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The lawyer who wrote the bar association’s proclamation, asserting Vietnamese sovereignty over disputed islands off the country’s central coast, has been arrested by Vietnam’s government.

OK so this is not strictly a Vietnamese-American issue, but I felt compelled to speak out. This is, after all, my blog. (Note also that I’m not speaking in the third person.)

On Saturday, the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security, acting under what it called an “urgency,” arrested attorney Le Cong Dinh (Lê Công Định in Vietnamese spelling). The purported reason was for “acts against the State” and “libel of the Prime Minister and other comrades in the leadership of the Party and State.”

A closer reading of the news of his arrest, however, shows that the Vietnamese government could not even adequately allege, let alone prove, any of the charges. The same, almost identical “news story” appeared throughout the country’s media, all of which are owned directly or indirectly by the state. Here’s one sample.

Successful professional

Educated in Ha Noi, Saigon, and at Tulane University - Columbia, the 39-year-old Dinh is highly successful and wealthy. He owns a house in the exclusive Saigon South new development, and has his solo practice in the high-rent District 1 area. (It’s the Vietnamese equivalent of living in Westchester and working in Manhattan.)

Dinh is married to one of the prettiest and smartest women of Vietnam, beauty queen Ngọc Khánh. (That’s Dinh and his wife in the photo above.) In a country where most positions of prominence go to older men and women over 50, Dinh was elected the Vice-President of the Bar Association of Ho Chi Minh City, the umbrella organization for all lawyers in the 9-million-people metropolis.

And yet, he’s taking risks that a wealth-maximizing rational being would not take. In the restrictive and risky environment that is communist Vietnam, Dinh has dared gone against the grain, representing clients that other lawyers would not touch, and speaking out on issues that many others, lawyers or not, would not speak.

These taboo issues include the assertion of Vietnamese sovereignty over the Spratlys and Paracels, and also issues of human rights and religious freedom.

Represented activists

Among clients represented by Dinh are his colleagues Nguyen Van Dai and (Ms.) Le Thi Cong Nhan. Both are attorneys based in Hanoi, and they were most prominent as lawyers specializing in human rights, representing Christians, mostly Protestants, seeking the right to practice their faith. In the picture is Dai in suit in front and Cong Nhan in red behind him.

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Signs with crossed out “bô xít” went up along Bolsa Avenue. Viets all over Facebook on Earthy Day today posted “Save Tay Nguyen - Stop Bauxite Mining” logos as their profile pictures.

What’s this bauxite (or “bô xít” in Vietnamese pronunciation) and what is the issue? Who’s the “Tay Nguyen” that needs saving anyway?

First of all, Tay Nguyen is not a who, it’s a what. It’s not a person whose last name is Nguyen — it is the Vietnamese name for the central highlands of Vietnam (through which the notorious Ho Chi Minh Trail once ran).

Bauxite, in a one-word summary, is aluminum. It is the ore from which all aluminum is made.

The issue is the Vietnamese government’s decision to allow China to strip mine bauxite right in the Vietnamese central highlands, a strategically important location and an ecologically fragile tropical rain forest.

The potentially destructive effect of bauxite mining is so devastating that a wide range of Vietnamese across the political spectrum have spoken out loudly in opposition. Read here.

This includes Vietnamese in the U.S. and throughout the diaspora. It also includes numerous well known and well respected people in Vietnam. The U.S.-based Viet Tan opposition party calls on people to run the “Save Tay Nguyen” logo on their Facebook page (pictured right), in what appears to be the first time Viets use the social networking site for political purposes.

The writer Nguyen Ngoc, whose writings about the lives of communist soldiers along the Ho Chi Minh Trail served as government propaganda for years, has raised the alert that allowing bauxite mining in the area would result in the destruction of the health and livelihood of ethnic minorities living in Tay Nguyen, as well as hundreds of species unique to Vietnam’s highlands.

Most prominent among the opponents, however, is retired General Vo Nguyen Giap, the architect (or co-architect) of practically all of the communists’ military victories. Read here.

Gen. Giap also raised environment issue, but the word is that he was concerned more about the presence of tens of thousands of Chinese workers who will be allowed to move to the Vietnamese Central Highlands to man the mines. (See here.)

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The “Phan Boi Chau Youth for Democracy” (in Vietnamese: Đoàn Thanh Niên Phan Bội Châu) is putting together a whole host of events to commemorate the end of the Vietnam War, which many people call “Black April” as it ushered in the dark age of communist rule over the country.

Phan Boi Chau was an early 20th-century anti-French activist and democracy theorist; he was also an early mentor of Ho Chi Minh, but allegedly was betrayed by the latter to the French secret police. The allegation was widely believed by their contemporaries, but has not been proven.

The PBC Youth for Democracy is one of the most politically active and aware organizations (youth or otherwise) in the Vietnamese-American community. They are also among the sharpest, coming up with some of the cleverest ways to call attention to the dismal human rights situation in Vietnam.

The PBC is also known for many of its prominent members. Its current president is Van Le, also an activist with UVSA and the anti-human trafficking group VietACT. Tammy Tran, the district director for State Sen. Lou Correa, is a co-founder of VietACT and a long-time member of PBC. Another of Correa’s staffers, My-Dung Tran, is also a top PBC activist.

This year’s events include a fundraising car wash, a writing and art contest (deadline today; sorry, didn’t see that detail until now), a youth conference, and — here’s where the PBC’s cleverness shows again — a skit on the democracy movement in Viet Nam and the widely denounced decision by the ruling Communist Party to allow China to mine bauxite in the Vietnamese Central Highlands. For more on the bauxite mining issue, read here, here and here.

The text of PBC’s announcement follows the jump.

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Today, Valentine’s Day, is the birthday of Dieu Cay. He’s a blogger who is serving a 2-1/2 year sentence in Vietnamese prison for speaking out against China’s occupation of the Spratly and Paracel Islands.

Read what other people write about him: Amnesty International (here and here), Reporters Without Border (here, here and here), Committee to Protect Journalists (here), prominent U.S. Congress members (here), the International Freedom of Expression Exchange a Canada-based UNESCO affiliate (here), Global Voices, an advocacy project at Harvard University (here), the Ottawa Citizen (here), etc.

Happy birthday, Dieu Cay.

A romantic comedy by Vietnamese-American filmmaker Victor Vu is scheduled to be released in Vietnam on Valentine’s day, in the country’s top theatre chain the Megastar cinemas.

Passport to Love is a coming-of-age story of two young foreign exchange students from Vietnam - close friends with opposite personalities - whose lives were changed when they met two Vietnamese-American  women. Khang (Bình Minh - on the right in picture) is a charming and handsome playboy from a tremendously rich family; Hieu (Huy Khánh) is his earnest sidekick, a hardworking Bill Gates wannabe. “The Boys” are sent to study abroad in the US and to bring home a coveted American university degree.

Once in America, Khang’s life spirals into chaos. He even gets himself arrested, and then he falls in love with the arresting officer Tiffany (Kathy Uyen - on the left in picture), a young single mother. Meanwhile, Hieu finds himself trapped between his almost too perfect fiancé, Thao (Tăng Bảo Uyên), back home, and the tempting, Viet Kieu pageant girl Jennifer (Ngọc Diệp). When Hieu’s mother falls ill, he must return to Vietnam. A distraught Jennifer follows in secrecy. Meanwhile, Khang and Tiffany are just turning over a new leaf when Khang is confronted by his very disappointed father.

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Thankfully that’s not the Bolsavik’s situation, but that is the situation for many of the Bolsavik’s friends, including the blogger Dieu Cay (pictured standing), and others.

So it struck a very responsive chord with the Bolsavik when he got a message on his Facebook about this initiative: Let’s all send Tet cards to Vietnamese prisoners of conscience.

Pick your favorite — Dieu Cay, Nguyen Van Dai the attorney, Le Thi Cong Nhan his law firm associate, Ngo Quynh the college student, Nguyen Van Ly the priest, etc.

Or just send to everyone on the list.

The list is here; click on the names to get the addresses. (more…)

Not sure if “naturalization” is the right word to apply to Texas-born Lee Nguyen whose parents are born in Vietnam, but the news is Lee (whom fans call by his first name) will get himself Vietnamese citizenship on April 1 (of all the dates to choose from!) as part of the deal of playing for Hoang Anh Gia Lai, reports Voice of Vietnam radio here.

Click here for all entries about the former Gatorade National Boy Soccer Player of the Year, member of the national under-20 squad as an 18-year-old, and Soccer Times and Soccer America’s Freshman of the Year.

… National Human Trafficking Awareness Day.

The day was recognized for the first time by the United States last year, by a resolution passed in 2007 and co-authored by now President-elect Barack Obama. Other authors/co-authors from both parties include Diane Feinstein (D-Cal.), John Cornyn (R-Tex.), and Richard Lugar (R-Ind.).

In the U.S., human trafficking criminals usually take advantage of American worker immigration laws.

People who are unfamiliar with the law are brought to the U.S. and conned by these criminals into virtual slavery.

Human trafficking victims are disproportionately Vietnamese. As a result, one of the most effective activist groups of the Vietnamese-American community is, in fact, an anti-trafficking group.

Check out VietACT’s web site here. The County of Orange also has its own Human Trafficking Task Force, with web site here.

This report here by the New York Times’ Nicholas D. Kristof tells of little Vietnamese girls being kidnapped and sold into brothels in Cambodia where most die of AIDS by the late 20s. (Vietnamese translation here)

Elsewhere, there have been numerous reports of Vietnamese women being sold into slavery in countries all around the world, most notably Taiwan.

More recently, a Japanese labor union has accused Vietnamese embassy officials of trafficking Vietnamese people into the sweatshops of Japan.

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In a risky career move that brings him from the major soccer leagues of Europe to his parents’ country of Vietnam, U.S. stand-out Lee Nguyen is said to have accepted a position with Hoang Anh Gia Lai, one of Vietnam’s top teams.

The news was first reported by the nascent Vietnamese sports publication The Thao 24 Gio, which does not have a web site, and was promptly re-run by others including Dan Tri here and the soccer-only Bong Da here (both in Vietnamese).

The publication reports that the team has submitted its official roster to the league’s office for the championship tournament, and 22-year-old Lee Nguyen is shown to be donning jersey no. 9.

Lee Nguyen - whom fans call by his first name Lee - apparently clinched the deal with a stellar tryout, scoring 3 goals in 60 minutes. Last-minute rumors that suggest an MLS team may be looking at Lee turned out to be just that, rumors.

The Thao 24 Gio notes Lee’s career risks, but points out that with the high risk comes a high reward: (more…)

One of the U.S.’s top young soccer star, a Dallas-born Vietnamese-American, is trying out to play in Vietnam for the country’s champion club, reports Sports Illustrated here.

Lee Nguyen, 22, one of USA soccer’s hottest young stars, is trying out to join Hoang Anh Gia Lai, the V-League’s championship team.

According to SI, “Nguyen is currently on trials at the Gia Lai club with technical director Nguyen Van Vinh assessing his ability to carry the club challenge next season.”

And the forward blasted in three goals for a 5-1 win over Binh Dinh in a friendly match.

The team’s technical director was quoted as saying “I am very pleased with Nguyen’s excellent performance. He’s not exceptionally strong, but he is technically skilful, creative and accurate. He is powerful enough with both legs and can get round an opponent wonderfully.”

Hoang Anh Gia Lai is named after its home province and the team’s financial backer Hoang Anh - a lumber and furniture company. Its  lineup is notorious for being stacked with players from Thailand’s national team. With two V-League championships, the club is considered the country’s powerhouse.

Nguyen calls the opportunity to play in Vietnam “a dream come true for me.”

Nguyen, however, may want to check out the club’s finances. Hoang Anh’s owner is plunked a huge portion of his fortune into real estate, and with the land market in Vietnam going down the tube, rumors are swirling that Hoang Anh will be the first house of cards to fall. Maybe Lee should make sure his pay is deposited in an escrow account or something.

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