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August 11, 2002

A philanthropist with a purpose
MODEL FOR CIVIC-MINDED ASIANS

By Cecilia Kang

(San Jose Mercury News) - Sitting in his Portola Valley mansion adorned with a vast collection of rare Asian ceramics and bronze Tibetan Buddhas, Chong-Moon Lee seems worlds away from the days he lived on a dry patch of dirt dug out from underneath a boulder.

But the reminders are everywhere. In a Chinese medicinal chest he keeps at the entrance of his home, a memento of his youth when he worked at an herbalist store to support his family. And on his finger, where a scar still remains from hastily slicing deer antlers, an ingredient for a common Asian health remedy.

Lee's life story of ascension and redemption is why the 74-year-old has dedicated his golden years to becoming a prominent Silicon Valley philanthropist. He's one of a growing number of Asian-Americans across the nation determined to raise the profile of Asians in civic participation.

Lee cemented his place among Silicon Valley philanthropists when he donated $16 million to the new Asian Art Museum in San Francisco -- the single largest individual contribution to the museum. The new building in the Civic Center will open in January as the Chong-Moon Lee Center for Asian Art and Culture.

``I've struggled a lot in my life, and I know that money comes and goes,'' Lee said. ``Now I can't complain about anything. I have to share.''

At his lows, the Korean-born entrepreneur was broke, divorced, living on meals of Top Ramen and contemplating suicide. At his highs, Lee made millions from the sale of his company, Diamond Multimedia, and accompanied former President Bill Clinton on diplomatic trips to Asia.

He has given millions more to a range of causes, including building a new emergency room at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation and helping New York Korean-American gang members turn around their lives.

Through donations of time, skills, and money, Lee and others are trying to encourage more Asians to support their communities.

Los Angeles banker Dominic Ng helped break a United Way fundraising record last year, raising $66 million for the greater Los Angeles chapter from his network of Chinese-American friends and acquaintances. Andrew Cherng, chairman of Panda Restaurant Group, broke Ng's record this year by raising $67 million from mostly Asian-Americans.

``We want to show that we Asian-Americans are as American as anyone else,'' Ng said. ``The best way to demonstrate that is by contributing to the community.''

Donations to large organizations has not always been common among Asians, said Jessica Chao, a philanthropic consultant. Many have instead focused on informal giving to family and friends, as well as supporting causes in their native countries.

``If you think of philanthropy to be the broad giving and sharing of talent, time and also money, then Asian-Americans have been doing this since they first came,'' said Chao, an expert on Asian-American philanthropy.

Lee began his charitable giving at 67, when he sold Diamond Multimedia, the Sunnyvale-based computer-graphics card company he launched in 1982. It took 10 years to establish the company, and it was only when he sold it for $92 million in 1995 that he felt ready to give back to the community.

Born into poverty, Lee's life has been marked by a string of business successes and failures in Korea and the United States. He keeps several tokens from his past as reminders of his humble beginnings.

Set next to towering cases of precious Asian art in Lee's foyer is an otherwise unremarkable sculpture of a man stooped over by the weight of firewood on his back.

Lee points to the sculpture and shakes his head in disbelief: ``This was me,'' he says. ``Can you believe it?''

The youngest of five children, Lee was forced to drop out of school at the age of 12 because his parents couldn't afford his tuition. Living underneath a boulder in Seoul, South Korea, Lee spent his teenage years repairing fishing boats, mixing and slicing Chinese herbs and cleaning a pawn shop.

``I begged my parents to just let me take the junior high entrance exam, but they cried and said it would be too heartbreaking for me if I had passed,'' said Lee, wiping tears behind his large black-rimmed glasses.

His thirst for education as a child has influenced how Lee spends his money today.

Earlier this year, he founded a scholarship fund for financially disadvantaged Korean-Americans, giving a total of $250,000 to 30 Bay Area high school graduates. He has also donated $600,000 to the Asia Foundation, a non-profit group focused on U.S.-Asia ties, for a program to train North Koreans in the fields of medicine, technology and law.

``I'd like to help people who have given up because they don't have money,'' Lee said.

Lee, however, never learned how to give up.

At 17, while working long hours, he studied for two years to prepare for Korea's national college entrance exam. He was the first in his family to graduate from college. He later earned a scholarship from the Korean government to pursue a master's degree in library science at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.

When he returned to Korea a few years later, Lee helped his family launch a profitable pharmaceutical materials business. He got married and had three children.

By 1970, he chose to flee with his family to the United States to avoid persecution under the military government of President Park Jung-hee.

He moved to Los Altos and put his savings into an idea to create a add-on card for IBM computers so that they could run Apple II applications. Mountains of copyright and trademark regulations kept Lee from taking his product to the market. He clung to his dream and lost all his money. In the process, he says, his wife left him and took the children.

``It was a terrible, depressing time. My family thought I was ruining myself,'' Lee said.

But in a stroke of good timing and keen marketing, Lee rebounded, starting Diamond Multimedia. In 1993, the firm ranked 17th on Inc Magazine's list of 500 fastest-growing companies.

Those harried days of trade shows and business meetings are over. After recent surgery from a hernia in his intestine, Lee has pared down his travel schedule. He devotes much of his time to community and charity events. And he's in the process of writing his second book, about transforming business ideas into successful commercial projects.

His life is quiet and simple at home with his second wife, Reiko Lee. He walks about his home wearing modest gray slacks, nondescript button-down shirts, and the same Seiko watch he has worn for more than 15 years.

In his dining room, he keeps an original calligraphy script by Kim Koo, a famous Korean patriot during the Japanese occupation from 1910 to 1945. He considers its message a guiding principle for his life.

``What you think is right,'' it reads, ``do it.'''
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For King And Country
Elvis Expresses Vietnamese Nostalgia For a Lost Time

By Phuong Ly

(Washington Post) - Henry Newinn needed something to believe in. In 1975, the Vietnamese refugee had few friends, limited prospects and a wife and baby to support on a busboy's salary.

Then one afternoon, at a roadside stand in Houston, Newinn found a reminder of happier days in South Vietnam: a velvet Elvis. The King, wearing a white jumpsuit, was captured mid-song on black cloth. Pictures of Elvis had been common in Saigon, Newinn's home town, but he'd never before seen a velvet version of his rock-and-roll idol. It was beautiful.

After a few weeks of saving tips, Newinn bought the picture for $5. For years the Elvis hung in his living room, across from the family's Buddhist altar.

"He is the main spirit in the house," says Newinn, now a 60-year-old mechanical engineer in Houston. "He's an example for me to follow. He was poor, but he moved up."

Friday will mark the 25th anniversary of Elvis's death, and it may come as a surprise to learn that many of those taking note will be Vietnamese immigrants who formed an intense bond with the King long ago in their homeland.

Ever since homesick GIs started bringing over Elvis records in the late 1950s, the Vietnamese have used the King and his music as a gateway to American culture. And when the war was over, many refugees like Newinn found faith in the story of the poor boy from Tupelo, Miss.

Many can recall the moment they first heard Elvis's music or saw his image.

Some named their kids after him.

And naturally, some became Elvis-inspired performers.

Elvis Phuong, one of the most famous Vietnamese American crooners, sings "Blue Suede Shoes" and "Can't Help Falling in Love" in both English and Vietnamese. Elvis Cong, a Vietnamese American magician, performs his illusions sporting a pompadour and wearing black clothes.

And Paolo, now a nail salon owner living in Southern California, was one of the best-known Elvis impersonators in Saigon in the 1960s. Thanks to the Elvis movies, he has English lingo down pat.

"That's right, uh-huh, I first started it. My legs started shaking to his music, uh-huh," said Paolo, 56, who goes by just one name.

Henry Newinn, too, played the guitar and sang Elvis tunes in his sister's Saigon nightclub. Today, his son, John, is an Elvis impersonator who performs in custom-made rhinestone-studded jumpsuits. John, 28, finished in the top 10 in the 1994 international impersonator competition sponsored by Graceland. Father and son are the founders of the Asian Worldwide Elvis Fan Club, a Houston-based organization officially sanctioned by Elvis Presley Enterprises.

For Henry Newinn, a Vietnamese passion for Elvis isn't surprising at all. It makes perfect sense.

To Vietnamese immigrants of a certain age, Elvis is forever linked with a carefree adolescence, before the darkest days of the war. He is Saigon before it became Ho Chi Minh City.

His music and movies came to South Vietnam at a time when nearly all things American were novel and fashionable, particularly in well-to-do Saigon society. The presence of GIs was building, along with nightclubs, Coca-Cola and rock-and-roll.

There was plenty of English-language music broadcast in Saigon -- the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Supremes -- but it was Elvis's picture plastered in barbershops across the city. As in America, in Vietnam Elvis inspired youth rebellion, but the Vietnamese could also relate to his sentimental songs and romantic life story. His songs also were a lot easier to learn for beginning English students than most stuff by the Beatles (compare "It's Now or Never" to most of the tracks from the "White Album.")

Henry Newinn discovered Elvis sometime in the late 1950s. He remembers himself and a group of teenage friends staring in awe at the movie poster for "Jailhouse Rock."

"It looked like he was moving," Newinn says now. "We wished one day we could be like that."

After seeing the movie, Newinn grew out his hair, rolled up his jeans and carried cigarettes in his back pocket. He bought a few records and began learning songs. Eventually, he was rocking in his sister's nightclub.

American GIs came to the Rainbow Bar to listen and dance to Newinn's covers of "Blue Moon of Kentucky" and "That's All Right, Mama."

"It was kind of like stepping back home for a minute," says Tim Swearengin, of Houston, then a 19-year-old draftee.

Swearengin became a regular at the club during his 1966-67 tour of duty, and he and Newinn became friends. At his request, Swearengin's mother sent him several LPs -- Elvis, Johnny Rivers, Jimmie Rodgers -- so he could expand Newinn's song list.

Swearengin finished his tour of duty in November 1967. On his last day, he went to the Rainbow Bar and wrote down his parents' address and phone number in Houston. He remembers telling Newinn, "If you're ever in America, give me a call."

Swearengin got that call in the summer of 1975. Newinn and his family were among the hundreds of Vietnamese refugees housed temporarily in barracks at Camp Pendleton near San Diego, looking for American sponsors.

Newinn, who had worked for the U.S. Embassy, fled Saigon just a few hours before North Vietnamese tanks rolled into the city. His family jumped onto a crowded fishing boat and were picked up by a U.S. military ship. The pillowcase his wife had packed contained their son's diapers and a piece of paper with Swearengin's number.

After getting over the shock of hearing Newinn's voice again, Swearengin didn't hesitate. He and his parents invited the Newinns to Houston and agreed to sponsor them.

Elvis had come through.

By the time Vietnamese immigrants settled in the United States, they would face a new kind of Elvis, a King defined by fat jokes and rumors of drug abuse. Then, two years after the war ended, he was dead. But for many Vietnamese, it was the Elvis of their youth who remained.

Singer Elvis Phuong had emigrated to Paris in 1975, but the city just didn't have enough Vietnamese immigrants and Elvis fans to support his shows. In 1981 he moved to Orange County, Calif. -- the Vietnamese Motown, as it has come to be known.

In Houston, Newinn sang "Love Me Tender" to his son, John, as a lullaby. His collection of Elvis memorabilia grew to include oil paintings, clocks, bathroom accessories, a cookie jar, a phone and a park bench. He converted the garage into an Elvis Room, where his first velvet Elvis hangs today.

Newinn and his wife, Tania, say they had tried to conceive their son so that he would have the same birthday as Elvis, Jan. 8. John arrived three weeks early, on Dec. 14, 1973. Tania, who fell in love with Henry partly because he was a singer, said she felt John's birthday was close enough to be auspicious.

"I think when my child grows up, I want him to be like Elvis," Tania Newinn says.

She got her wish. Kinda. John Newinn, a student at Stephen F. Austin State University, has been doing Elvis ever since his successful appearance in a high school talent show. And he will do Elvis, he says, as long as possible, "until I can't shake my hips anymore."

No matter, he says, that times have changed and that younger Vietnamese Americans often see his act as funny. Or that his own sister, Carol, 19, thinks he should move on.

"I don't think it's a good idea to be an Elvis for the rest of his life," she says. "Being a singer is such a shaky job."

Elvis was good for her father, says Carol, who is also a performer, but she has decided to create an Asian American music identity for herself, using English pop songs with a few Vietnamese words thrown in, and Chinese instrumentals mixed with a techno beat.

Perhaps it's a sign that the Vietnamese immigrants are now settled into American society if their children want to reach back to their roots for some inspiration.

These are the fat years in the Vietnamese-Elvis affair. Those who loved him in their youth must watch him decline in the eyes of their children. In a way, says 38-year-old Minh-Hoa Ta, a San Francisco State University professor, the Elvis lovers are trapped in time.

If South Vietnam hadn't lost the war, the immigrants wouldn't still be stuck in the 1960s, says Ta, who is also co-director of the Vietnamese American Studies Center at San Francisco State. She remembers her own reaction at hearing "Love Me Tender" one night on television. Her Saigon childhood came rushing back: It was the tune she had heard constantly floating out of her older brother's room.

"They could never cross that time," she says of fellow immigrants. "It's something they lost when they were forced to leave Vietnam. That moment was something to treasure. . . . That's my era. I got stuck, too."

Paolo, billed as one of Saigon's best Elvises, tried to continue his singing career in the United States. After a few years, he decided to quit and go into the nail salon business.

He found the subsequent waves of Vietnamese immigrants in the 1980s and 1990s didn't have as much of an interest in classic rock-and-roll. Many of them were from the countryside and, under the communist regime, had developed other musical tastes.

"They just listen to the old Vietnamese music," Paolo sniffs.

Last year, missing the recognition he once enjoyed, Paolo began to record songs again. He diversified his music, including Tommy Jones covers, French tunes and even some old Vietnamese classics, and released two compact discs.

But the Saigon days are gone.

Asked about Paolo, one freelance reporter for Vietnamese-language publications had trouble remembering him. She thought he was dead.

Elvis Phuong has lost some of his hair and his boyish figure. In 2000, angry callers to radio stations and newspaper editorials denounced him when he toured Vietnam during April, the month set aside to mark the fall of Saigon.

Today, most of the second generation of Vietnamese in the United States have never heard of him.

Phuong focuses on the homeland. He spends half the year touring Vietnam, where he lives in a new gated community next to the Saigon River. There, his audience falls into two categories: those who consider him a novelty because he's a Vietnamese American singer and those who remember his pre-1975 popularity. Many of his shows are sold out.

Henry Newinn also returned to Vietnam two years ago. Besides keeping Elvis's memory alive in the United States, he also dreams of helping to bring Elvis back to postwar Vietnam. During his trip home, a relative made an oil painting of Elvis that Newinn entered into the art contest at Graceland. It won second prize.

They are the true believers.

In an e-mail from Vietnam, Phuong says he is proud "that after so many years, the audience still loves me."

He dismisses the jokes about Elvis Presley. His idol's records, he says, are selling well.

In capital letters, he writes, "A legend never dies and will never die."
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The last `freedom fighters'?
POLITICS: Controversy shrouds a Vietnamese anti-communist organisation based in the United States

By Songpol Kaopatumtip

Orange County, California (Bangkok Post) - In front of major shopping malls in Little Saigon, the old South Vietnamese flag is hoisted on the same mast as the Stars and Stripes. The sight may seem odd to visitors passing through this sprawling community of 400,000 Vietnamese Americans, but for many residents here, it is a significant symbol of solidarity.

For the past seven years, a group of overseas Vietnamese have been waging a campaign to impose American-style democracy in the country which they left after the communist takeover in 1975.

To outsiders, and even a number of overseas Vietnamese themselves, the campaign is merely a pipedream. But members of the Government of Free Vietnam (GFVN), an exile organisation headquartered in the Los Angeles suburb of Garden Grove, are confident that the communist party in Hanoi will ``soon'' be brought to account for its alleged atrocities against democratic-minded citizens.

At a conference held by the GFVN on June 30, about 7,000 Vietnamese, many of whom travelled from countries as far away as Germany, Switzerland, Australia and France, heard a passionate call to bring the communist party before the International Criminal Court for its alleged ``crimes against humanity''. The meeting also endorsed the election of Nguyen Huu Chanh, the organisation's charismatic founder, as its new prime minister-in-exile.

The conference, held at the Anaheim Convention Centre in Orange County, capped two days of preliminary discussion among 1,000 GFVN members who spoke at length about alleged oppression, corruption and economic problems in their homeland.

``We must unite behind Nguyen Huu Chanh to regain our religious freedom,'' declared the Venerable Thich Tue Uy, who said he represented Buddhist monks in central California.

``They (Vietnamese authorities) persecute all faiths - Buddhists, Roman Catholics and Protestants,'' said an elderly Catholic priest. ``The enemy that belongs to you and me is communism.''

Another speaker drew a big round of applause when he condemned the Hanoi government for ``ceding a large chunk of Vietnamese territory'' to China.

Indeed, anti-communist rhetoric was heard throughout the two-day meeting, held at the Sequoia Center in Buena Park, a short drive from Disney Land and Ripley's Believe It or Not.

An honour guard in military fatigues greeted VIP guests who arrived in chauffeur-driven limousines. The old South Vietnamese flag fluttered alongside the Stars and Stripes. Young people, some in military-style uniforms and traditional Vietnamese dress, welcomed visitors. On stage were Nguyen Huu Chanh, prominent scholars and old soldiers who fled Vietnam after the communist takeover more than a quarter-century ago.

The election of Chanh, 52, as prime minister was not unexpected. A letter of resignation from his predecessor, Nguyen Hoang Dan, was read and one speaker after another rose to nominate him for the post.

The meeting was briefly interrupted by a Vietnamese woman, who was booed away after proposing that a president should be elected instead. ``She's probably a Vietnamese government spy sent here to disrupt the meeting,'' one participant whispered.

TERRORIST ASSOCIATES

The presence of anti-Hanoi groups like the GFVN has stirred quite a controversy in the US. But it is not meetings like this that worry the Vietnamese government and its counterparts in the region.

As President Bush expands his ``war on terrorism'' into Southeast Asia, it finds its campaign complicated by so-called ``freedom fighters'' based in the US who straddle a fine line between pressing for peaceful change and planning violent attacks against communist governments in the region.

In May last year, a Vietnamese court sentenced 38 members of the Government of Free Vietnam to long prison terms for attempting to blow up government buildings in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). The
court statement said GFVN followers smuggled over 17,000 subversive leaflets into Vietnam along with 37 kilogrammes of explosives and 40 detonators between March 1999 and August 2000.

In response to the convictions, Thai authorities said, GFVN members placed a backpack full of explosives in front of the Vietnamese Embassy in Bangkok in June last year. A box containing five kilos of diesel fuel and ammonium nitrate was also thrown into the embassy compound. Both items were linked to a detonator that was supposed to be activated by a cellphone, police said. The bombs never went off.

Chanh said the incident was carried out without his knowledge.

``They acted on their own. It's not our policy to engage in such violent acts,'' he told Perspective in an interview at his Garden Grove office. ``We are not terrorists.''

Chanh said his campaign was aimed at overthrowing the Vietnamese communist party - not the government.

In early October last year, FBI agents arrested Van Duc Vo, a GFVN member accused of planning to bomb the Vietnamese Embassy in Bangkok. Hanoi officially welcomed Vo's arrest, but said it wanted the US to go a step further and shut down Chanh's organisation as part of its declared war on terrorism.

``Chanh and his men have not given up terrorist plans against Vietnam,'' Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Phan Thuy Thanh said in a statement issued in Hanoi. ``The US and all governments should have a consistent attitude to terrorist activities.''

The GFVN, however, is not the only group of Asian exiles accused of plotting subversive plans in the United States. In Long Beach, California, an accountancy office doubles as the headquarters of the Cambodian Freedom Fighters (CFF), whose forces allegedly staged a rocket attack in Phnom Penh that left eight people dead in November 2000.

The head of an anti-communist group which attacked a Laotian customs post opposite the northeastern Thai province of Ubon Ratchathani in 2000 is also believed to be residing in the US, according to a Thai security official. He said Chanh, CFF leader Chhun Yasith, and Laotian dissident leader Srisook Chaiyasaeng are blacklisted by Thai Immigration Police. ``The Thai government does not support or condone terrorist activities,'' he said.

US government officials insist they are not turning a blind eye to these groups. But many question why they are still allowed to operate on US soil.

In an October 29, 2001 article entitled ``Terror Made in the USA'', Time magazine described Chanh as ``Vietnam's most-wanted terrorist, a globe-trotting rabble-rouser sought by police in his homeland and in the Philippines, where three of his associates were recently arrested with bombmaking materials.''

``He may not be in the same league as Osama bin Laden, but his Free Vietnam movement ... is suspected in half a dozen attacks on Vietnamese targets in Europe and Asia,'' the article added. ``Despite George W. Bush's war on terrorism, he feels no need to hide in his adopted country.''

Chanh immigrated to the US in 1982 and is now a permanent resident.

Asked for his comment, a longtime Orange County resident with a background in Vietnam-US relations told Perspective: ``The US policy towards Vietnam is to promote reform through trade, travel, cultural exchanges and occasional pressure on human rights issues. The US State Department has issued statements warning Americans such as Mr Chanh not to engage in hostile activities against friendly governments.''

``It's possible there might be some rogue CIA types or aging Rambo wannabes who support Chanh to stir up unrest in Southeast Asia, but that's merely speculation,'' he added.

Yet, it is understandable why groups such as the GFVN are tolerated. Several members of these dissident groups fought alongside American soldiers during the Vietnam War, earning them the enduring sympathy of American war veterans and politicians with a hardline stance against Hanoi. Alleged human rights violations by the communist governments in Vietnam and Laos give US politicians still more reason to sympathise with the dissidents.

During a House debate on a US-Vietnam trade law last month, Rep Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican, called the Vietnamese government a ``gang of thugs''. He said Hanoi has a poor human rights record and has not done enough to help the US recover the remains of Americans stilling missing from the Vietnam War.

Tell-tale signs are also abundant on the walls of Chanh's headquarters, where he displays photos of GFVN leaders talking to high-ranking US Special Forces officers, and camouflaged soldiers training at a camp code-named Base KC-702 on the Thai-Cambodian border in 1996-98. There are also pictures of Chanh with President Clinton and a Thai ``Godfather''.

Back at the meeting, I asked a former US Special Forces officer if the display of the old South Vietnamese flag would offend the Vietnamese government. He replied: ``This is a free country. If the Vietnamese Embassy people don't like it, they may go home where they can set rules and regulations.''

QUESTIONS OF COMMITMENT

Founded in 1995, the GFVN claims over 7,000 members and 75 chapters in North America, Europe, Australia and Asia. It is one of several groups seeking to establish democracy in Vietnam or raising political awareness among the Vietnamese community.

The Alliance for Democracy in Vietnam (www.lmdcvn.org) says it has ``fighters for democracy staying in Vietnam and residing abroad.'' The Vietnamese-American Public Affairs Committee, based in Saratoga, California (www.vpac-usa.org) says it is ``committed to enhancing the voice of Vietnamese Americans in the political process''.

Locally, the GFVN broadcasts Radio Free Vietnam, which produces an anti-communist short-wave radio programme; publishes a weekly newspaper, Tieng Dan (Voice of the People); and operates Web sites to publicise its activities. It also organises youth gatherings, stages annual rallies and participates in Little Saigon Tet festivals and parades.

Spokesman Le Chi Thuc said these activities are supported by the GFVN's own income, which is generated by donations, ad sales and membership dues.

Despite its strong organisational skills, critics say the GFVN is not overwhelmingly popular among Vietnamese immigrants in California.

``This area is filled with factions competing for popularity,'' said an Orange County resident. ``They don't get along any better here than they did in Vietnam.''

Disagreements range from personality conflicts to questions of tactics.

``Some accuse Nguyen Huu Chanh of being a communist collaborator. Others think he's a swindler,'' said the resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

But people close to Chanh say they join the organisation because of their faith in him.

Peter Ha, 48, a successful businessman with a Mercedes and a Cadillac parked at his Orange County home, volunteered to work for the GFVN two years ago. ``I let my wife take care of my business,'' he told Perspective.

``Tony (Chanh's nickname) is a determined man and I believe in him,'' said Ha. ``He is a dedicated leader. He is willing to sacrifice himself for our cause.''

Thuong Cuc, a landscape architect in Orlando, Florida, drove to the Anaheim conference with her American husband. ``We have great respect for Tony,'' she said. ``People love him so much that they are willing to do anything for him.''

Many supporters said Chanh ``is chosen by God to lead Vietnam out of communism.''

Nonetheless, sceptics are not sure whether to take Chanh and his organisation seriously.

``A lot of Vietnamese want to return to Vietnam to do business, to visit relatives, to learn about their roots. But I don't know many who want to permanently relocate there and give up their US citizenship,'' a specialist in American-Vietnamese affairs told Perspective.

``Most people I have interviewed don't think an armed struggle will overthrow the government in Vietnam,'' he added. ``It failed in 1975.''

- Editor's Note: This is the first of a two-part series on Vietnamese-Americans. Email: songpol30@hotmail.com
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`We just want to oust the communists'
GFVN leader hopes to see American-style democracy in Vietnam

By Songpol Kaopatumtip

(Bangkok Post) - The Sept 11 terrorist attacks on the United States have prompted the Government of Free Vietnam to lower its profile, but its supporters are still determined to establish true freedom and democracy in Vietnam, according to GFVN leader Nguyen Huu Chanh.

``People in Vietnam are ready (for change),'' he said. ``But we're not trying to overthrow the Vietnamese government. Our aim is to remove the communist party.''

Chanh referred to the Neutrality Act which prohibits American citizens or residents from using force to overthrow a foreign government. ``A lot of newspapers got it wrong when they said we tried to overthrow the Vietnamese government,'' he told Perspective.

``US government officials understand our position. That's the reason why we can still run our office here,'' he said. ``We are free to talk, we are free to speak.''

Nonetheless, Chanh claimed that a number of military commanders in the Vietnamese government support his cause. ``They are four-star, three-star, two-star officers. I met them in Germany, France, Bangkok. They are on standby now.''

Corruption is widespread in Vietnam, starting from local to central government organisations, he claimed. ``This has aggravated economic problems in the country.''

He said he already had plans to run Vietnam as soon as the communist party was removed. ``What we have in mind is a presidential system like in America.''

Chanh said he had met people and government leaders in several countries who sympathised with his cause. There are now about 3.6 million overseas Vietnamese living around the world, and many of them are ready to go home and help rebuild the country, he added.

``They are educated people and they know how to start new businesses. They already have business connections worldwide,'' he explained. ``We can build a very strong community with these overseas people. They know how to make money.''

Overseas Vietnamese now send about $2.5 billion to their families in Vietnam each year, he said. This excludes money taken into the country unofficially.

``When there is freedom in Vietnam, I am sure overseas Vietnamese can easily send $5 billion or $10 billion. We may not have to rely on foreign loans.''

Chanh said he had entered Vietnam many times before ``through the border'' and met a lot of leaders of various pro-democracy groups.

``These parties want to see democracy in Vietnam, but they have different ways to fight - some by staging protests, some by broadcasting radio messages, some by force,'' he said. ``What they need is a strong leader from overseas who can really unite them.''
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