Firstly, on behalf of all my friends in Section 3, fellow students in Section 7 and all my friends at the Whitehead Detention Center for Au Lac Boat People, please allow me to wish You, and the thousands of Your disciples, health and success in everything You do.
Dear Madame, when I first arrived in Hong Kong, I was only 11 years of age. I have been living at this center with my parents for nearly 6 years now. Living around me are fellow countrymen such as the Kinh, the Chinese and the Tay, etc. All are Au Lac people in a foreign land seeking refuge from the disaster of communism. Madame! I have spent my childhood confined within these four barbed-wire fences of a jail. However, it was also right here that my parents and teachers taught me, word by word, the Au Lac language. They taught me clearly, the tradition of the Au Lac people; that people must protect each other, must live in unity and love, and that everyone in this world should be able to lead a life of freedom.
However, for us, in our situation, freedom has long been buried in the past. The reality that I observe instead is the freedom to use force , the freedom to use tear gas , the freedom to make arrests ..., that the Hong Kong Government has so freely executed against my fellow Au Lac countrymen, in a place well known as a land of humanity.
Madame, do you know that on April 7, 1994, I and my friends, my parents and fellow countrymen in this center, witnessed with our own eyes how inhumanely the Hong Kong policemen treated our fellow countrymen. My friends and fellow Au Lac countrymen had to suffer the attack of tear gas, truncheons, poisonous gas, etc... when the only things we had to protect ourselves with were the strips of white cloth wrapped around our heads with SOS, and slogans:
- Protest against forced repatriation.
- We'd rather die than go back to the prison of the communists.
- Return to us our rights as refugees.
- Down with communism.
With their bony hands raised, full of blood and in tears, they weakly attempted to resist, but how could they oppose the 1200 strong policemen who were fully-equipped with gas masks, canisters of tear gas, truncheons and shields and tanks, etc...?
The angry and sad outcries, the howlings, the crying of the little children, and the cries for help filled and shook the Whitehead center, but they failed to attract the attention of the office of the United Nations. All the cruel truths have been tightly kept and covered up by the United Nations and the Hong Kong Government. However, You have come with Your noblest and kindest heart to help us, those who are in this furnace of Whitehead. We and our countrymen have been waiting for and listening to the news about You in the newspapers and on the television everyday. You have come to us with a love as though we are Your own flesh and blood, with the love that a father, a mother, gives to their children. How deeply moved we are!
Dear Madame! It is May 7, 1994 today. A month has passed by, but how can we forget the horror of April 7? Freedom or Death : the Au Lac people in the detention center are still vigorously protesting in unity against any conspiracies or devious plans of the Hong Kong Government and the United Nations in exercising their force against the Au Lac boat people. Tens of thousands of people in the detention center are still protesting peacefully and non-violently. Thousands are on hunger strike, ready to torture themselves, ready to incinerate themselves, to protest against the inhumane actions of the Hong Kong Government and the United Nations in forcing the Au Lac boat people back to the prisons of the communists, to protest against the inhumane suppression by the Hong Kong police toward the boat people in Section 7 on April 7, and to protest against the unjust screening process used by the Hong Kong Government.
The more I grow up, the more the rust on the detaining wires builds up. Six years have passed by since we were first locked up in this huge prison. Our childhoods have been lost and the right to live life as normal human beings has been denied us, day by day, in front of our very eyes. Even though we are only human, we just wish that we could turn into birds and fly over the fences to savour a breath of clean fresh air, to enjoy sight-seeing, to be able to see the tender green trees, the colorful displays of the gardens, to join in with friends from the five continents and sing together the songs of unity, to enjoy a full and complete childhood.
Dear Madame! I will remember all my life Your boundless love. Once again, on behalf of all fellow Au Lac students at the Whitehead Detention Center, I would like to wish You a long life!
Yours sincerely,
Le Thi Hang
Whitehead Detention Center
A Thank You Letter And A Petition
(Originally in Au Lac Language)
To The Supreme Master Ching Hai
Dear Honorable Supreme Master,
We represent a group of military and administrative officers of the former government of the Republic of Au Lac; those who have, for the second time, been denied political refugee status, and are facing forced repatriation. We wish to express our sincerest gratitude to the Supreme Master, in response to the Supreme Master's recent peaceful demonstration in Hong Kong in order to urge countries who are currently temporarily sheltering the refugees and the UNHCR not to force the Au Lac boat people back to the place from where, risking their lives, they have fled.
Dear Honorable Supreme Master, we are so moved by Your chivalrous actions that we are unable to contain our tears; at least we feel that there are still sympathetic people such as Yourself who understand our grievances, understand the bitterness, the insults and the cruel sufferings we have been subjected to for fifteen years in our homeland, and for a complete five years inside the detention centres. And now we have to endure yet another deadly verdict: failure to pass the screening process for the second time , thus facing the gloomy prospect of being forcibly sent back to Au Lac.
Dear Honorable Supreme Master, we feel extremely wronged. We do not know what else we can do except to secretly raise in our own mind the question which we know we will never have the opportunity of having answered: "Have we been betrayed?" If not, why then have we been abandoned so unfeelingly? They even mercilessly and groundlessly labelled us as those who have fled their countries in search of food and clothes !
Before 1975, we once bravely put up a heroic fight against the communist countries preventing the danger of communism being spread southward, blood-staining the regions of Southeast Asia. How unlucky we were to be forsaken and left behind to single-handedly handled the war ourselves, and then fatally and humiliatingly be defeated. Is this not a betrayal that we have had to put up with?
Since April 30, 1975, people from South Au Lac collectively, and we, the former military and administrative officers specifically, have been suffering in agony and left in perilous circumstances, having to face the barbaric, vindictive behaviour of the Au Lac communists through various forms of torture. The extreme suffering that we have had to endure included unjustified maltreatment, being jailed or exiled, being killed, our belongings vanished, fathers lost their sons, wives separated from their husbands, families broken... and yet all this is the work of our own countrymen dressed up as communists. Is this not the second time that we have had to put up with treachery? Only this time the treachery is from our very own countrymen, our blood-relations!?
We have been left with no alternative, but to risk our lives crossing dangerous mountains and waters, rubbing shoulders with the deadly dangers of the boundless ocean! Nothing could compare to the happiness of finding ourselves standing firmly on a land of freedom. However, happiness barely surfaced, smiles were just beginning to take shape... when we, once again, found ourselves stepping worriedly and lost into another prison camp - the detention centre; a place where life is full of deprivations and difficulties. We willingly put up with the wait and went through the screening process in the hope that we would receive assistance from the free world, from our allies, so that our wish for freedom would be fulfilled. And then one year went by, then 2 years, 3 years, 4 years, 5 years!... failed to pass the screening process once..., twice... What other miseries must we endure...!? Dear Honorable Supreme Master, what other despair can compare to our despair and insults? Is our feeling of being betrayed and wronged not justified?
Dear Honorable Supreme Master, why is it that we are still unwilling to return to our homeland!? Because:
- The communists are still governing our motherland Au Lac. We have fled to avoid the persecutions of communism. On what grounds does the free world refuse to recognize and accept us, and instead force us to return to the place from which we have painfully fled? When communists no longer exist, of course we will return to start afresh and rebuild a free, fair and brotherly Au Lac.
- We can not return to Au Lac, because we have been burdened with grief and sorrow, troubled by dark memories of the unjustified interrogations, maltreatment and torture that the Au Lac communists used against us and our families. And now they still have the gall to deceivingly announce: All our offenses are forgiven . In the past, the communists continuously and by engaging various ways, tormented, maltreated us in revenge, until we could no longer stand it and were forced to look for ways of escaping. And now they are saying: All are forgiven which is no different than - cruelly torturing an innocent person, and then announcing: All is forgiven . Where is the justice in this? And yet there are still people who believe in communism, what irony! We feel that we should be the ones making the remark: All are forgiven to the communists. If we are guilty, then we have only one sin - looking for freedom.
- What else could compare to the illogicalness of this: - escaping from 'communism' in search of 'freedom', only be to returned to 'communism' by 'freedom' itself!
How much sorrow, depression, and feelings of bitterness fill our hearts and minds? How can we relieve such anguish!? Those secret words of sadness, those indescribable afflictions, those silent laments for the destiny of humankind, all brought about by human beings themselves. We are tightly kept in the depth of this unforgiving land, we have fallen to the bottom of hell on earth. Oh kind-hearted people of the world, can you hear us?
We think that You are the one who has the determination to look for a complete solution transcending sentient beings, leading to liberation from this world. In response to the Whitehead incident and our extreme agony, You protested in Hong Kong not so long ago. Apart from sincerely expressing our deepest gratitude for Your consideration and Your demonstration on behalf of the Au Lac boat people, we wish also to earnestly request that You, the Supreme Master, try to use Your reputation and the power of mercy and love to rescue us in a last attempt, by using the following steps, before the international community decides to tightly close this page of tragic history of the Au Lac refugees:
(a) Please personally speak out on our behalf on radio stations, television networks, in newspapers and magazines, the insults and injustices that we have been and are still enduring, so that the world, the leaders and those who have a responsibility to care for the refugees understand that: we are truly refugees, who did not flee their country in search of food and clothes .
(b) Call for all our countrymen to come together and co-ordinate with all the concerned organizations, groups and overseas Au Lac communities to actively support and assist with the rescue efforts and activities.
(c) Directly meet, negotiate, and plead with concerned organizations and leaders of nations who are connected with the Au Lac refugees, so that they can fully understand our situation and save us, those who have spent half of their lives in misery, giving us an opportunity to start afresh and rebuild a new life in a free country.
Once again we ask You to accept herewith our sincerest and deepest gratitude, and we respectfully hope that You will wholeheartedly help us with our petition, and look for ways to resolve our grievances that we have yet to find words to describe.
On behalf of all the military and administrative officers of the Republic of Au Lac.