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

Year :      [2006]      [2005]      [2004]      [2003]      [2002]      [2001]      [2000]      [1999]      [1998]      [1997]

Vietnam boat girl speaks of affection for Chirac

PARIS - When Jacques Chirac offered a weeping Anh-Dao Duong his handkerchief at a Paris airport in 1979, a lifelong bond was created between the future French leader and the Vietnamese boat girl. In memoirs to be published later this month, Duong recounts the ordeal of her escape from Communist Vietnam to being taken in by Chirac's family as one of their own. She speaks of her affection for the man who was then Paris mayor and is now France's president -- and has helped her ever since.

Duong, then 22, escaped Vietnam on a leaky boat with 350 other people. She endured 7 months in a transit camp on a Malaysian island where rape, theft and violence were commonplace. She told Le Figaro Magazine she had written her book, "Daughter of the Heart", so that France might know Chirac's human side. Her praise for Chirac, 73, comes at a time when his political fortunes are waning. Many expect him not to seek a third term as president in an election due in 2007.

Duong, who now goes by the name of Traxel following her marriage to a French police officer, tells how being among the first batch of refugees to be flown to France led to her chance encounter with Chirac and his wife Bernadette. "Thanks to my name, Duong, alphabetically I was among the first to be able to leave (a holding camp). It was the plane that the mayor of Paris met in person," she told the magazine. "I was alone in my corner, really all alone in the world. I was crying ... That's when Jacques Chirac approached me and held out his handkerchief. A tall man with a reassuring look," she said.

In tears herself, Bernadette Chirac took Duong in her arms. "I said to myself straight away that I had found a real couple, parents, my mother and father," Duong said. Moved by the young woman's plight, the Chiracs took Duong in to live with their own daughters, Laurence and Claude, and she became a naturalised French citizen in 1980.

Duong said she had been forced to wait to speak about her experiences "until I was truly happy". Chirac may have his faults but France should know better the man who has been head of state since 1995, she said.

By Jon Boyle - Reuters - February 3, 2006.