~ Le Viêt Nam, aujourd'hui. ~
The Vietnam News

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Vietnamese exiles protest targets UMass

Coming from as far away as California and France, about 500 Vietnamese-American activists are expected to ramp up their battle today against the University of Massachusetts at Boston for inviting two North Vietnamese scholars to study at the school. Bringing the two men from Hanoi reopened old wounds, according to a group of Dorchester residents victimized by communists during their homeland's 20-year civil war.

The fact that so many people are flying into town to denounce UMass for hosting ''revisionist'' scholars from Vietnam is proof, the activists say, that their cause is gaining international momentum. ''We are seeking some way to have our voice heard by mainstream society,'' said Luyen Nguyen, a counselor at Madison Park High School who spent 211/2 years in a ''reeducation'' camp in North Vietnam. ''And we want every Vietnamese person in America to know what is going on at that university.''

But UMass officials are perplexed that the Dorchester activists, who number about 40, are seeking wider publicity just as the problem is going away. Hoang Ngoc Hien, who studied contemporary literature of the diaspora and the expatriate community's attitudes toward their homeland, returned to Hanoi in April. And Hue Chi Nguyen - who specializes in the Ly-Tran Dynasty of the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries - will finish his fellowship in two weeks. Both scholars are high-caliber thinkers and writers who lent a dynamic perspective to the school, said officials at the William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences at UMass, where the men studied. None of the seven fellows picked for this year's study on the Vietnamese diaspora are from North Vietnam.

To the activists, the mere presence of the North Vietnamese was an affront to their years of suffering at the hands of the communists, and they have no intention of giving up their fight. Today's anti-UMass blitz will begin with a 9:30 a.m. news conference at attorney James Keane's office in Charlestown. Activists will then head to the auditorium at Grover Cleveland Middle School in Fields Corner for a 1 p.m. public meeting. Last year, Luyen Nguyen filed a class-action lawsuit alleging discrimination, saying the Joiner Center didn't adequately publicize fellowships within the Vietnamese-American community. The lawsuit was dismissed because state law requires that discrimination complaints first be filed with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, which Nguyen has since done.

He wants to force the Joiner Center to advertise fellowship positions widely within the Vietnamese exile community - hoping, he said, to keep out interlopers from North Vietnam, those who have no idea what it is like to be imprisoned or to have to flee their homeland. The commission has yet to render a decision, but Nguyen said he believes that it is coming soon and that raising public awareness on his side will help.

''These men have no practical experience in refugee life. We don't want them writing about our experience,'' Nguyen said. Keane, his attorney, said the protest of the exile community has already had an impact, pointing to the lack of North Vietnamese in this year's group of fellows. Five are Vietnamese exiles living in America. One is an exile living in Canada. The other is a Latino scholar who specializes in the study of exiled people. Kevin Bowen, the director of the Joiner Center, said he understands how the protesters feel, but contends they are wrong about the two Hanoi-based scholars. ''There are people who want to oppose any exchange with Vietnam, any overtures of reconciliation,'' Bowen said. ''Our center is about understanding the nature of the war, the impact of the war. The war didn't happen in the US. It happened in Vietnam.''

Bowen estimates there are about 50 North Vietnamese scholars studying at colleges throughout Greater Boston. They lend a perspective and often a specialty that is hard to find, he said. Toan Ngoc Phan, director of the Vietnamese Community of Massachusetts, said Joiner doesn't want to concede that it made a mistake bringing in the Hanoi scholars, but for the exile community it was a tremendous slap in the face. The published works of Nguyen and Hien can't help but be biased, Phan said. ''We want to make clear that we won't stand for [our enemies] speaking on our behalf,'' said Phan, a technical engineer living in Revere. Bowen said that kind of talk only serves to keep the civil war in Vietnam alive. ''The history of the war is one of betrayal, of distrust on all sides,'' he said. ''If we can't trust each other now, and we prey upon that mistrust, it will keep that emotional state of war alive in people. It keeps us back in 1975.''

By Cindy Rodri Guez - The Boston Globe - August 26, 2001.