Vietnam Government

In a bizarre vestige of Cold War intrigue, an unknown author has fabricated a document purporting to be a Los Angeles Times news article quoting the Vietnamese ambassador to the United Nations as sharply criticizing his own government.

Here we go again. Only now it's the "Iraqification" rather than the "Vietnamization" of a quagmire war in another distant and increasingly hostile land. Washington's puppets are once again said to be on the verge of getting their act together, and the American people are daily assured that we are about to turn the corner. Soon we will be able to give Iraq back to the Iraqis, and some distant day the United States will get out. In the meantime, U.S.

Vietnam's Communist Party has purged about 50,000 members in four years to root out corruption, an official Vietnamese newspaper reported. "The loss was huge but essential," the army newspaper Quan Doi Nhan Dan said of the expulsions from December, 1986--when the party began nationwide reforms--to September, 1990. The article was seen in Bangkok on Wednesday. Vietnam's party, which now has nearly 2 million members, has governed the country since the Communists defeated the U.S.

It's an article of faith in Orange County's Little Saigon: Somehow, someday, the defeated nation of South Vietnam will rise again. Though the Communists won the war 28 years ago today, belief that the government of Vietnam will fall is promoted on Vietnamese-language radio and used as a litmus test for politicians in this community of Vietnamese expatriates -- the nation's largest. Those who dare challenge the orthodoxy face ridicule, even violence.

President Clinton's decision to lift the trade embargo against Vietnam hit home with Vietnam war veterans, business leaders and members of Orange County's Vietnamese community. The news brought anger, jubilation and hopeful talk of future cooperation. On Thursday, several people offered their thoughts on the decision. * Trang Nguyen, 32, is an Anaheim resident who is a shareholder in Little Saigon Television and Little Saigon Radio.

The nearly 1,300 Vietnamese Americans who filed documents this month in an attempt to recover property and assets in their homeland appear to be out of luck. According to the U.S. State Department, claimants had to be U.S. citizens at the time they lost property during the Vietnam War to qualify for compensation from the Vietnamese government. More importantly, they were required to file claims by 1983.

Declaring that the Roman Catholic Church is increasingly less restricted in Vietnam and that many Vietnamese leaders want to "move beyond the past," a delegation of American archbishops has urged that the U.S. government normalize relations with its former enemy. Los Angeles Archbishop Roger M. Mahony and two other prelates represented the U.S. Catholic hierarchy on the bishops' first official visit to the country since the end of the Vietnam War.

The re-education camp for women with "social disorders" stands amid rice paddies and peasant farms at the end of a long dirt road, a lonely reminder of all the changes, good and bad, sweeping Vietnam. During the American War, as it is called here, this cluster of yellow stucco buildings 70 miles northwest of Hanoi was run by the army and housed young criminals and draft dodgers. Today, the camp is run by the provincial government's Social Affairs Department and houses 93 women. Their "disorder"?

It's an article of faith in Orange County's Little Saigon: Somehow, someday, the defeated nation of South Vietnam will rise again. Though the Communists won the war 28 years ago today, belief that the government of Vietnam will fall is promoted on Vietnamese-language radio and used as a litmus test for politicians in this community of Vietnamese expatriates -- the nation's largest. Those who dare challenge the orthodoxy face ridicule, even violence.

Here we go again. Only now it's the "Iraqification" rather than the "Vietnamization" of a quagmire war in another distant and increasingly hostile land. Washington's puppets are once again said to be on the verge of getting their act together, and the American people are daily assured that we are about to turn the corner. Soon we will be able to give Iraq back to the Iraqis, and some distant day the United States will get out. In the meantime, U.S.

Few things define Southern California's Vietnamese American community more than its passionate brand of anti-Communism, on display in heated discussions along the sidewalk cafes of Little Saigon and in frequent demonstrations. That's what makes the case of Van Duc Vo different. His activism went beyond words to action, making him a folk hero to many in Little Saigon and a wanted terrorist in Vietnam. Vo, 42, of Baldwin Park, is being held in a Los Angeles jail, accused by the U.S.

The FBI is examining the activities of an Orange County group of self-styled freedom fighters that has been branded a terrorist organization by the Vietnamese government. Chanh Huu Nguyen, president of the group called Government of Free Vietnam, said FBI agents visited the group's headquarters at a Garden Grove office complex twice over the last two weeks, spending hours asking about the organization's activities.

A Vietnamese court sentenced six people to up to 20 years in prison in a corruption case that has touched off widespread public anger. Two government officials were acquitted, a court official said. The court ruled that the guilty officials collaborated in awarding a contract to Van Thien, a small private company, to build a $13.6-million entertainment complex despite its lack of construction experience. The defendants consisted of six government officials, a banker and a businessman.

Vietnamese authorities are targeting critics of the Communist Party and Buddhists in a new crackdown, religious and human rights groups charged Monday. The New York-based group Human Rights Watch said more than a dozen political dissidents were detained and interrogated last week in what it described as "the largest and most systematic effort to intimidate Vietnamese dissidents in a long time."

Sharing a dais with a flower-bedecked bust of revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh, President Clinton on Friday reached beyond Vietnam's government to appeal to the country's overwhelming young population as the force for change in this Communist state. The president, on a historic visit to Vietnam, used carefully worded but obvious language to call for basic human rights, from freedom of religion to the right to political dissent.

On Sundays, the magnificent Catholic cathedral on Nha Tho Street is packed for Mass. Pagodas throughout the country again buzz with activity. Small groups of farmers gather outside the Communist Party headquarters here almost daily to meet with officials who hear--and sometimes act on--their grievances. The press is no longer just a monolithic propaganda machine, and scores of lively newspapers have sprung up. Artists have newfound leeway to choose their topics and display their work abroad.

Sharing a dais with a flower-bedecked bust of revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh, President Clinton on Friday reached beyond Vietnam's government to appeal to the country's overwhelming young population as the force for change in this Communist state. The president, on a historic visit to Vietnam, used carefully worded but obvious language to call for basic human rights, from freedom of religion to the right to political dissent.

Few things define Southern California's Vietnamese American community more than its passionate brand of anti-Communism, on display in heated discussions along the sidewalk cafes of Little Saigon and in frequent demonstrations. That's what makes the case of Van Duc Vo different. His activism went beyond words to action, making him a folk hero to many in Little Saigon and a wanted terrorist in Vietnam. Vo, 42, of Baldwin Park, is being held in a Los Angeles jail, accused by the U.S.

For dozens of former South Vietnamese "lost commandos" now living in Southern California, a U.S. government compensation program has been successfully concluded, thanks to years of effort by an ex-Senate lawyer named John Mattes. But for their former colleagues still living in Vietnam, unexpected problems have arisen that may thwart the will of Congress. The Vietnamese government has threatened to block U.S.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher set off a minor international tiff Wednesday with a congressional resolution demanding greater respect for human rights in Vietnam on the 25th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. The Huntington Beach Republican's resolution, which has no practical effect, attacks the Communist regime as a one-party state that "continues to violate the liberties and civil rights of its own citizens." It urges the release of all religious and political prisoners.