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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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What’s the first thing that Congressman Anh Joseph Cao ought to do?

U.S. Rep. Cao, the former Jesuit seminarian, should ask the Vietnamese Embassy for a visa to travel to Hanoi to join the Catholics of Thai Ha in prayer.

That would be a win-win situation for Cao, regardless of whether visa is granted, and a lose-lose situation for the Communist Party of Vietnam.

What are they gonna do? Allow the protestors to mingle and pray with a U.S. elected official? Or reject the visa request and look all “not in with it” with the first Viet Congressman?

This piece of unsolicited advice is brought to you by mischief-maker extraordinaire Bolsavik.

The Human Rights Action Center, as part of its campaign for Burma/Myanmar, recently unveiled a web commercial directed by Timothy Linh Bui and starring the hot-hot-hot Tila Tequila (pictured, screencap from the video). And if you don’t know this already: Tila is Vietnamese.

The Bolsavik previously published Timothy’s casting call here. Don’t say Bolsavik never helps you with women problems.

The series of web commercials was the brainchild of Jack Healy, former executive director of Amnesty International. Its purpose is to raise awareness of the massive and deadly human rights abuses currently happening in Myanmar.

“Myanmar” is the official name of the former Burma, that country where the River Kwai of the bridge fame is located. Because Myanmar is the name given by the right-wing military dictatorship, however, all human rights groups (and the U.S. government) stick to “Burma.”

Want to know more about human rights abuses in Myanmar/Burma? Tila will teach you. Watch the commercial at the end of this posting.

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