“The family can of course go back to Vietnam at any time” No, Prime Minister Howard, these Vietnamese asylum seekers
cannot
According to yesterday’s media reports, the Prime Minister said the above in relation to the Vietnamese asylum seekers
who are parents of baby Michael Andrew Tran.
No, they cannot go back. They have been involved in an organised operation of dropping pro-democracy leaflets in
Vietnam. This is considered by Hanoi’s kangaroo courts a crime against the state, and subject to long imprisonment. Some
15 others in their group, who came with them to Australia in July 2003 on the same boat, have already been given refugee
status by the Refugee Review Tribunal.
The Hanoi regime’s ruthless will to kill and imprison dissidents is well documented. As reported by Human Rights Watch,
last Easter it killed dozens, perhaps hundreds, of Montagnards involved in a peaceful land-rights demonstration. And
despite a few recent releases, the regime is still keeping hundreds of prisoners of conscience in prison.
• Mr. Minh Dat Tran and Mrs. Hoai Thu Nguyen named their son Michael Andrew Tran because they learned that “Michael
rowed to the shore”, and because they are grateful to Democrats Senator Andrew Bartlett who had visited the group on
Christmas Island, showing much genuine concern for the unnecessarily harsh treatment that they received under the
current mandatory detention regime.