Talk:Cong Thanh Do

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Freed Activist Is Seen as a Hero

Released by Vietnam, Cong Thanh Do is back in the U.S. and working for the freedom of other members of his anti-communist group. By Christopher Goffard, Times Staff Writer October 1, 2006

Cong Thanh Do's family never found it especially strange that he spent his evenings glued to his laptop, sometimes well past midnight. Nor did they think it unusual when, on family trips to his native Vietnam, he regularly disappeared to visit unnamed "friends" in Ho Chi Minh City or Hanoi.

Unknown to them or anyone else, the San Jose engineer — a mild, inconspicuous father of three who favors Polo shirts and jeans — was operating for years under another identity: "Tran Nam," an underground freedom-fighter and founding member of a banned anti-communist group. Using the Internet and on annual vacations, he oversaw a network of dissidents pushing for change in Vietnam.

Do's dual life came to light after he was arrested in mid-August while traveling in that Southeast Asian country with his wife, Tien Jane Dobui, and 9-year-old son. The government accused him of plotting to attack a U.S. Consulate, but sent him home last week after 38 days in a Ho Chi Minh City jail where he went on a hunger strike that stripped him of 20 pounds.

"This work is very dangerous," said Do, 47, relaxing Saturday at his brother's apartment in Garden Grove, where he owns a coffee shop and has become a hero to the large Vietnamese-American community of Little Saigon. "I did the work in the dark for almost five years. Nobody knew about anything."

Do said that members of his People's Democratic Party of Vietnam scattered throughout that communist country are unknown by their real names even to each other, a precaution taken to prevent those captured from implicating others. Committed to nonviolent change, the activists surreptitiously distribute anti-communist materials, adopting and scuttling new e-mail addresses regularly to avoid detection.

On yearly trips to Vietnam, Do said, he would meet with other leaders at coffee shops, restaurants and parks in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi.

"We never communicated through the phone, all through the Internet," Do said, adding that his cellphone was the first thing seized when he was arrested.

After he was jailed on his latest trip, Do said, authorities accused him of being a terrorist, a charge the U.S. Embassy dismissed. He was interrogated day and night, he said, and locked in a sweltering 10-by-10-foot cell with two other prisoners, where he embarked on the hunger strike in protest. He said his cellmates, who were common criminals sympathetic to his plight, brought him water and saved his life. "After 10 days your body is really weak," Do said. "Most of the time I lay there on the floor."

After a while, he said, he felt no hunger but only exhaustion. He tried to minimize his movements, meditating and keeping his mind blank and away from worries about his family. "I tried not to think about them," Do said. "The more you think about them, the more you go crazy."

Do said he was in jail for 18 days before being permitted to see a representative from the U.S. Consulate. His story, when it got out, prompted a chorus of protest from the Vietnamese-American community and U.S. lawmakers, including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

Lan Nguyen, a Westminster attorney, activist, and member of the Garden Grove Unified School District board, said Do's case struck a powerful chord among Vietnamese Americans, especially those concerned about democracy in their homeland and personal safety when they travel.

"The American government's State Department sent a very strong message to the Vietnamese government, 'Don't do that again,' " he said.

The Vietnamese Embassy in Washington, D.C., could not be reached for comment.

Janet Nguyen, a Garden Grove councilwoman, said that she's never met Do but had received many pro-democracy e-mails sent under his pen name. "Everybody worked to bring him home," she said. "The bottom line for us is, he's an American citizen who's just voicing his opinion."

Do fled Vietnam for the United States in 1982, settling briefly in the Washington, D.C., area before coming to California, where he got an engineering degree from Cal Poly Pomona. His wife, who is 43, said she was arrested by Vietnamese authorities briefly and questioned about her husband's activities, but had little to tell. She knew he had an interest in Vietnamese affairs, but figured his late-night computer sessions were spent reading.

Do's daughter, Bien Dobui, 21, a student at San Francisco State University, said she knew of her father's desire for democracy in Vietnam, but didn't know he was actively working for the cause. She's proud of him now that she knows the truth, she said.

"I've always known my dad is someone who isn't really afraid to push the limits," Dobui said. "When he announced he was on a hunger strike and people kept telling us it's not true, we knew it was true…. I wanted to think he was eating. But we knew if he said he was doing something, he was going to do it."

Bien Dobui took time off from school to help fight for her father's release. "The house is full of flowers from people telling my dad he's a hero," she said. "He doesn't think he's a hero. He only thinks, 'Good, now people are aware of what's happening.' "

Do said his main job now is trying to win the release of six other members of his group who are incarcerated in Vietnam. "They can stop me from going back to Vietnam," he said, "but they're not going to stop me from doing the work."

S.J. man continues fight for Vietnamese

Kept work secret for family's safety

http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/state/15826962.htm?source=rss&channel=montereyherald_state

SAN JOSE - For years, Cong Thanh Do waged his battle for democracy in Vietnam on a laptop computer in his quiet suburban home, thousands of miles from the country he fled a quarter-century ago.

No one -- not even his wife or three kids -- knew the soft-spoken Silicon Valley engineer had founded an underground political party, was an advocate for jailed dissidents or penned dozens of pro-democracy essays -- all under the pseudonym Tran Nam.

Do's secret life as a freedom fighter was revealed to his family and the world when he was arrested while vacationing in Vietnam and accused of plotting against the communist government. He spent more than five weeks in detention, staging a 38-day hunger strike, while a slew of American politicians and activists demanded his release, before he was deported to the United States last month.

Though Do, 47, says he prefers working behind the scenes, but since returning to California he has embraced his new celebrity to advance his cause: bringing democracy and political freedom to Vietnam. He said his imprisonment illustrates why the country's one-party system needs to change.

The government lets you have freedom in the stomach, but they control your ideas, Do said during an interview in his modest house in San Jose. As long as you accept the rules, it's OK. But if you want to stand up for your rights, you're going to be in trouble.

The Vietnamese Embassy in Washington, D.C., did not respond to calls seeking comment on Do's case.

Do's wife and children said they never suspected their husband and father had led a double life. Over the past five years, he spent several hours each night typing away at the dining room table. His family thought he was just working on engineering projects or surfing the Web.

I didn't have any idea, his wife, Tien Jane Dobui, 43, said, sitting next to Do in their living room, where jade art pieces, and family photographs decorate the walls. I wasn't angry at all. I was just surprised he was so deeply involved in politics.

Do, a naturalized American citizen, said he didn't tell the people closest to him to protect them. He worried that if his identity were uncovered, it would endanger him, his family and the People's Democratic Party, the outlawed political group he co-founded last year to promote free elections and human rights in Vietnam.

To live a better life, to have freedom and democracy for all, we the people have to stand up, Do wrote in the party manifesto.

Vietnam's fast-growing economy has raised incomes and lifted millions out of poverty in recent years, but critics say the country hasn't done enough to improve its human rights record. Activists hope President Bush will push Hanoi to hasten political liberalization when he visits in November.

Seeing no future in communist Vietnam, Do and Dobui fled in a small boat in 1981 and eventually settled in California, where he studied to be an electrical engineer while working nights as a janitor.

Over the years, he created a comfortable middle-class life for himself and his family, but he never forgot his roots. In the early 1990s, he began working with other Vietnamese refugees to push for political change back home.

Even though I have lived here so long, part of me is still Vietnamese, Do said. I want to see the Vietnamese people enjoy what I enjoy here -- freedom and democracy.

Four years ago, Do began corresponding by e-mail with political dissidents inside Vietnam and launched the Democracy Club, which provided information on jailed activists to groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Using the Tran Nam alias, he wrote and edited an online newsletter that advocated political freedom and reported the inside workings of the Communist Party.

Do and other club members last year founded the People's Democratic Party, one of numerous political groups calling for regime change and democratic reform in Vietnam.

Unlike other exile groups, Do's Web-based party is focused on building membership inside the country. He said the party has hundreds of members, 90 percent of whom live in Vietnam. Party members communicate almost exclusively by e-mail and use pseudonyms to protect their identities.

If you want to have a positive effect, you have to be inside, not outside, Do said. Without the Internet, we wouldn't be able to form the party.

Do was visiting Vietnam with his wife and 9-year-old son when he was arrested on Aug. 14 in Phan Thiet, a coastal city north of Ho Chi Minh City.

He believes Vietnamese authorities had been tracking members of his party and began following him after he met with two other leaders at a restaurant several days before his arrest. The men, both Vietnamese citizens, were arrested the same day and remain imprisoned, Do said.

Police took him to Ho Chi Minh City and accused him of being a terrorist with a plan to bomb the U.S. consulate -- allegations Do and American officials have denied.

They tried to make me admit I'm a terrorist, but I denied it all the way, Do said.

After he was transferred to a state prison, he shared a cramped, airless cell with two convicted felons. He said he was interrogated two or three times a day about the People's Democratic Party by officers demanding the identities and e-mail addresses of its members.

To protest his arrest, he went on a hunger strike, only drinking water, milk, lemonade and rice powder for 38 days. Sick and weak, Do spent most of his time lying on the floor and meditating while his cell mates cared for him. Still, he said he refused to disclose the party's secrets even while his requests to see U.S. consulate officials were denied.

When you're on a hunger strike and nobody knows it, it's tough, Do said. Because I worked underground for so long, even my wife didn't know why they arrested me.

On Sept. 1, he finally met with American officials and revealed that he was the online activist Tram Nam -- a disclosure that shocked them and his family.

Do's son, daughter and wife scrambled to learn about his democracy work, searching his computer files and talking to activists who only knew him as Tran Nam. They set up a Web site, worked the phones and testified at a congressional hearing on human rights in Vietnam.

Do's detention angered Vietnamese Americans who fled their homeland after the Vietnam War and were outraged its authoritarian regime would arrest a U.S. citizen advocating nonviolent political change.

This case was a rude awakening for the Vietnamese American community, said California Assemblyman Van Tran, R-Garden Grove. He's an American, and he gets this type of treatment? What does it say about the native Vietnamese and how they're being treated?

Three weeks after politicians ranging from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to Sen. Dianne Feinstein began calling for his release, Do was put on a plane to San Francisco, where he was greeted by his family and a crush of reporters.

I'm really proud of him, said his son Vien Dobui, 24. It takes a lot of courage to do something that puts yourself in danger for other people.

Regaining his health after the hunger strike that left him 20 pounds lighter, Do is back to his democracy work, meeting with activists who knew him by his alias and campaigning for the release of six party members he says are still being held by authorities in Vietnam.

Do said he probably won't be allowed back in Vietnam for years, if ever, but he doesn't plan to quit pressing for change in his native land.

This is not going to stop me from spreading democratic values in Vietnam, Do said. I plan to keep on fighting as long as possible.