It is clear that only without constraint of oppression or guidance, the writers, whatever be their social position, will then be able to maximize their creativeness to contribute to this collective painting of the society they live in.

Sadly, in several dictatorial countries such as Vietnam today, literature can no longer be used to that purpose. Instead it has either become a tool of propaganda for the people in power or a victim of oppression if it does not conform to the guidance of the power in place.

As a member of PEN International and member of its Writers in Prison Committee, I learned of hundreds of cases where writers have been murdered, persecuted, imprisoned because of their writings. Others have gone into oblivion by abandoning their profession or by never trying to publish their work for fear of persecution. Countless others have decided to join the power in place either to survive or to try for personal gain. In the process, they sacrificed the rainbow of their creativity.

In this short perspective, I’ll focus on the situation of Vietnam. I’ll first talk about Vietnam between 1954 and 1975 then about its situation afterward.

Between 1954 and 1975
After the Geneva Treaty of 1954 that effectively placed Vietnam under two political idealisms, the North Vietnam started its Stalinist and Maoist life. Everything had to be for the collective benefit of the society. In this atmosphere, the people, especially the people of creativity such as writers, poets, artists squirmed under the dictatorship of this blend of communism; so much that during a seemingly “reform”, a group of writers, poets started a literary publication named “Nhan Van Giai Pham” that I tentatively translate to “Human Literature Review”. In this publication, the poet Tran Dan, who instigated it, related his life experience as he was returning to his hometown: “As I walked, I could not see neither houses nor neighborhoods, I could only notice the rain falling on the blood red flag.” Other writings had simpler subjects such as Love in general or only asked for freedom to write.

The Vietnamese Communist Party came down hard on them. All contributors to the publication were persecuted. They were accused of being reactionaries. Many were given long prison sentences. Others have seen their career destroyed. Tran Dan earned on top of that another absurd sentence: “Forbid to create.” Many must have heard of the poet Nguyen Chi Thien with his collection of prison poems titled “Flowers from Hell”. He was a young man then, but he was imprisoned because of his involvement with this publication too.

After this round of persecution, the literary circle in the North Vietnam had become submissive. Those who continued to write had to join the Writers Association, a governmental sponsored association where all writers wrote after the Party guidelines. The main subjects could only focus around the yearning for the South, the celebration of the superiority of Socialism, and the incitement of the hate for the Americans and its supposedly “puppet government” in South Vietnam. It should be noted that the communists spent large amount of money to promote its image of a more literature savvy government with the Western world.

Literature was given more freedom in the South. One could see that beside the publication of new writings, there was an effort to re-publish all pre-war literary works that have seen life in the North Vietnam. There were occasional confiscations of newspapers that wrote negatively about the then government. Those incidents often became propaganda ammunition for the Communist North Vietnam. After 1975, it came to light that several journalists were in fact Communist agents that infiltrated the South. One well known case was that of Vu Hanh, a writer in the South who was charged with being a communist agent because of his writing. Since there was no hard evidence against him, and thanks to the intervention of several worldwide organizations, among them PEN International, the government had to release him. After 1975, people learned belatedly that he was a North Vietnamese spy. The lack of world politics knowledge among the officials in the South Vietnam government had led them to pay a lot less attention to its literary image abroad. This had led some to believe the South was only an illiterate people enslaved by the American Imperialists.

1975 to today
In the last 30 years, while democracy has finally won over in most of the countries that formerly had adopted communism, what has happened to the freedom of expression in Vietnam? Practically not much, except the occasional propaganda of reform, of untying the creativity of the writers in Vietnam. Those unfortunate or courageous enough to go along with it, learned soon afterward that it was yet another trick from the Party to dig out dissenting elements of the society. So many writers are now bearers of absurd, at times ridiculous charges. Duong Thu Huong, Bui Minh Quoc, Nguyen Vu Binh, Pham Hong Son, and others are serving prison terms or are being under house arrest because they had expressed their concerns for the future of their country under the damaging management of the Party.

Immediately after the take over of the South Vietnam, the communist government started its campaign of repression against writers in the South. They were sent to reeducation camps where some lost their life due to torture or to the harsh environment. One well known case was that of Nguyen Manh Con. He was killed after being denounced by a fellow writer turncoat and locked in a container exposed to the summer sun. Another writer, Phan Nhat Nam, a war reporter, was isolated in an underground hole only large enough for him to sit or lie down in a fetus position during seven years. He only survived and escaped madness by practicing a form of Zen. Countless others chose to flee the country. Some failed and lost their lives at sea or in the Southeast Asian jungle, other resettled throughout the world, in Europe, in America, in Australia.

For those who cannot leave or have decided to stay, dealing with censorship has become a hardship to all writers. Creativity is stifled, writers have to watch their own shadow when writing. Of course there are writers who sided with the Party in exchange for more benefits, including the one of censoring their peers. The writer Luu Quang Vu has observed: “Such a monopoly in expression obviously would stifle all creativeness, thus drying out arts and literature.”

However, the communist party has learned the art of concealing their dictatorial oppression. They would disguise their repression of writers as criminal charges. But one cannot always cover up bad deeds. People have found imaginative means to leak news to the free world. The internet has contributed enormously to the dissemination of these news. Knowing this is a threat to their totalitarian power, like other dictatorships, the Vietnamese government tries with all it might to restrain the use of internet both inside the country and abroad to block the flow of free information to its people. Both PEN International and Reporters Without Borders, among other organizations, have deplored the harsh sentences the Vietnamese government has placed on writers such as Nguyen Khac Toan, Nguyen Vu Binh, Pham Hong Son. Son was sentenced to five years of forced labor because he had translated and posted a document publicly available on the American Embassy in Vietnam website: “What is Democracy?”

Michel Tauriac in his book “Vietnam, the Black File of Communism” (Plon, 2001, p.187-194), asserted that all 450 newspapers, magazines, and all radio, television stations in Vietnam are under the control of the Communist Party. However, their sheer number at a press kiosk might lead a foreign visitor to believe that freedom of expression does exist in this country. Mr Tauriac reported that one editor-in-chief of the Tuoi Tre magazine had lost her job because she had the guts to publish an article about the “love life” of Ho Chi Minh. Reporters without Borders, an international organization of reporters, recently published that out of 167 countries being ranked for their respect for freedom of press, Vietnam has earned a quite high ranking from… the bottom of the list of being the 155th.
Vietnamese writers in exile, numbering in the thousands, although having more freedom of writing and publishing, are not faring any better concerning the dissemination of their writing in Vietnam. One can say that this is practically impossible. Today, only a handful of authors living abroad have their work published inside the country. Most of these have chosen to lean toward the government, the rest only write fictional historical stories. In the mean time, one can see an enormous effort from this government to flood the Vietnamese community living abroad with works published in Vietnam. Among these, there are books still depicting their hate for the Americans and their pride in vanquishing the US people. It is clear that the freedom of expression that the Vietnamese government so skillfully displays to the free world is only a masquerade.

Censorship is a nightmare to writers in Vietnam, no one can escape the scrutinising eyes of the Party. Even Nguyen Dinh Thi, Secretary of the National Writers Association in Vietnam until early 1989 was forbidden to publish 6 of his drama pieces. According to Nguyen Hung Quoc in his book “The Vietnamese Literature under the Communist Regime, 1945-1990”, every writing has to clear three stages of censoring, first by the editors, then the editor-in-chief or his second in place, and by the political propaganda body. They would disassemble a piece of writing down to every letter or punctuation. They can do whatever deemed necessary to that writing. All observations would be recorded and kept on file. This has led to considerable abuse. Since the Publishing Committee composed of the writer’s agent, the publishing house, the propaganda body, and the Minister of Information only meet annually, any single changes to a book would require a waiting period of at least a year before it could be reconsidered for publication. Thus, several authors had been waiting for eternity to see their work reach the readers.

The utmost nightmare of censorship comes under the form of post-publication censor. When one’s writing is censored and banned from publishing before its introduction to the public, the author can still hope to submit another piece of his creations soon afterward. It is not the case if the censoring comes for a second round post-publication. In a short story published in the weekly magazine Van Nghe, issue 27 of July 4th, 1992, it took Tran Huy Quang more than ten years to carefully tell the story of a dreamer who yearns to become the master of his people. Following a sequence of clues from a dream that led him through a few rotten social pictures, he finally gets people to bend down in front of him looking for ... nothing. Quang started his story by naming the dreamer as H…inh, a name that somebody subsequently interpreted as a truncated name of Ho Chi Minh. He was then forbidden to write for three years.

The control of freedom of expression in Vietnam doesn’t show signs of letting go. Recently, the Vietnamese government has stepped up its grip on the flow of information by requiring all cyber-cafe operators to serve as a first stage political police: they will have to record the identity of all internet users and keep this info on file for a period of at least 30 days. These operators are forced to take a six-month course to learn to better monitor their customers. The directive explicitly wants to ban people from accessing “pornographic and subversive” sites. In a country where the officials are turning their back on the illicit trade of young girls to Cambodia for prostitution or the business of bride on order throughout Southeast Asia, how can one believe that the Vietnamese government is fighting on line pornography for the sake of its people’s morality.

In Vietnam today, published works continue to be introduced but tend to be more for entertainment than food for thought, which is what the government would condone, but not without a wary eye. One can see the same with all other cultural aspects, from musical to theatrical to television programming. The youths lose their interest in their country’s future. Many spend away their life on a day to day basis. The privilege section of wealthy party members and those connected with them are sending their children to college overseas to get a different kind of education. The irony of this is that several of them are going back with a new concept of democracy that the party so despise. One of them is Phuong Nam Do Nam Hai, an Economics graduate from Australia. He is now one of the most vocal voices calling for a real democracy in Vietnam.

On a positive note, I’ll end my presentation by saying that as long as there are people and organizations throughout the world such as PEN International, Reporters Without Borders, Asia Watch, and Amnesty International leading the fight for freedom of expression in Vietnam, and as long as there is a will in all writers still believing in this precious right, any dictatorship including the Vietnamese one today will have to yield and let writers and its people exercise the right so cherished in all democratic societies, even if it is used to criticize the people in power. Another Vietnamese poet, Phung Quan, wrote: “Papers and pen yanked away, I’ll write with knife on rocks.”

Tran Vu
Vietnamese Writers Abroad PEN