Former leader of South Vietnam returns home after decades
HO CHI MINH CITY - Former exiled South Vietnamese premier Nguyen Cao Ky returned today to the communist country he fled nearly three decades ago, marking his first homecoming trip since the Vietnam War ended.
Ky, 73, of Hacienda Heights, Calif., arrived in Ho Chi Minh City's Tan Son Nhat Airport with his wife, daughter and three others, becoming one of the most well-known political figures from the former South Vietnamese government to come back.
Vietnam, which issued tourist visas for the couple, has said it welcomes his decision "to come back to the homeland ... after many years apart."
Before his return, which coincides with Tet Lunar New Year festivities, Ky, a long-standing critic of the Communist leadership in Hanoi, said in interviews that he wants to bring a message of reconciliation on his trip.
"The war ended 30 years ago, but it still divides us into two camps. So I want to put aside the past hatred, and just sit together and talk to one another face to face," he told Radio Free Asia. "And I believe if everybody loves the country and loves its people, we will sit together as one."
He plans to travel to Hanoi and the country's central region. He will visit his mother's grave and his home province.
Along the way, he will be escorted by a Vietnamese government security detail.
Ky fled Vietnam nearly 29 years ago as his nation collapsed, piloting a helicopter out to sea, where he was plucked aboard a U.S. aircraft carrier.
His decision to return has been angrily condemned by some activists in Southern California, home to the largest Vietnamese-American community outside of Vietnam, who say the visit bestows legitimacy on a corrupt government.
But the trip is emblematic of changing attitudes among Vietnamese expatriates in the U.S., who, through travel and business deals, are increasingly bucking the staunch anti-communism of the generation that fled three decades ago.
Ky was no longer in office when South Vietnam fell, but he was one of the era's most flamboyant and powerful figures.
"He served as vice president, which stands for freedom and human rights and now he's betraying all the ideas of what he stood for and represented," said BachLien Tran, co-founder for Americans for Human Rights In Vietnam Action, based in Garden Grove, Calif. "He has made a very big mistake. ... He's betraying us. Vietnam still does not respect human rights or freedom."
Cong Minh Tran, 62, of Mission Viejo, Calif., a Vietnamese community activist and staunch anticommunist, said he was shocked. "I don't believe it ... It's politically unwise and morally wrong."
He said the Vietnamese government continues to suppress religious leaders and jail political opponents.
"When they treat our people like that, who would have the heart to go back to Vietnam?" Tran said. "Especially Ky, who should know better. He was urging people to fight the communists and telling us why we were fighting them — to keep the country free."
Ky was a South Vietnamese Air Force general when he was made the country's prime minister in 1965 after a military coup. U.S. officials were wary of Ky, who had a reputation for drinking, gambling, womanizing and making outrageous statements. Once, when asked whom he most admired, Ky offered up Hitler. "We need four or five Hitlers in Vietnam," he said.
"An unguided missile," one U.S. diplomat called him.
Ky served as prime minister for two years, then as South Vietnam's vice president from 1967 to 1971. After the war, he settled in Norwalk, Calif., a city in the Los Angeles area, where he opened a liquor store. He later moved to New Orleans and worked in the shrimp and fishing industry. When the enterprise failed in the late 1980s, he moved back to Southern California — first to Huntington Beach in Orange County, then to Hacienda Heights.
Critics say Ky is being used by a communist government hungry for increased business ties with the United States. But Ky said he decided to go to Vietnam now because he believes the government there has opened up and is working to improve people's lives.
"Whether people agree with me or not, I accept that," Ky said. "I don't represent them anymore and we live in a democracy now."
Ky says business and talks with government leaders aren't on his agenda — but he's open to both if they should arise.
Last year nearly 100,000 visas were issued to Vietnamese Americans for travel to Vietnam — down from levels before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists attacks, but still up significantly since 1997, according to the Vietnamese embassy. In 2002, Vietnamese Americans sent more than $1 billion to family members back home, twice as much as in 1999.
The Associated Press - January 14, 2004.
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