I was chatting with my dad on Sunday and he mentioned meeting a Vietnamese man at church. He was in Virginia visiting his daughter. After the service he, his daughter and her family were heading up to DC to protest the visit of Prime Minister Pham Van Khai of Vietnam. This man knows of what he protests.
During the Vietnam war he fought with the Americans against the North Vietnamese as a Montagnard soldier. The Montagnards are an ethnic minority group within Vietnam and known for the help they gave the Americans. Once the Americans left, the North Vietnamese obviously took over the south. One of the missions of the North Vietnamese was hunting down Montagnard soldiers and no doubt killing them. This man my father met hid in the jungles of Vietnam and Burma for NINETEEN years to escape death. After the first thirteen, he managed to get his wife and kids to America, but it took another six years before he could flee his home country. A Lutheran church in North Carolina sponsored him so he could join his family.
Vietnam is still a communist state. The Vietnamese government still persecutes Christians, Buddhists, Hmong, and other ethnic people groups like the Montagnards. This man's fear is that the Vietnamese government will get away promising reform with mere words, but then never be held accountable for backing up their promises with changed policies. A very reasonable fear.
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