now active in a humanitarian group, Save the Montagnard
People. ``They don't take them out and shoot them every day. They
marginalize them, they don't give them enough land. They're starving.''
In early 2001, Montagnard discontent finally erupted in widespread public
protests. The government responded with a massive military crackdown,
prompting more than 1,000 Montagnards to flee to neighboring Cambodia.
Four months ago, Human Rights Watch issued a scathing, 194-page report
documenting Vietnamese repression of the Montagnards, including police
torture, destruction of churches and forcible repatriation of refugees. In
a
June interview in Phnom Penh, a 16-year-old Montagnard girl described to
the Herald how she and several family members walked for 15 days to escape
Vietnam, where their land had been confiscated and they were punished for
being evangelical Protestants.
``Now it's very difficult for my people,'' said the girl, who spoke
anonymously because of fear of reprisal against relatives still living in
Vietnam. ``A lot of people are in prison and many people are missing . .
.My family life is very dangerous.''
After a diplomatic dustup, the girl and 900 other Montagnard refugees were
resettled in North Carolina in June with the help of the State Department,
the United Nations, STMP and other humanitarian groups.
And in a remarkable mea culpa, the Vietnamese government admitted that same
month that its social, religious and economic policies were largely to
blame for the unrest in the Central Highlands.
Tai Le expressed disappointment that Kerry had not spoken out against the
harsh Vietnamese treatment of the Montagnards. ``I've been very surprised
and very disappointed. We hope that John Kerry would stick up for another
former ally on behalf of reason and conscience,'' he said.
Pham said the upcoming protests, which he expects will draw hundreds of
demonstrators, are not designed to embarrass Kerry.
``We hope he won't lose any face,'' said Pham. ``We are not protesting John
Kerry; we are not anti-John Kerry. We just try to urge him to let the bill
be debated in September, when Congress is back in session. Let democracy
work. That's what this country is all about.''