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2 novembre 2006

Duong Quynh Hoa - The Courage to Follow One's Conscience

Born to a prominent family in southern Vietnam, Duong Quynh Hoa was sent to France in the 1950s to be trained as a pediatrician. Attracted by the promises of national independence and social egalitarianism, this young doctor first joined the French Communist Party and later the Vietnamese Communist Party (Vietnamese Labor Party at the time) upon her return to Vietnam. In December 1960, she became one of the founding members of the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF), a frontal organization to mask the northern communists' hands in their war to invade the South.

After the communist victory in April 1975, Duong Quynh Hoa first served as Minister of Health, Social Affairs, and the Disabled under the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the NLF. As early as July 1975, the NLF was disbanded to make way for Hanoi's official rule over the whole country. Duong Quynh Hoa became Deputy Minister of Health, while all other leaders of the NLF like Nguyen Huu Tho, Nguyen Thi Binh, Nguyen Thi Dinh, etc. were stripped of all power and given various ceremonial positions.

It was during this time that she gradually realized the Vietnamese Communist Party's goal was not to serve the Vietnamese but the opposite. Utilizing all national resources to realize the Party's ambition of being the "spearhead of the Communist International in Southeast Asia," the Party has driven the country and its people to the bottom of destitution. Despite her considerable privileges in such a poor country, Duong Quynh Hoa decided not to serve as accomplice to the Party against her own people.

In late 1970s, she told Nguyen Huu Tho, the former Chairman of the NLF: "You and I have been scarecrows, masks, or some sort of cheap and flamboyant jewelry. We simply cannot serve a regime that is not democratic and respects no laws. So I want to let you know I will resign from the Party and any positions in the government."

In 1979, Duong Quynh Hoa officially resigned from the Party and its government. The Party leaders, as expected, did not receive the resignation kindly. To avoid widespread defections by southern party members, they first offered her a ticket to move quietly to France. When the offer was turned down, the Party ordered her not to reveal her resignation for ten years. During this time, the Party raised its own smear campaigns as a preemptive strike. It went as far as spreading rumors that Duong Quynh Hoa was a CIA operative.

In late 1980s, Dr. Hoa began to speak out on behalf of Vietnamese who were facing widespread starvation while the Party continued to export rice to finance its ruling machinery and ask for international aid at the same time. To foreign reporters, she protested: "In countries as this, exporting food is exporting people's health!" And this pediatrician was among the first to alert the world to the disaster of selling Vietnamese children, as young as nine years old, to foreign businessmen and tourists for sexual abuses. Most of these cases took place in hotels and resorts run almost exclusively by government and military organs and their affiliates. It took almost a year later before the first article on the problem appeared on the state-controlled press.

Of society as a whole, Duong Quynh Hoa admitted "Indeed, this society no longer stands for any clear moral values," and added "During the war, we lived close to people, lived in people's hearts. Today, when power is safely in their hands, they [the Party] consider people their potential enemies. So they always intend to strike down right away any sign of dissent and force people to stay mute."

When asked what was the most remarkable development of the past 50 years, Duong Quynh Hoa pointed to the fall of the Berlin Wall for it was the end of the "big illusion." She detests any suggestions that Asia is absolutely different from Europe in valuing freedom and democracy and that "enlightened dictatorship" is more successful than "Western democracy."

Unlike the rest of the NLF leaders who chose to keep their perks and stayed quietly in their decorative offices till death, Duong Quynh Hoa chose to be led by her conscience. It is her courageous admission of being tricked by the "big illusion" and speaking out on behalf of Vietnamese victims under the regime that has gained her admiration from people on both sides of the Vietnam War and lit up her integrity and genuine care in her callings for attention to the fate of Vietnamese children today.

(in www.fva.org)

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