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Deception and
Propaganda within the Vietnamese Community in Australia
If you get news only from the Vietnamese language
media outlets in Australia or in the United States, you would have no idea of
the situation in Vietnam. You will not find anything positive in or about
Vietnam. Indeed, in virtually all Vietnamese language papers and radios,
including the SBS Radio (Vietnamese Program) in Australia, Vietnam is a lawless
country and is on the verge of collapse; everything comes from Vietnam seems to
be bad; everyone in Vietnam is either corrupted or incompetent; every policy of
the Vietnamese government is either wrong or incoherent; every product made in
Vietnam is not acceptable ... In fact, you even do not know the official name
of the country; what you will find is either “Communist Vietnam” or “Communist
Hanoi”, not Vietnam.
Let us have a look at the most popular
Vietnamese language newspaper in Australia: the Sydney-based Chieu Duong
(Sunrise). In every issue, apart from the indispensable negative news and
articles about Vietnam, the paper prints a substantial amount of soft
pornography probably pirated from the internet and pornographic books. It also
openly carries advertisement for brothels. It was awarded “The Newspaper of
the Year” by the New South Wales Ethnic Affairs Commission! Unbelievable you
may say, but it is true.
Let us sample a radio station called “Vietnamese
Radio in Australia” (which is at present actively campaigning against the SBS
Television Management). The operator of this radio station proudly and crudely
suppresses any viewpoint he deemed to be undesirable. In any talk-back program,
the operator makes sure that anyone calling in with view that he doesn’t like is
immediately cut off and then label the caller “a communist”. (It is not
surprising that this station and their associated “leaders” are now calling SBS
Television a Vietnamese communist organ too!)
For almost 30 years, the overseas Vietnamese
language media outlets, including those in Australia, have been feeding the
Vietnamese community with those kinds of information produced by those types of
media operators – without challenge. In papers or radios, anti-Vietnam is the
rule rather than the exception. The community is so sick and so tired of the
information which are, we definitely know, largely false, imaginary, or
manufactured.
A few weeks ago, SBS Television decided to transmit
a news bulletin from VTV4, a satellite-based Vietnamese television station. The
decision angered many Vietnamese media operators in Sydney and Melbourne and
some of the so-called Vietnamese “community leaders”. They demand that SBS
Television must stop transmitting the news bulletin. Why? They argue that by
transmitting the 30-minute news bulletin, SBS Television helps broadcasting
propaganda materials from the “dictatorial” Vietnamese government. In the mean
time, they derisively refer to SBS Television as a “propaganda organ” of the
Vietnamese government. They even spread an innuendo accusing that SBS
Television Management has received bribery from the Vietnamese government!
Australians who are used to the concept of freedom
of information may be puzzled by the actions of these “community leaders”, and
may think that Vietnamese Australians share their view. The reality is
different: We (yes, I can use the pronoun “we,” for I know I speak for the
silent majority), the majority of Vietnamese Australians, are delighted with the
SBS Television’s decision. Finally, SBS Television has provided the community
with an alternative news bulletin, and free us from the on-going deception and
one-sided propaganda churned out by the Vietnamese media outlets in Australia
and their leaders.
I find the objections to SBS Television raised by
the Vietnamese “community leaders” rather offensive. Their objections
manifestly display their contempt for democracy and human rights in Australia,
where the right to information is sacredly respected. The right to information
is a crucial underpinning of a participatory democracy. The right to
information is a fundamental human right which upholds the inherent dignity of
all people. How do these Vietnamese “community leaders” dare to withhold that
right to information from us. Who do they think they are?
I also find their objections quite hypocritical.
Let me be open about this: For more than a decade now, all Vietnamese language
media outlets in Australia have been pirating news and articles from online
Vietnamese newspapers in Vietnam. (They also daily copy news and articles from
mainstream Australian newspapers and media organisations, but they never
acknowledge the source). Right now, if you open any Vietnamese language
newspaper in Sydney or Melbourne, you will find that up to 100% of news content
concerning Vietnam are simply copied [without permission or acknowledgment, of
course] from sources in Vietnam.
Moreover, some people who have access to satellite
television have been recording satellite television programs from Vietnam, pack
the programs into video tapes, and sell them in the market for as low as $5 a
tape. Many Vietnamese bookshops in Sydney and Melbourne (and in the United
States) stock up to 70% of books, newspapers, music, and literature materials
from Vietnam. During the past ten years or so, SBS Television has also
regularly screened movies and current affair programs from Vietnam.
Thus, news and information from Vietnam have
existed – as they should be – within the Vietnamese community for a long time.
And, during that time, I have neither seen nor heard a single “community leader”
condemning those materials as propaganda from the Vietnamese government.
What is the difference between news bulletin
transmitted by SBS Television and news that covered by the local Vietnamese
media? The difference has something to do with ethics and professionalism. SBS
Television broadcasts news from Vietnam in Vietnamese without alteration, so
that viewers can judge for themselves. In contrast, Vietnamese newspapers and
radios in Australia pirate or plagiarise news and articles from sources in
Vietnam, and then alter the information to make them negative and unfavourable
to Vietnam. For example, if a news is originally a good news (such as economic
development, educational achievement, artistic prizes, etc), they would modify
it to look bad; if a news is a bad news (such as corruption, crime, disaster,
etc), they would reword it to sound worse, much worse, as if it was a scandal.
When a news article contains the word “Vietnam”, they change to “Communist
Vietnam” or “Communist Hanoi”, although the news item has nothing to do with the
Vietnamese government. In fact, most of these media operators have never been
trained in media or mass communication, and as a result, they show no ethical
standards or professionalism. It appears that they don’t know how to respect
the truth, and they seem to operate with intent to deceive and brainwash their
readers.
There is no dissent voice in the
Vietnamese community. The local Vietnamese media and their “community leaders”
are used to live in a world of dichotomy, in which there are only two-values:
Good versus evil, right versus wrong, enemy versus friend, etc. Anyone who is
not fully committed to their side is automatically grouped into the “other
side”. Living in this world, they lack the ability to manage difference. Being
unable to manage difference, they also can not tolerate different viewpoints
from others. Indeed, anyone dares to publicly express a different view from the
view held by these media operators and “community leaders” is immediately
branded as “a communist” – equivalent to a death sentence within the community.
A few years ago, a prominent academic in the community suggested that many
Vietnamese refugees had escaped from Vietnam only to be imprisoned by their
community in Australia, and he was immediately denounced as a “communist”, or a
“communist sympathizer”, and had subsequently been vilified for more than a
year.
In one word, the local Vietnamese media
and their “community leaders” have one common business: Anti-Vietnam. They are
anti-Vietnam, not necessarily anti-communism, because they do not hold to any
particular political principle. They think that by manipulating and
indoctrinating their readers with bad news about Vietnam, they help the struggle
for democracy and human rights in Vietnam. However, these media operators and
the so-called “community leaders” do not contribute to the debate on, or
advancement of, human rights in Vietnam. Instead of criticizing the Vietnamese
government in a civilized and constructive way, they resort to disinformation by
churning out brainless and groundless accusations against the Vietnamese
government – day after day. The result is that they gradually become totally
irrelevant to the development in Vietnam. Try to talk to anyone in Vietnam or
any Vietnamese in Australia, and you will soon find out that they do not know,
do not need to know, or do not to care about these so-called “community
leaders”.
In this article, I write “community
leader” in quotation marks, and there is a good reason for it. Those who
vocally object to SBS Television claim that they are leaders and that they
represent the Vietnamese community in Australia. This is not true, if not a
blatant lie. They do not represent the Vietnamese community in Australia.
Ninety-nine per cent or more Vietnamese Australians don’t vote for them.
Instead, they maneuvre through their social or interest groups and get
themselves voted and “elected” to spend the tax-payers’ money.
These people are no leaders; they are extremists.
These extremists are there not to serve the Vietnamese Australian community;
they are there to manipulate the community for their own political agenda.
Their primary concern is how to overthrow and sabotage the present government in
Vietnam, not how to solve social problems within the Vietnamese community in
Australia. In the mid-1970s and 1980s, they advocated a policy of overthrowing
the Vietnamese government. However, they soon discovered that their objective
was unlikely to be met; so in the 1990s, with the re-discovering of the concepts
of democracy and human rights as political weapons, they wholeheartedly utilized
the weapons with the long-term aim of removing the current government in
Vietnam, so that they can return to Vietnam to lead the country as they used to
do in the 1960s and 1970s.
Yet, they love to dress up as
“community leaders” and hang around the corridor of power to garner political
influence. Some opportunist and ill-informed politicians have fallen into their
trap, and put out meaningless and absurd statements on social and religious
issues in Vietnam. These “leaders” like to boast that the Australian government
regularly consult them for advice on Vietnam affairs. If that is the case
(e.g., if their boasting is true), I think the Australian government has
definitely asked the wrong people, because these people do not have insightful
knowledge about the present Vietnam, and more importantly, they are likely to
mislead the Australian government. (Should the Australian government or
industrial groups need advice on Vietnam, they should consult Vietnamese
Australian academics in Australian universities and research institutions.)
In summary, we, ordinary individuals within the
Vietnamese community in Australia, have been subjected to, and suffered from, a
continuous deception and childishly one-sided propaganda from the anti-Vietnam
industry. This industry has been thriving during the past 30 years thank to the
silence of the community. Now is the time for a change. Only the Vietnamese
community public opinion can change the single viewpoint and single ideology
currently imposed on us by the extremists who self-proclaim as our “leaders”.
But we can change if we know about the truth of issues by acquiring new
information. SBS Television is helping our community in this endeavour by
providing us with full information, to which we are greatly grateful.
I would like SBS Television to know that the
majority of us, Vietnamese Australians, do support SBS Television. We may be
silent, but we are with SBS Television.
Hoang D. Tran
Normanhurst, NSW
P.S. You may be interested to know who am I or whether I represent an interest
group. I am a computer scientist. I am also an ex-refugee who escaped from
Vietnam to Malaysia in 1980, and was subsequently admitted to settle in
Australia in 1982. I closely follow developments within the Vietnamese
community, but I have never been a member of any organisation. Since 1992, I
have often visited my relatives in Vietnam, but do not have any link with the
Vietnamese government.
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