A man of steel, indeed!!! Hats off to your courage, Mr. intellectual
``They know very well I'm not a terrorist,'' Do said. ``They just want to destroy my group.''``What they wanted was the information in my head,'' said Do, speaking from his modest tract home in San Jose. ``They didn't get anything from me.''``I have a very nice, comfortable life here in the United States. But a part of me is always in Vietnam,'' said Do, 47. ``I've always wanted to do something for Vietnam, so the people can enjoy what I do: democracy.''
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S.J. activist keeps democracy dream alive for Vietnam
By K. Oanh Ha
Mercury News
Before his arrest in Vietnam, Cong Thanh Do knew he was a marked man.
Speaking at length Tuesday for the first time since his release last week after 38 days of detention, Do said he had traveled to Vietnam to meet with fellow members of the underground People's Democratic Party, a banned political group.
Shortly after meeting with two members in Ho Chi Minh City, he was followed by at least four men, he said. When a car pulled up in front of his wife's family home in central Vietnam in the morning hours of Aug. 14, he knew they had come for him.
They accused him of plotting a bomb attack on the U.S. Consulate in Ho Chi Minh City, an allegation dismissed by U.S. Embassy officials.
``They know very well I'm not a terrorist,'' Do said. ``They just want to destroy my group.''
During his imprisonment, interrogators pressed him to reveal e-mail addresses of the group's members. All members use pseudonyms, and most have never met one another. To ensure their safety, he said, he set up more than 100 different e-mail accounts to correspond with them.
Freedom fighter``What they wanted was the information in my head,'' said Do, speaking from his modest tract home in San Jose. ``They didn't get anything from me.''
Do plans to continue pushing for democracy in Vietnam and the release of six members of his group, most of whom he characterized as intellectuals in Vietnam.
Do's arrest exposed a double life he had led for seven years. By day, he was an engineer at Applied Materials. By night, he was an online freedom fighter who wrote political essays under a pen name, Tran Nam, who pushed for an end to Vietnam's one-party communist system.
He and his wife had fled Vietnam by boat, arriving in the United States as political refugees in 1982. Even as he settled into the routines of family life, fathering three children and starting a bakery on the side, Do never gave up on hopes of helping reform his native country.
``I have a very nice, comfortable life here in the United States. But a part of me is always in Vietnam,'' said Do, 47. ``I've always wanted to do something for Vietnam, so the people can enjoy what I do: democracy.''
Do has been actively working to introduce democracy in Vietnam since the early 1990s, when he joined a San Jose-based group, Vietnam Restoration Party. Do joined after the group renounced violence to overthrow the Hanoi government, after communism fell without bloodshed in Eastern Europe.
Diem Ngo, one of the group's leaders and a prominent community member, knew Do for more than a decade as a fellow fighter and friend. When Do began writing under his pseudonym, Ngo traded e-mails with Tran Nam -- but never knew it was his old friend. ``I was really surprised when I learned it was him when he was arrested,'' said Ngo.
Do also kept his family in the dark, even though he routinely worked on pro-democracy efforts on his laptop in the evenings. ``My wife thought I was an Internet addict,'' Do said. ``I didn't tell them to protect them. This is very dangerous work.''
In 2002, Do said he began corresponding with political dissidents in Vietnam through e-mail. Soon after, he started the Democracy Club, devoted to informing the world about Vietnam's arrest of dissidents. That work eventually led to the formation of the underground political party.
Going publicThis summer, Do and other members felt it was time to discuss going public so they could attract more members and develop the group more quickly. He joined his wife and son on their vacation to central Vietnam, arriving in mid-July. He went to Ho Chi Minh City without his family for two days and individually met with two members of the group at a cafe and at a restaurant. His meetings with them were videotaped and broadcast on Vietnamese television, Do said.
He was arrested and transferred to a prison in Ho Chi Minh City. His wife had been arrested that morning, too, as well as two members of his organization. One image he has of that morning is of his 9-year-old son, Nien, in tears.
Kept in a 10-foot-by-10-foot cell with two convicted felons, Do tried not to think of his family and what had happened to them. ``Otherwise I would go crazy,'' he said. ``I had to focus on my strategy for when they questioned me.''
Do said he was interrogated two to three times a day. His questioners tried to get him to confess to planning a bombing attack and pried for information about his group and its members.
He meditated and tried to preserve his energy, spending most of his time lying flat on his back. He had started a hunger strike the day of his arrest, drinking only water, milk, lemonade and a rice drink. Though he was weak, he never felt hungry, he said. He meditated to stay calm.
He credits the two cellmates for helping to keep him alive. They prepared his drinks, bathed him and cleaned his clothes because he was too weak. The only time he was on the verge of losing hope, he said, was during the first 18 days of his detention. He waited daily for a visit from a U.S. Consulate representative, but no one came.
``You die on a hunger strike if no one knows about it,'' Do said. ``When he came, I knew it would be OK.''When he came, I knew it would be OK.''
