Interview with Duyen Anh

Abstract

‘One of the ten most dangerous writers’ of South Vietnam describes his experiences since the Communist take-over in 1975 Duyen Anh (pen name of Vu Mong Long) was a well-known writer and journalist in South Vietnam. After the communist victory in April 1975 he was arrested and sent to jail, and later to ‘re-education camp’, together with many other writers, journalists, intellectuals and artists. Like most political prisoners in Vietnam, he was not charged and was never tried. On 2 September 1981, Duyen Anh was released. This was part of the government's policy of clemency, he was told. Duyen Anh, however, still believes it was due to international pressure from organisations such as Amnesty International and International PEN, which had taken up his case and those of many other Vietnamese writers. On 24 March 1983, Duyen Anh fled from Vietnam as a ‘boat person’, after having bribed some officials. Ten days later he landed in a refugee camp in Pulau Bidong, a small island off Malaysia's east coast. On 20 October 1983, he arrived in France and was allowed to stay. He has now joined a community of some thirty thousand Vietnamese refugees who have been granted political asylum by the French government since 1975. In early March, Lek Hor Tan interviewed him in Paris. For other articles on persecuted Vietnamese writers and journalists see Index 4 and 6/1978, 3/1982 and 3/1983.