Poems smuggled from Vietnam: An appeal, and 377 poems, from one who has spent 20 years in detention

Abstract

A poignant cry for help from a Vietnamese writer who vanished shortly after he smuggled a collection of his poems out of the country According to an Amnesty International report published last year, the Vietnamese government admitted that up to 40,000 people had been detained in re-education camps in South Vietnam following the communist take-over in April 1975. Emigré groups, however, put the number of detainees much higher. None of the detainees is known to have been tried in a court of law and only a few are reported to have been released in recent years. In a reply to an Amnesty International Memorandum dated September 1980 on the legal procedure of detention, the Vietnamese government's explanation was that ‘re-education without judiciary condemnation is an extremely humanitarian system which is very advantageous to them [the prisoners], compared with the usual system of trials before a court’. Another explanation given by the authorities was that ‘in Vietnamese psychology the absence of judiciary condemnation spares the person concerned a tarnished judiciary record (casier judiciaire) which may adversely influence his whole life and that of his children, especially in matters related with his professional activities: for instance, an imprisoned curate cannot deliver sermons after his release. The regime in re-education camps differs from that in prisons, and the duration of his loss of freedom is also shorter’. As for North Vietnam, the number of political prisoners either in re-education camps or in prisons has never been made public. There are reports of many who have been detained since the fifties and the sixties. Nguyen Chi Thien is one of them. He is a poet and was first detained in 1959 for speaking against the authorities. He is reported to have spent the past twenty years of his life in various prison camps. In 1979 a collection of 377 of his poems (more than 4000 verses) was smuggled out of North Vietnam. In a covering letter, reproduced here, he implored the world outside to publicise the conditions in the prison camps that he experienced himself and described in his poems. Nguyen Chi Thien's present fate or whereabouts are unknown. The poems were first published in Tien Vong Tu Day Vuc, edited by Nguyen Huu∗∗∗ Hieu (7706 Random Run Lane, 102, Falls Church, VA.22042, USA). We would like to thank Mr Nguyen Huu Hieu for providing the English translation of some of the poems. We also publish here the text of Nguyen Chi Thien's letter and an official report on the Vietnamese government's policy of ‘cultural purification’ — see ‘Wiping out decadent culture’ by Tran Tho.