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AND A VOICE TO SING WITH -- A MEMOIR |
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1. "BLESSED ARE THE PERSECUTED" In the living room of a small home on the outskirts of Los Angeles I sang "Oh, Freedom" to a roomful of Communist Vietnamese. From the moment I walked into that room everything reminded me of my time in Hanoi seven years before-the touch of their soft, clean, yellow skin; the precision with which they set their eyeglasses; the modest and tidy grey suits looking as if they'd been tailored by a special designer who worked in miniature; their voices, soft and clipped, humming in Vietnamese, French, and broken English. When we left almost all of us had tears in our eyes or rolling down our cheeks. The spoken farewells were cordial; the looks, heartbreaking. I do not remember Hanoi often or easily. Sometimes at night I lurch upright in bed, waking myself, heart pounding, chest and forehead damp with a sudden crazy sweat. As my mind races to discover who and where I am, I hear the rumbling of a jet sweeping lower than usual over the quiet town of Woodside. Five years after the end of that war and seven years after my time under the bombs, I was once again rallying for the people of Vietnam, this time against the Communist government to which we had lost the war. In 1979, I had no more desire to think about Vietnam than any one else in the world did. The West, anxious to forget about Southeast Asia, let the horrendous massacres in Cambodia pass almost unnoticed. Though the massacres in Cambodia were reported by conscientious press, little protest was raised against them. The left wing was reluctant to make an issue of yet another disgrace being conducted by a "revolutionary government." The right wing didn't have much to say except for its usual "I told you so," which is never very helpful. I had not become involved, and knew only vaguely about the devastation wreaked by Pol Pot's scorched earth policy. I didn't want to know. I was even less aware of what was taking place within Vietnam. The exodus of boat people into the South China Sea had begun but was by no means at its peak. One quiet morning I was visited by two boat people. One of the men was named Doan Van Toai, an ex-student from Saigon who, in the sixties, had been imprisoned under Thieu for antigovernment activities. The other was Hue Hu, a Buddhist monk who'd been defrocked by the Communist government. They were soft-spoken and terribly gracious. Where, they asked, were all the Americans who cared so much about the Vietnamese people in the sixties? The Vietnamese people needed their help again, but could not find it. They began a long description on the human rights violations in Vietnam. I groaned inwardly. Overflowing jails, starvation diets, suffocation in "connex" boxes. Intellectuals, doctors, dentists, architects, artists, old people, anyone who had had ties with the Americans, anyone suspected of being less than enthusiastic about the new regime, was being taken away to re-education centers. Some returned home, but many did not. They wanted to know if I would help them. I remembered the pressure put on me in 1976 when I'd signed a mildly stated letter to the government in Hanoi requesting that Vietnam improve its human rights conditions. The request was accompanied by an apology for our long and destructive presence there, but a campaign was started to stop the letter. Cora Weiss and I had had a huge row. When the letter received little notice the pressure eased, and the issue faded into the background. Perhaps it was time to bring it back to light. I formed a research group of five people, including Ginetta. We worked extensively, mostly in Paris, seeking out well-known French journalists of the left who as early as 1976 had begun to realize and denounce Hanoi's policies. We turned to members of the Buddhist and Catholic communities, to diplomats, both French and Vietnamese, to former fighters from the National Liberation Front, to exiles, and to refugees. Some of them had supported the Provisional Revolutionary Government, and had assumed that after the liberation they would be welcomed home as heroes. They discovered that they were now persona non grata, and that it was impossible to get a visa home, period. Over and over and over again, the stories repeated what I'd been told by Toai and Hu. Everything the United States had done in Vietnam, following in the bloody footsteps of the French and Japanese, had created a political climate in which it was impossible for a peacetime society to evolve and flourish. We had mercilessly bombed, strafed, and burned the mountains, cities, and countryside and now refused to recognize Hanoi. We would not give Hanoi the reparation money once promised, and Vietnam had accordingly broken her promises of no reprisals, reconciliation for collaborators, and, of course, self-determination and democratic freedom for everyone. According to our findings, Hanoi was destroying her own resources. The people who could be rebuilding Vietnam from within were being locked up. The numbers of political prisoners ranged from Hanoi's own figure of 50,000 to the figure given by many refugees, 800,000. Our calculations and best educated guesses put it at around 200,000, a large number when compared with any country in Amnesty's files. We would attempt to reveal our findings as soon as possible. I still have friends who think that the proper time has not yet arrived to criticize Stalin's gulags. I wrote an open letter to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and began collecting signatures in support of it. Getting signatures was not easy. In the end, eighty-one people signed. I was not shocked when I was turned down by most of the left. I was not even surprised when Jane Fonda chose not to sign. I wrote her a long and careful letter explaining how important it was that she join us. Jane and I knew each other only from brief meetings. We had never worked together. I wrote to her as an actress whom I admired, and someone who had shared my strong protests against the war in Vietnam. Her response was a letter written to me and sent to twenty-five of our co- signers. It was written in a sympathetic tone, but declined our offer. "I do not doubt that there is some degree of repression in Vietnam and I recognize it is even possible that I am blind to the practices you allege. However, I have tried to do my homework and to see with both eyes and I am not convinced that your charges are true." She went on to say that my sources were questionable, and that the repression was not as bad as the predicted bloodbath might have been, had it happened. Then she, or whoever wrote the letter for her, was extremely careless, and wrote, "I don't know if we can expect the Vietnamese to turn free those millions of people overnight ..." Our estimates were much more modest. She hoped I would "reconsider your allegations," as it aligned me with the most narrow and negative elements in our country who continue to believe that death is better than communism. "While I do not agree with your analysis and I worry about the effect of what you are doing, I still look forward to sharing in a dialogue with you. Your iconoclasm intrigues me and I wish we could understand each other more fully." I had to look up "iconoclasm," and now I've forgotten it again. At least she wasn't pious. A campaign was launched to stop me. I felt as if I were living in a vise. People appeared from my past, "just wanting to talk." They tried everything to get me to stop the letter. I woke up in the middle of the night in cold sweats. The phone rang off the hook with ultimatums and suggestions that I was naive, that Doan Van Toai was a CIA agent, that I was being used by the right wing, that I had lost all judgment. Ginetta tried to speak with Vietnam's U.N. ambassador in New York. He brushed her off. After weeks of preparation, we were. ready to release the letter: Open Letter to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam Four years ago, the United States ended its 20-year presence in Vietnam. An anniversary that should be cause for celebration is, instead, a time for grieving. With tragic irony, the cruelty, violence and oppression practiced by foreign powers in your country for more than a century continue today under the present regime. Thousands of innocent Vietnamese, many whose only "crimes" are those of conscience, are being arrested, detained and tortured in prisons and re-education camps. Instead of bringing hope and reconciliation to war-torn Vietnam, your government has created a painful nightmare that overshadows significant progress achieved in many areas of Vietnamese society. Your government slated in February 1977 that some 50,000 people were then incarcerated. Journalists, independent observers and refugees estimate the current number of political prisoners between 150,000 and 200,000. Whatever the exact figure, the facts form a grim mosaic. Verified reports have appeared in the press around the globe, from Le Monde and The Observer to the Washington Post and Newsweek. We have heard the horror stories from the people of Vietnam from workers and peasants, Catholic nuns and Buddhist priests, from the boat people, the artists and professionals and those who fought alongside the NLF.
For many, life is hell and death is prayed for. Many victims are men, women and children who supported and fought for the causes of reunification and self-determination; those who as pacifists, members of religious groups, or on moral and philosophic grounds opposed the authoritarian policies of Thieu and Ky; artists and intellectuals whose commitment to creative expression is anathema to the totalitarian policies of your government. Requests by Amnesty International and others for impartial investigations of prison conditions remain unanswered. Families who inquire about husbands, wives, daughters or sons are ignored. It was an abiding commitment to fundamental principles of human dignity, freedom and self-determination that motivated so many Americans to oppose the government of South Vietnam and our country's participation in the war. It is that same commitment that compels us to speak out against your brutal disregard of human rights. As in the 60s, we raise our voices now so that your people may live. We appeal to you to end the imprisonment and torture-to allow an international team of neutral observers to inspect your prisons and re-education centers. We urge you to follow the tenets of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights which, as a member of the United Nations, your country is pledged to uphold. We urge you to reaffirm your stated commitment to the basic principles of freedom and human dignity ... to establish real peace in Vietnam.
Joan Baez
CO-SIGNERS: We raised $53,000 to have the letter printed in four major newspapers: the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle. But, before it was printed, I felt that I, too, should meet with the U.N. ambassador. And that's what I was doing singing to the roomful of communists in Los Angeles. Ginetta and I met with the ambassador and his many aides over tea and cakes and bouquets dotted with hidden microphones. We chatted pleasantly for a while. Then I presented the ambassador with a polite ultimatum: Either Hanoi make a written promise that Amnesty International representatives would be allowed into Vietnam within six months, with free access to go where they chose, or we would print our full-page letter. The ambassador assured me that I was completely misinformed and misguided. He insisted that human rights in Vietnam were the best in the world. I listened patiently, and then smiled sadly and said that he had done his job, and now I would have to do mine. The meeting had its light moments. The ambassador conceded that after a revolution there are always, regrettably, a few isolated cases of mistreatment of prisoners; he would be glad to personally look into any we might know about. Ginetta, who is only four-feet- nine, dragged out a small carryall suitcase full of documented cases of prisoners currently detained in Vietnam. She placed it on her lap, unlocked it, and sat practically hidden behind the mountain of grisly evidence, chatting gaily, her huge brown eyes sparkling mischievously. Those eyes, at age sixteen, had seen the violation of her friends and co- orkers, and had closed against the dark atrocities performed upon her young self in the cells and dungeons of the fascists. They had known her nakedness and their shining boots, her filth and their morning freshness, her youth and their defiling of of it, but in the end, her mind and will and their defeat in the face of it ... She flopped the suitcase open and revealed a stack of documents which alone would have put the Hanoi government in disgrace. The ambassador composed himself, raised his hand as though to calm a schoolchild, and said that perhaps this was not the right moment. And Ginetta, knowing she had made her point, said, "Oh, of course! You must be so beezy! I weel send dem to you later." We left the little white house nestled in the orange blossoms and smog and waved our last goodbyes. My head was tight with conflicting thoughts and feelings, my nose clogged with tears wanting to be shed. We flew home, and I went directly to bed with a cold and fever, unable to face the onslaught I knew was coming until I had regained my strength and spirit. All hell broke loose when the letter was printed. I was called a CIA rat. "It's an honor to be called both a CIA rat and a KGB agent," I responded. "I must be doing something right. And if they'd both pay me, I'd be rich." I was accused of "betraying" the Vietnamese. "Which Vietnamese?" I asked. Would I not at least consider the possibility that my facts were wrong? "I would rather err in intentionally offending government officials anywhere in the world (to whom I would happily apologize later if I have been mistaken) than offend one political prisoner whom I might now conceivably help and whom later I may never be able to reach." William Kunstler, the noted left-wing lawyer, called my singling out Vietnam a "cruel and wanton act." But he followed that up by saying, "I do not believe in public attacks on socialist countries, even where violations of human rights may occur." At least he was consistent and honest, if, in my opinion, ridiculous. I much preferred Kunstler's response to that of Dave Dellinger, a well-known pacifist. I agreed with the first part of his statement. "You have to be naive to believe that a Leninist revolution will allow any independent thought. Many Americans were wholly naive about what was coming in Vietnam if 'our' side won. I had no such illusions, although I did not oppose that criminal war any the less. So don't expect me to be shocked now." Why, then, wouldn't he support the condemnation of human rights in Vietnam? "Because, any such statement will be used to try to harm a government not only trying to cope with the enormous problems for which we're responsible, but also a government that is surely going to greatly improve the lives of the Vietnamese." A full-page ad came out in The New York Times modestly entitled "The Truth About Vietnam." It was signed by fifty-six liberal leftists and accused me of calling thousands of people "prisoners of conscience" without having a "scintilla of documentation. [They are in fact] 400,000 servants of the former barbaric regimes...." The signers assured me and the American public that "Vietnam now enjoys human rights as it has never known in history," and that the people of Vietnam now "receive -- without cost -- education, medicine, and health care, human rights we in the United States have yet to achieve." Another public letter was circulated by David McReynolds, Don Luce, Philip Berrigan, and others, taking no particular stand on current human rights violations, but urging reconciliation with Vietnam. I, in fact, supported recognizing the government of Hanoi. Tyranny has certainly not stood in the way of reconciliation before, if reconciliation was to our advantage. In this instance, however, it was not. The only official response was from Vietnam's observer to the United Nations, Dinh Ba Thi: my charges were "groundless" and constituted "calumnies against the people of Vietnam." The response from the right wing was, of course, even more obnoxious. William F. Buckley called me and my co-signers "new found humanitarians," but showed enormous generosity in forgiving us our transgressions. "The prodigal son, scripture and reflection teach us, is always welcome, never mind his tardiness or his procrastinations." Governor Reagan mentioned me in glowing terms on his weekly radio broadcast. My position as darling of the right was short-lived, however. It ended when I went to Argentina and Chile to visit the Mothers of the Disappeared in 1981. There was also a very healthy, moving and reassuring response on the part of many people around the world who regarded the issue without ideological blinders. And what, if anything, were the effects of the letter within Vietnam? I have heard that some immediate changes took place. The government of Hanoi responded the way most governments do: it disliked international criticism intensely. Many prisoners were released, and the mystique that had cradled Vietnam was no longer impenetrable. The situation, in 1987, sadly, is still grim.
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