- Translated by Hoàng Triết & Trần Quỳnh Vi
I caught the first glimpse of him just
after he stepped out of the car, a tall guy with a small camera dangling around
his neck. He shyly mumbled “hello,
sis.” A few hours later, I was looking
at him running around in the midst of the colorful and lively atmosphere at
Universal Studio, under the bright sun of August in Los Angeles. At the sight of almost everything, he
excitedly squealed “wow, it’s so pretty, very beautiful!” and then ran up-close
to pose and take pictures. He then
looked at the pictures, checking them out with a big smile on his face. In those moments, looking at him, it’s hard
for anyone to imagine he was also bearing a huge amount of weight on his
shoulders: his father has passed away;
his mother is in jail, and she is one of the most-prominent prisoners of
conscience in Vietnam right now. He has
traveled from South to North Vietnam, then all the way to America, in hope that
he will find justice for his mother. He
is Tran Bui Trung, a.k.a. Bo Trung, the son of Mrs. Bui Thi Minh Hang.
In literature and cinemas, the image
of kids who are searching for their parents in time of war and chaos has always
touched people deeply. There was Rémi of
the 19th century, wandering around with a circus in An Orphan’s Tale written by
Hector Malot. And then there was an
orphan named Mario, who gave up his spot for his friend, Julietta, and died in
a shipwreck incident as narrated in Coure (Heart) written by Edmondo De Amices. Vietnamese audiences from generations before should remember the movie
series Devochka Ishchet Otsa (Girl Seeks Father) directed by the well-known
Russian director, Lev Golub in 1959.
Compare to those fictional characters,
the difference in the story of Bo Trung is that his mother, Bui Thi Minh Hang,
is not without a trace. Mrs. Bui Hang
was arrested on 2/11/14 and has been accused of “disrupting public
order." She is currently being held
in An Binh, Dong Thap awaiting trial.
Her trial is set for 8/26/14. However,
in contrast to An Orphan’s Tale, Coure, and Devochka Ishchet Otsa, Bo Trung’s story is recent,
more realistic, and much more intense. It is being played out in Vietnam as we speak with many details we
cannot even imagine. Why such stories
continued to happen in our countries, in this time and day?
Mother won’t be home tonight
Before Mrs. Bui’s arrest, Bo Trung lived
with his mother in Vung Tau. Their lives
were not very stable back then: Trung’s
childhood was often disrupted when he had to move continuously. There were times that he lived with his
father, and there were times that he lived with his mother. He moved through seven different provinces in
his twelve years of school. However, the
most-insecure period of his life did not happen until after 2011 when his mom
became one of the most-prominent figure in those anti-China protests that broke
out in Vietnam. In Nov. 2011, Mrs. Bui
Hang was arrested by security police and was taken into “re-education” facility
Thanh Ha in Vinh Phuc province under the order of Hanoi mayor Nguyen The Thao. According to that order, Mrs. Bui Hang shall
be held for two years. However, she was
released after four months. Mrs. Bui
Hang returned to Vung Tau after her release, and since then, she was considered
as an unruly citizen. Every action the
local authorities used on her appeared to be directed and had taken a darker path
with defaming phone texts, Facebook messages, and phone calls from
strangers. There were nights in which
someone threw rotten fish paste mixed with mobile oil, dead rats, and trash
onto her front yard.
With a strong and firm personality,
Mrs. Bui Hang bluntly retaliated with strong words. Her position is clear: With thugs, you do not need to be modest and
peaceful. As a result, as Bo Trung
recalled, “My mom kept yelling back at them, and I kept cleaning up the
yard. Rotten fish paste was bad enough;
it was horrible when mixed with used engine oil.” He recalled the story, smiling. “I was not mad at my mom, and I did not ask
my mom to stop the tension with them so we could live peacefully. I just told her that I supported whatever she
does because she is my mom. That’s all.”
Eventually, Mrs. Bui Hang asked Trung,
“Should we work together, son? For
example, when I go meet with farmers who are struggling to get their land back,
you follow me to videotape and take pictures, write a blog, and convey information
to others?” There were more than a few
instances when she asked Bo Trung to join her. However, Trung refused, not because he was afraid, but because he was
still a kid and did not take human rights activism seriously. He did not see it as a job and a career that
requires commitment.
Born in 1991, Trung is no longer a
child, yet he is not any more mature than the others of his peers. He was a smart student and had good
grades. There was a year when he was chosen
to be vice-captain of the class. However, he enjoyed messing around a little too much and did not commit
fully to schoolwork. He quit Economic
College. “Disarranged” was the word he
chose to describe himself in a casual and teenage way. “Ay, I’m much disarranged. I get up late, smoke… My room is like a
rental place, full of smoke.”
All those “disarranged” and
“teen-like” characters seemed to come to an end on the day his mom got
arrested, 2/11/14, two weeks after the Lunar New Year.
Mrs. Bui Hang has somehow foreseen
that day would come (although she was not sure when). Thus, she was well-prepared for it. She even signed a contract with a defense
lawyer. When they lived together in Vung
Tau, she often left the house all day and all night; therefore, Bo Trung was
not concerned when Mrs. Bui Hang did not come home on that day. However, he quickly realized afterward that
his innocent days had ended.
Surrounded
It has been said that the child who
was born during the time of war would mature twice as fast as the average child. As for me, I do believe that kids who were
born in poor families, in families in which the parents are dissidents, or in
time of war would become mature, at a minimum, two or three times faster than
the average kids. Bo Trung seemed to age
a decade in the days that followed his mother’s arrest. News of his mother’s arrest spread all over
Facebook and social networks; however, details about where she was held and
about her health conditions were kept in the dark. The police never notified him of anything. That gave him the feeling that they were busy
planning on how to find a plausible reason to accuse her with some crimes. It is similar to the attitude the government
had during Mr. Cu Huy Ha Vu's arrest. Just within a day, the reason behind the arrest changed continuously
from administrative citation to prostitute solicitation, to even drug charges
and then finally stopped at “propaganda against the state” under Article 88 of
the Penal Code (!).
Just imagined that a young adult whose
father has deceased and his mother suddenly got arrested for reasons everybody
believed to be politically related. What
should that kid do? Who should he trust? Who should he listen to and who could he
depend on among dozens and hundreds of people around him, both online and in
real life with all opinions and comments ranging from sympathetic to directive,
to threats, to defamation, to insults and humiliation? While notably, there are people with
self-righteous mentality, with beliefs of the good people who sincerely want to
advise him for his own good and the sake of his mother, there are others who
are the opportunists, the hoodlums, or simply those who are trying to use him,
etc..
There were people who could no longer
be considered as immature because they were of the age of Bo Trung’s
father. They did not hesitate to “give
it one last kick after a person fell down." One such person has taken a snapshot of Bo
Trung’s Facebook wall and wrote a status on his wall with the comment “… how
unfortunate for Bui Hang, her friends and her kids are not so sharp…” A jungle of comments consists of commands and
criticisms surrounded Bo Trung from all sides for the last six months. That is without mention the army of “opinion
shapers” who frequently humiliate Bo Trung with the nastiest comments and words
they can think of. There are no other
things more enjoyable than spitting out profanities at those who you already
label “traitors” without any consequences since the law and police are on your
side. These “opinion shapers” knew this
well.
At age 23, without a job, without a
degree, without social connections, and without what is called “political
experience," Bo Trung is like a leaf floating on a stream. His primary concern is a place to live. Like other poor young single men in the city,
he struggles with daily meals. He used
the rest of the day to go online to look for info and connect with others, in
hope that he would find people who can help him free his mom. Every cloud has a silver lining, among
unfortunate circumstances comes good gestures. There are many unnamed people anonymously and secretly sent money to
Trung to support him and his sister, as well as support Mrs. Bui Hang in
custody.
Who are they? We cannot know. We should not know anyway since “accepting
monetary support for activist work” in Vietnam is still a crime in the mind of
the authorities. Security police love to
instill that thought in people’s mind as an effort to destroy the civil society
that is on the verge of growing in the country.
“I’m going to fight”
Bo Trung is smart enough to understand
that his mother’s arrest is a result of her human rights works; that is what
the government dreads the most. His
mother is innocent. Even if she is
guilty as accused, “disrupting public order” is not a crime that warrant a jail
sentence of multiple months. This
concept seems to be common legal knowledge in many places around the
globe. Unfortunately, it’s just not the
law controlled by police in Vietnam.
Bo Trung quickly realizes that he is the
son of a prisoner of conscience and that he must act in accord with that fact,
to be worthy of being Mrs. Bui Hang’s son. From a youngster who just wants to play, he becomes a mature, young man
with humility. He speaks politely to
everyone.
From the information he gathered
online, Bo Trung started to think about going abroad and campaign
internationally for freedom for the prisoners of conscience in Vietnam,
including his mother. The fact that a 9x
youngster stepping out of his country for the first time, mumbling basic
English phrases such as “thank you, I will try” shows his huge effort to rise
to the occasion. That is without
mentioning the fact that Bo Trung has to elude large groups of security police
who closely monitor him day and night, in order to escape from Vietnam. This aspect alone is intense enough so that
one day it can be made into a movie.
I think that movie title would be
“Adventure for Justice” or simply “My Mother is Innocent.”
But, Vietnam has yet to change. The stories we heard today from Bo Trung,
from Nguyen Tri Dung (Dieu Cay Nguyen Van Hai’s son), or from friends and
relatives of Anh Ba Sam are all stories with details that need to be kept
secret. The books and the movies will
have to wait.
We must continue to fight for that day
to come in Vietnam. As for me, I hope
one day I will see Bo Trung running around near the edge of a pool full of
reflecting sun rays, taking pictures under the huge King Kong statue, wrapping
his hand around the “Egyptian mummy," taking a walk in Jurassic Park and
frequently whistling: “When will Vietnam
be like this?”
I hope we can once again go out on a
day like that, in a beautiful wonderland like that… in Vietnam.
