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Nhan, Tran
Berkeley, CA, USA
For those "intellectuals" who believed in Hanoi in the past and maybe still in the present, I'd like to quote an excerpt from a recent letter that was managed to be secretly sent oversea by the Buddhist Patriarch Thich Huyen Quang, who has been imprisoned in Vietnam for decades after the war just for expressing his opinions:
"At the dawn of the 21st Century, Vietnamese citizens have the choice between only two alternatives : either to go to prison or to toe the Party line". Either way, they inevitably lose their freedom. "Those who toe the Party line must abandon their identity. They have mouths but cannot speak, have brains but cannot think, have hearts but cannot love their people or their country as they chose". As for those who chose prison or reeducation camp, "they may think and speak freely - but only to themselves", hidden from public eye and mind. "What kind of freedom is this, where human dignity is totally denied ? It is the freedom of worms, writhing and squirming in the depths of the earth".
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