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Vietnamese hero not legitimate enough for Vanstone?

By Norm Bernard - posted Friday, 22 July 2005


In 2003 I was first alerted to the story of a boat load of asylum seekers who had arrived at Port Headland. Having worked in refugee camps on the Thai border, I had been exposed to the hardships of many of these lovely people before I read the story of one amazing Australian Vietnamese who managed to rescue 53 of his family.

Many years earlier I had followed the story of Raoul Wallenberg and was totally impressed by his bravery and how he saved many lives during the holocaust.

A young journalist, Paige Taylor, on The Australian, reported in 2003 that Nyugen Van Hoa, a former refugee who had been awarded Australian citizenship, had just been sentenced to five years in prison for people smuggling.

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Judge Mary Ann Yeats, of Perth District Court said, in summation, the case varied from similar cases because no profit factor was involved. For that reason, she said, she would have preferred not to give the mandatory five years’ minimum sentence, but perhaps three years instead, with a suspended sentence. Tol Van Tran, the owner of the boat involved and also Vietnamese, received a similar sentence and the judge likewise felt this should have been suspended. (Following an amendment made for mandatory sentencing provisions, less than the current minimum was not handed out after 2001.) Even so, it seems to me that Van Hoa and Tran got a very rough deal.

I went with my wife to visit Nguyen Van Hoa in Hakea maximum security prison, south of Perth. I had first written to him asking if I could visit as I'd like to help him. Weeks passed with no reply (I had sent a stamped addressed envelope) and so we drove down and asked to see him. He had not received my letter. His command of English was poor and so we battled to understand his story.

I did not want to go overboard for the guy in case he was other than what I thought was a genuine hero. He was transferred to a lower security prison at Wooloroo and we visited him there several times, accompanied by a Catholic Vietnamese priest, Father Hunyh Nguyen, of St Columba’s Church, Bayswater. We questioned him thoroughly and meticulously. It became obvious that this guy was a Vietnamese “Raoul”, and so I went in to bat, full bore.

I took down his story of how he was born in 1956, fought in the South Vietnamese Army and continued with guerrilla fighting after Saigon fell. His father was murdered in 1977, and a few years after, Nguyen Van Hoa was captured and sentenced to death. This was later commuted to 20 years. In prison he was  tortured daily until he escaped in 1991. He has many scars and bullet wounds to verify his story.

He reached Thailand but languished there for three years until he was accepted by Australia and became an Australian citizen in 1997.

Because he had not seen his mother for over 20 years he was keen to return to Vietnam to see her. Despite the risk, he flew to Thailand and then walked through Cambodia until finally meeting up with his old friends in his village. They were still actively distributing leaflets about the harshness of the government and trying to persuade it to soften policies on freedom of speech, movement and religious observance. Unable to find his mother, he helped his friends in their campaign until word reached them that the police had become aware of their activities, making a hurried escape essential.

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Tol Van Tran, one of Van Hoa’s friends, owned a small fishing boat with which he eeked out a very modest living for his wife and two young children. Tran offered his boat for their escape and 53 people, all either family, extended family or very close friends, but all group members, crammed on board and undertook 28 days of terror across the ocean. Twice they were approached by pirates whom they warded off with poles taken on board for just such a purpose. Van Hoa could have walked back to Thailand and used his return airfare, but instead he chose to go with them by boat because he felt responsible for them.

They actually arrived within a few yards of Port Headland, something refuted by the Australian Government. The navy towed them to Christmas Island. A Catholic nun, who can be identified, said she waved to the people on the boat when they were only a couple of hundred yards off the beach. She is prepared to make a statement that the people on the boat had, in fact, reached Australian territory.

Among people deeply concerned by the story is my niece, Kaye Bernard, of Mandurah, an everyday house wife, mother of four young children and helper to her husband in his balustrade erecting business. She foresaw what was likely to happen and was horrified. She recognised that the chances for the boat owner were utterly desperate. He was held in Acacia prison and his wife and two children were held on Christmas Island. With a prison conviction, it was not likely he would obtain refugee recognition, and if he were forcibly repatriated, he would get “the works” from the Vietnamese Government.

Kaye with husband Kim, visited Tran in jail many times and persuaded her close friend, Olympian legend Betty Cuthbert, to become interested. Betty was irate at the way these people were being treated by Australia. Press and TV coverage resulted. Kaye and Betty went to Christmas Island, not easy as Betty with her advanced MS is wheel chair bound and no longer a spring chicken.

Kaye was the one who shamed Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone into allowing photographs of the new born baby of one of Tran’s close relatives(also one of the boat’s compliment) to be published in the media. Vanstone had at first decreed no photographs would be allowed.

The latest situation is that Van Hoa has applied for bail after the Supreme Court quashed his conviction just prior to Christmas. Bail was granted while a retrial, set for October, is pending. Van Hoa is living in Perth with his widowed sister and two teenage children, who also came on the boat. At the bail hearing, the prosecution tried to stop bail alleging Van Hoa had a record of escaping jail in Vietnam. Did they seriously dream he would try escaping back to where he would certainly be executed?

Tol Tran has recently been recognised as a refugee. As of this week, after obtaining bail, he and his wife, and two children, live in Perth. But they are also awaiting retrial.

Australia’s history of jailing smugglers from the scores of boats in the past has seen sentences averaging much less than 12 months; many were 3 or 6 months. At the moment, there remain only 12 of the 53 awaiting deliberation on their applications still left on Christmas Island. All others have been recognised as refugees and given visas. They live in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. Any retrials will involve them having to be brought back to give evidence - very costly and difficult, especially with their limited language skills.

So why not drop the retrials? Tol Tran is a recognised refugee who has endured two years’ jail - much longer than the real smugglers who made profits out of their ventures have had imposed. So too Van Hoa - he is no profiteer smuggler. He has been in jail two years also.

This is another example of the clumsy and over-zealous hands of DIMIA (Department of Immigration and Indigenous Affairs). Don’t forget John Howard recently announced extended powers to his minister to evade the humiliation of some of his party members crossing the floor. The retrials are a farce, an exercise in irresponsible waste of public money and a cruelty to people who have suffered enough already.

Finally, the last 12 of the original group still remaining on Christmas Island ought to be released. They are all from the same politically active group, family, extended family or very close friends. If the 41 already granted visas are legitimate asylum-seekers, then it follows that these people must also be legitimate.

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About the Author

Norm Bernard is retired. His "legend" of a wife has spent 30 years voluntarily working in refugee camps on Thailand borders. She herself was an Italian refugee whose whole family fled Tito’s oppression after World War II. He joined her in Thai camps when he retired.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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