1. Since last year, I have been worrying about, and searching mentally for, a person, or rather the shadow of a person, whose uncommon name reminded me, vaguely, that she was, perhaps, one of my students, from the prestigious Catholic all-girls Thanh Tam private High School, in Nhatrang. That person is now a victim, though oblique, but notorious and miserable, of the Viet Cong (VC, Vietnamese Communists) rulers viewed by their own people as dictators and traitors –ready to sell the country to the Chinese Communists (Chicom) for power and dollars.
Until one day, in 2017. I read, by chance, an informative article entitled “Angels and Monsters” by Pham Tin An Ninh, a great writer from Norway and one of my Nhatrang compatriots. In his article, the author confirmed that the person I looked for had, indeed, attended Thanh Tam HS, and her name is Nguyen Thi Tuyet Lan. She is the mother of Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, alias Me Nam (Mother Mushroom), the illustrious political prisoner, who was sentenced in July 2017 by the Khanhhoa Courtto ten years in jail for her activities as a blogger having battled for, and dearly protected, the environment and human rights in Vietnam.
On the contrary, here, Nhatrang, my beloved hometown, for nearly half a century after the war ended, still condemned, nevertheless, to live under the yoke of the VC monsters, worse than the war itself, is nowadays a terrestrial hell. A true hell, in every sense. Like all the South Vietnam, in reality. Nhatrang, once surnamed “the beautiful country of white sand”, was dead forever and became a “city occupied by Chinese”. Flowers and butterflies of yore disappeared. Rows of green weeping willows on the immense and undulating beach had been destroyed to cede space to private barracks, hastily built for hordes after hordes of Chinese tourists, rude and extremely arrogant, who swarmed into and around the town like herds of famished and smelly rats crawling, one does not know, out of where. Birds had emigrated to remote and unexplored islets. Buildings, hostels and restaurants had quickly sprouted up, and so, prevented the marine wind from entering and refreshing the heart of the city. Besides those Chinese tourists or residents, Nhatrang is invaded by cohorts of Vietnamese barbarous Policemen and Security Agents, in uniform or undercover, fat, obese, overfed, and archicruel, who arrest, beat, torture, and kill, at leisure, innocent and unarmed civilians. That could happen to any of these Vietnamese towns where, and when, “Evil strikes at it down the generations wave after wave, like seas that batter a headland...” (cf. Sophocle, Antigone). Vietnam, now, is a veritable hell, more hideous, more terrifying than Dante’s Inferno.
3. You may wonder what has incited me to write, and send you, this humble article about Nguyen Thi Tuyet Lan and her daughter, Me Nam Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh –who are truly, in my eyes, meritorious descendants of the Sisters Trung and many other heroes and heroines, our ancestors, who had fought against the Chinese aggression for centuries. Here are my reasons:
a) I would like to show my compassion, admiration, and pride toward both mother and daughter for their tremendous courage and enormous sacrifice, even at the cost of their lives, in the fight for our country’s survival, each in her own way, equally dangerous, in the name of millions of Vietnamese living inside Vietnam and abroad. We, their compatriots, have already owed them too much. With emotion, I read the words that Me Nam had told her mother and her two little children, right after the verdict, “I apologize to you, my dearest mom and babies, for what I have done which resulted in a long separation between us. However, I don’t regret what I have done. And should I have now a choice, I would do the same again”. My heart melted at that farewell speech which would, one day, come down to history as the most sublime and unforgettable words that a Vietnamese political prisoner, let alone female, would have ever said.
b) I would like to denounce, before the world, or before the conscience of the world, the crimes committed against humanity by VC tyrants, and Chicom leaders, their masters. A blogger and a journalist, Me Nam only expressed her opinions, and eventually, told the truth, the whole truth, for the sake of freedom of speech. Yes, the very freedom which the hypocritical and biased UN Human Rights “experts” have, on August 3, 2018 (cf. The Hill), noisely claimed for American journalists and reporters, just to blast President Trump in his rightful and persistent verbal attacks on the media –thefake, the bad, the ugly media. While so doing, they completely ignored what those badasses had done and said in their vile attempt to distort the truth and to destroy Trump since the 2016 election. In another larger context, they have, strange enough, shut their big mouths on how the VC denied free speech to their own citizens, including Me Nam and thousands of peaceful demonstrators. So what? Me Nam’s only crime is to urge people to protect the environment, against Chicom’s companies, notably Formosa, and its occupation of Vietnam’s lands and seas. That is why, I guess, VC and Chicom tried to silence her by that despicable verdict and thus, blatantly suppressed freedom of speech for which UN “experts” shed crocodile tears, on behalf of those US journalists who had sold their souls to the demon Mephistopheles, exactly like Faust, the infamous character in German folklore and Goethe’s chef-d’œuvre.
c) I would like to respectfully ask the world leaders, and especially, President Trump and the First Lady of the USA, Mrs. Melania Trump, to pressure the VC, and their vicious boss, the Chicom, to release Me Nam as soon as possible, and give her a chance to reunite with her little children. And that, in the name of free speech and human civilization: one must not put in jail an innocent young mother for such a long period of time, under such ridiculous pretexts, in such odious living conditions where she is constantly being harassed, both physically and mentally, by her jailkeepers and her so-called co-prisoners, their accomplices.
Deliver her, and us, from evil, please. Thank you very much. May God bless you all.
Portland, Oregon, August 8, 2018
Joseph Kim Quy Nguyen
