Dear Mr Nick Vujicic,
I hope this letter finds you in good spirit.
I have just learnt of your recent trip to Vietnam to promote your books. Being one of your admirers and being a Vietnamese-Australian, I took great interest in what you had to say to your audience in Vietnam. However, since then I have received many comments on Facebook and through emails from the Vietnamese youths, conveying a sense of disbelief and disappointment, where inspiration and motivation were expected.
We, the Vietnamese people in Australia, admire your achievements greatly. To our dismay though, we heard you call on the Vietnamese youth to follow the example of Ho Chi Minh where your dialogue was translated to “look up to Uncle Ho” (Hãy làm theo gương Bác Hồ) and “His greatness always talked about freedom but not money, because freedom can’t be bought with money”. (Người luôn nói về sự tự do chứ không phải là tiền bạc. Bởi đó là thứ mà tiền bạc không thể mua nổi.).
In reference to the second quote, this in actual fact is quite untrue and disconcerts our community. In reality, Ho Chi Minh was very much only interested in absolute political power. He prioritised supreme authority above all and believed that once absolute power was obtained, everything else would follow. We have great difficulty believing that you find inspiration in Ho Chi Minh and we are upset that this was what was relayed to your audience.
We believe that your translated words were actually manipulated and are not reflections of your true values. We hope that the message you wanted to deliver was reason for your achievements which is freedom; the freedom that gives rise to equal rights and opportunities to everyone in a fair society like Australia and the very thing that your audience in Vietnam is deprived of. We only wish that this was what was translated to your audience.
Similarly, whilst on stage you asked a young girl who was born without arms and legs, “Do you know why I love God...? Because heaven is real, and one day when we get to heaven, we are going to have arms and legs. And we are going to run, and we are going play, and we are going to race." Sadly, none of these words were translated into Vietnamese for your audience to hear.
This is the reason why I have taken the liberty to write this letter and invite you to read the following article, translated into English, written by the Vietnamese blogger, Le Dien Duc. This article highlights what Ho Chi Minh was really about and what he represents. We hope that these facts help you realise that Ho Chi Minh is a tyrant and more importantly impart to the young Vietnamese generation to not “look up to Uncle Ho”.
You are a role model to so many of our compatriots in and outside Vietnam. Please take a little of your time to read through this article and hopefully you will be able to rectify this incident and send out to your Vietnamese audience your true message; one about hope, freedom, self-confidence, faith and success against all odds - all the aspects that truly characterise who you are.
Thank you ever so much for reading through my letter.
Best regards,
Phung Mai
Victoria Australia
By Le Dien Duc
Talking
about oneself is usually not advisable. It’s alright if you talked about your
bad points but the good ones can label you as a braggart. For this reason, I
have to ask first to be excused for the following lines.
I
have the intention to use myself as the starting point of discussion about
another subject: about the resentments
of a human being. Like an example. I have no intention to lecture anyone (I
would never give myself such importance!). Neither do I pretend to put on the
robe of Democracy or Human Rights of any kind, nor to play the role of an intellectual,
far from it. These words are simply my thoughts: my experience.
When
I was ten, I was rewarded the title of “Uncle Ho’s good child”. In 1967, I
received from his hands the prize for my excellent school results with top
marks in all 14 subjects. The prize was a little notebook of 20 x 15cm, of mint
white paper, and gleaming pale blue hard cover, on it one can see the photo of
Ho Chi Minh’s portrait and a small inscription below it “Chairman Ho’s Prize”.
For me, my family, my school, and the local government, this prize was a great
honour, as not many towns or cities can boast of receiving one like it - the
best only ever had two. The prize-giving ceremony was organised with
excitements in the courtyard of the co-operative depot. It was carried out under
moonlight as at the time, the American bombers were fiercely attacking North
Vietnam and school children were evacuated to the countryside where at night
all light and fire were forbidden. The village people came in great number to
the event. My father was moved to tears. I pampered the notebook and wouldn’t
dream of using it, only took it out from time to time to admire it! But that’s
in no way as pathetic as what happened to a friend of mine. In 1968, the
Party’s First Secretary Le Duan came to visit our school, he gave to each of
those chosen to come to welcome him, a candy from Hai Chau (the kind of
quality, rarity and luxury candy that the poor schoolchildren that we were
never got to see during the war). My school mate was dying to eat it, but dared
not, he was determined to keep it as a souvenir. Under the heat, only a couple
of days later, the candy had melted and was sticking all over its wrapping and
had to be thrown away. He went on to study in East Germany then came back to
teach in Ha Noi Polytechnic to this day. I am quite sure he has never forgotten
this anecdote.
As
for me, I left for Poland in 1969. The whole group of foreign students like me
had to undergo check-ups hospital, to be treated for parasites before being
allowed to share the living quarters with others at the Polish Language Centre
for foreign students. While in the hospital, we learnt of Ho Chi Minh’s death,
we all wept profusely! The Polish nurses were baffled, and disconcerted not
knowing what was going on! We had all
loved the Party and Uncle Ho to that point! We all were once so naïve, so
innocent to that point!
Until
1994, when Kim Il-Sung died, we watched on TV the people of North Korea packing
and lining the streets crying and lamenting his death. At this point, I burst out
laughing! I laughed at myself! For once I had been just like that, just as
crack-brained, just as duped, not knowing otherwise. We have to give credit to
the communist regime for its supreme mastery in planting and modelling human
beings to conform to their objectives.Each and every one of my generation and
the entire North Vietnamese society has been shaped, forged and brain-washed
until they are no longer their own person, until they only think and operate
according to the teachings of the Party and Uncle Ho, until they only follow
the path traced out by the Party and Uncle Ho, like puppets, like machines. The
shadow of Uncle Ho and his Party looms over every aspect of life.
Our
actions and reactions are no different to those of the fishes in the pond of Mr
Ho in the Chairman’s compound. No more, no less. In 1958, to realise Mr Ho’s
wishes, the architect Nguyen Van Ninh has designed for him a house on stilts
similar to the highlanders’ with an orchard and a fish pond. This house on
stilts has two floors; Ho used the top floor for his bedroom and office in
winter, the lower floor during summer and for the Politburo Committee meetings.
They finished building the house on May 1st, 1958, in ordinary wood,
following his exact instructions – the papers had reported so. However, in real
life, I only discovered years later, nothing was so ‘ordinary’, not even the
‘ordinary’ wood of this ‘simple’ stilts house. Even this notion of ‘simplicity’
is worth a debate… The reason is, just imagine, I reckon nothing can beat this:
a house built in the middle of a very romantic setting, surrounded by green
vegetation, and colourful flora, birds and fishes for all seasons, and Uncle Ho
leisurely relaxes smoking his 555 cigarettes and his cigars offered by Fidel
Castro! That’s not to mention all the maids sent to serve him (like Miss Nong
Thi Xuan(1) for instance)! And all this spacious and palatial life right in the
middle of this crowded, noisy, polluted, cramped and downtrodden place we call
our capital. It’s nothing less than an unprecedented heavenly lifestyle.
Today
in the age of market-economy oriented socialism, some ‘Red Capitalists’
magnates are known to ‘play dirty’ and follow Ho’s example to the letter, so
they also built giant palaces in his stilts house model using only precious
wood, with gardens filled with rare plants, some costing several thousand
dollars. And all this of course also right in the middle of Ha-Noi.
When
I was young, I have heard many myths about Mr Ho. For us then, the name Ho Chi
Minh was synonym to a superhero, a saintly, and an idol we all worship. In Nghe
An, there is even a folklore rime relating Mr Ho and General Giap to the
essential elements of creation the Universe!
Every
time someone tells something about the life of Uncle (Ho), whenever his fish
pond is mentioned, the kids that we were would be hissing in admiration. The
telltale went on to suggest that the many fishes in his pond were so well
trained by Mr Ho himself that simply by the sound of his tapping on the feeding
box or on the side of the pond, the fishes would be rushing towards him to be
fed. By the time I reached secondary school, and started natural science
classes, I no longer admire Mr Ho’s fish training talent: I only credited him
with having a lot of time and patience. For I have only succeeded to cackle to
attract the hens after years of practice. So training fishes is no laughing
matter! What Mr Ho did was to follow the age-old theory of the Russian
scientist Ivan Pavlov (Nobel prize for Medicine in 1904).
Ivan
Pavlov is famous for his experiments on dogs about the working of the digestive
system. After his biological research on the saliva, he concluded that saliva
is not only secreted while eating, but also as a reaction before eating. The
food that causes the saliva secretion is the “primary stimulation”, and the
bell rings or the light signals before each meal, are called “supplementary
feeding”. He found that when the dogs are continuously and over a long period
subjected to “supplementary feedings”, simultaneously with “primary
stimulations” to induce a habit, then they could be made to slaver just by
subjecting them to some supplementary stimulation. This phenomenon is called
Pavlov ‘conditioned reaction’, in opposition to the natural secretion of saliva
which is an ‘unconditioned reaction’. And I realised then that the fishes in Mr
Ho’s pond are nothing but a small-scale reproduction of Pavlov’s dogs.Its
bigger-scale reproduction was to be all the more terrifying.People use to say
‘Vietnam is a big prison’, or ‘the whole nation is locked up in a cage’.In this
cage, like the fishes in his pond, the Vietnamese people are subjected to
innumerable “supplementary feedings” by Mr Ho and his Vietnamese Communist
Party in their master plan of ‘people plantation’ to serve the ‘everlasting
happiness’ of … the Party.With the many ways to control the population, through
the family register, rice tickets, gas tickets, food ration vouchers, clothing
vouchers, university register, and nowadays through the red books, inhabitant
certificates, passports, driver licences etc…, Mr Ho and his Party since they
took power to the present day have turned the whole country into a giant
laboratory of experimental ‘conditioned reactions’, and turned the people into
troops of docile beings. Millions of people have been and are still and will go
on to become the fishes in the pond or the dogs for Pavlov.
On
top of all that, there is another kind of ‘supplementary feeding’, no less
effective: it is the huge propaganda machine. Intricate is its network from
central right down to the smallest hamlet. It slaps on a person’s mind so
incessantly and right from childhood. Any information that happens to be to the
disadvantage of the totalitarian rule of the Party has to be prevented and
censored. It’s common practice to see the immediate eradication of any budding
reactionary element in society whose family circle and entourage have to turn
against one of their own or face being ostracised and eventually wiped out …Hence
the fact that when Mr Ho passed away, my friends and me, still innocent school
children at the time, we had cried all our tears, should be quite
understandable. In fact, others should forgive, empathise and commiserate with
us!
But
thank God, right at the start of my first year in university, I had quickly
realised the essential values of life, the injustice and the inhumanity of the
Communist regime. Under this regime, a human being is stripped of his private
life, his personality, and his most basic rights. As students, we were
forbidden by the Vietnamese Embassy in Poland from loving, from wearing jeans
outdoors, from dancing, from visiting the homes of the locals, from earning
money with our labour during the summer break, etc… A thousand and one prohibitions!
Every week at our unit meeting, we had to write down our self-criticism. A hint
of weariness in this duty could earn you a one-way ticket home!
And
I did get so weary and jumped the fence, earning for myself an eviction order.
When I arrived back in Ha Noi, at the train station of Hang Co, still on board,
two security police agents rushed to my seat and took me away to my detention.
Later I received a two years prison sentence for having loved and wishing to
covertly stay abroad. After serving my time, I struggled for a long time before
finding a job to return to Poland in 1989, right at the time when the Polish
communist regime was toppled. As a witness to 20 arduous years of the
construction of Poland’s democracy, I can say that the resulting progress and
development are palpable year after year, and my political conceptions have
also changed totally in the process. I have finally opened my eyes to the
magical lights of reality of a society that has evolved from a communist
totalitarian regime to a democratic and liberal country. Through this, I have
learned to discern and to distinguish Good from Evil. My personal development
has regained the normal path, from being a “fish in Uncle Ho’s pond” or a
“Pavlov’s dog” to be a human being. My total transformation has been
accompanied by the up-and-downs of the democratisation process of Poland and
Eastern Europe.
A
free Poland has revealed the historical truth to the lights of justice. The
past bears witness unequivocally that the communist regime was maintaining
itself in power through deceit and oppression. Confirmed communists refuse to
listen to anything that would jeopardise their Party’s absolute right to rule,
even when this is in their country’s greatest interest. Only when they are
under enormous pressure from the population, or when they have failed and are
cornered that they would reconsider and compromise to save themselves. But as
long as they have strength and especially success, they would be all the more
delusional, self-satisfied, conceited and obnoxious. Their true tendency to
lie, to cheat, to swindle, to rob with time becomes more and more obvious. They
would turn friends into foes, woo their enemies into allies, always in the best
interest of their scheme to insure total and absolute power. They have mastered
the art of deceit, betrayal and ingratitude. The point of view that the only
way to transform the communists, to make them listen, is to collaborate with
them, has proved to be utterly inane in the light of the consequences of those
who practice it for the last few decades. There has never been examples of any
‘collaborator’ who succeeded in changing the nature of communism, on the
contrary, there are many cases where these ‘collaborators’ became victims of
betrayal, deception and abuse. I came to the conclusion in the end that these
must be of the kind who either like being manipulated, or are of abnormal
psyche, or dare not venture off beaten tracks.
Due
to the lack of freedom and information from the outside world, a human being
does not have enough knowledge to enable him to analyse, compare and recognise
the different social models. This is why the vast majority of the Vietnamese
under the communist regime, in particular the rural population, still believe
that ‘the pond, the cage’ where the Party keeps them is ‘a shining pinnacle’.
God
damn it! They keep you in a cage, ears plugged, eyes blindfolded, then they let
you hear and see only what they impose that you should see and hear under
constant threat to your life. After that, they pretend that ‘the people have
low intellect’ and ‘the country is immature’. This is like drip feeding a
bound-and- gagged child for years then declaring that the child’s development
is below normal. What can be more wretched and despicable than this!?!
Yet, would you believe there are people who aren’t
living under this regime, whom time has honoured, but who now begin to love
Uncle Ho the way my generation used to some decades ago!
Weird still, as some of them have run away to escape
from communist rule and have been raised and educated to become highly
qualified professionals in democratic and liberal countries!
Even weirder, for those people, who think of
themselves as ‘intellectuals’, cannot ignore the genocides committed by the
Communist dictatorships against Humanity in general and against the Vietnamese
people in particular over nearly a century.
From the weird to the unthinkable, how could they be
so indifferent in the face of all the monstrous and atrocious tragedies brought
about by the Vietnamese Communist Party, from the early days with the land
reform act(2), the purge of the intellectuals (3), the trials of the
Revisionist movement against the Party(4), the Hue mass graves of the 1968 Tet
Offensive(5), the re-education camps after 1975 and the Boat People exodus (6),
… to the more scandalous official acts of daylight robberies like the gold collect
campaign, the case of Minh Phung-Epco, Nam Cam, PMU 18, PCI, the land
confiscations, etc…I wonder by which ‘conditioned reaction’ and by
which ‘supplementary feeding’ that in the age of official Party buzz words like
‘renew’, ‘grow’, ‘develop’, ‘advance seawards’, one can find right in the heart
of Ha Noi appear a phenomenon of regression in the natural evolution of human
kind! Thousands of people, though privileged materially, suddenly chose to
behave like the fishes in Uncle Ho’s pond, like the dogs of Pavlov, they
‘joyously’ and ‘candidly’ sang the song “Uncle Ho is present on the day of
Victory”. Then after much patting on each other’s back, they sang together the
refrain ‘the people have low intellect’ and ‘the country is immature’, and
reassure themselves that it’s not yet time to set the wheel on the path of
Democratisation!
These
are the symptoms of an incurable social pathology!
Le Dien Duc
Warsaw, Poland 20/12/2009
Warsaw, Poland 20/12/2009
(1) Nong Thi Xuan was known
to have been the last of Ho Chi Minh’s designated female bed servants. She had
a child with him who was given away at birth to his private secretary to bring
up in his own family. When Ms Nong tried to escape from Ho’s service, she was
assassinated by his secret police. She wasn’t the first woman to suffer this
tragic end but her story is the most recent and well documented.
(2) Cai Cach Ruong Dat
(1953-1956) : the Land Reform Act, inspired by Karl Marx and following the same
campaign in China (1946-1949) to wipe out the ‘feudal’ class of land owners,
the Vietnamese Labour Party (before it became the Vietnamese Communist Party)
has achieved a chilling statistics of an estimated number of persons executed
to be between 5000 to 15000, that partly triggered the exodus of 1.5 million
people to South Vietnam.
(3) Nhan Van Giai Pham : was
a political controversy in North Vietnam in the late 1950. Following a
loosening of political restrictions with some similarities to the Chinese
Hundred Flowers Campaign, there was a hardening of attitudes. Two periodicals
were closed down and their political associates imprisoned or exiled. They
published the Nhân Văn paper
and the Giai Phẩm periodical,
with articles demanding freedom of speech, and certain human rights be respected.
They also commented that Communist Party leaders had violated the Constitution
of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The affair is named for the suppression
of two independent newspapers in North Vietnam in 1956 and for the imprisonment
of the intellectuals linked to them.
(4) Vu An Xet Lai
(1963-1967): The Revisionist Movement is the name given to a series of
personalities from within the Party who are supposedly pro-Soviet, who
questioned the wrongdoings of the Party. The schism between the pro Soviet vs
the pro-Chinese was battled out during a series of trials of these Party
personalities for treason.
(5) 1968 Tet Offensive in Hue
or the Hue Massacre is the name
given to the summary executions and mass killings perpetrated by the Viet Cong
and North Vietnamese Army during their capture, occupation and later withdrawal
from the city of Hue during the Tet Offensive, considered one of the longest
and bloodiest battles of the Vietnam War. During the months and years that
followed the Battle of Hue, which began on January 31, 1968, and lasted a total
of 28 days, dozens of mass graves were discovered in and around Hue. The
estimated death toll was between 2,800 to 6,000 civilians and prisoners of war.
Victims were found bound, tortured, and sometimes apparently buried alive. The
killings were perceived as part of a large-scale purge of a whole social
stratum, including anyone friendly to American forces in the region.
(6) Re-education camp and
Boat People Exodus : Re-education as it was implemented in Vietnam was seen as
both a means of revenge and a sophisticated technique of repression and
indoctrination, which developed for several years in the North and was extended
to the South following the 1975 Fall of Saigon. An estimated 1-2.5 million
people were imprisoned with no formal charges or trials.
According to published academic studies in the United States and Europe,
165,000 people died in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam's re-education camps.
Thousands were tortured or abused. During the pro-Soviet years after 1975, the
purge of the merchant class mainly of Chinese origin, the re-education camps
and the forced labour in the new economic zones had pushed some 1-2.5 millions
of Vietnamese to choose to flee the country and became Boat People. This exodus
by sea has cost an estimated 200,OOO to 600,000 lives lost at sea (U.N. figures).
Cập nhật: 12:35 | 23/05/2013
"Hãy làm theo gương Bác Hồ!", đó là một trong những lời khuyên của Nick Vujicic.
Sáng 23/5, Nick Vujicic đã có buổi diễn thuyết thứ 2 tại TP.HCM với chủ đề "Không bao giờ bỏ cuộc". Đây là buổi diễn thuyết dành riêng cho giới doanh nhân, trong đó Nick đã chia sẻ khá nhiều những kinh nghiệm, quan điểm trong việc kinh doanh và quản lý doanh nghiệp.
Khi nói về việc phải đối mặt với những khó khăn, chàng trai kỳ diệu người Úc đã có một lời khuyên rất gần gũi với đông đảo khán giả. Đó là "Hãy làm theo gương Bác Hồ". "Trước muôn vàn thử thách, Hồ Chủ Tịch vẫn từng, từng bước dẫn dắt dân tộc Việt tiến lên phía trước", anh nói.
Không những thế, Nick còn tiết lộ thêm lý do vì sao anh lại ngưỡng mộ Bác Hồ: "Người luôn nói về sự tự do chứ không phải là tiền bạc. Bởi đó là thứ mà tiền bạc không thể mua nổi.
Nick Vujicic trong buổi nói chuyện với các doanh nghiệp ở TP.HCM.
Đây cũng là một trong những quan điểm về kinh doanh mà Nick Vujicic luôn đặt lên hàng đầu. Theo anh, một doanh nhân có bản lĩnh sẽ không bao giờ biến mình thành nô lệ của đồng tiền.
Bên cạnh đó, người không tay không chân còn chia sẻ rất nhiều quan điểm gần gũi, thiết thực mà không phải ai cũng nghĩ tới. Với anh, gia đình luôn phải đặt lên trên công việc. Nick nói: "Tôi muốn trở thành một người chồng tốt, một người cha tốt trước khi trở thành một CEO thành đạt".
Nói về vai trò của người lãnh đạo, ngoài việc phải có niềm tin, có sự kiên định và mạnh mẽ, Nick tin rằng một người chủ tốt còn phải là một người đầy tớ chăm chỉ. Một người biết quan tâm, lắng nghe và thấu hiểu.
Một trong những quan điểm sống của Nick.
Không chỉ là một diễn giả nổi tiếng, Nick Vujicic còn đang là giám đốc của tổ chức phi lợi nhuận Life Without Limbs (Cuộc sống khuyết tứ chi). Dưới sự điều phối của Nick, quỹ đã hỗ trợ cho nhiều người khó khăn, khuyết tật trên thế giới, giúp họ có một cuộc sống tốt hơn.
Với các doanh nhân Việt đang phải trải qua một thời kỳ kinh tế khó khăn, không dám chắc những chia sẻ đầy lạc quan cũng như những kinh nghiệm hữu ích mà Nick rút ra từ thực tế có giúp họ tìm được cách để lèo lái sự nghiệp của mình hay không nhưng quan trọng hơn cả, không ít người trong số họ sẽ có thêm niềm tin để dũng cảm bước tiếp.
Ngay sau buổi diễn thuyết này, Nick Vujicic sẽ đến với thủ đô Hà Nội để tiếp tục các hoạt động của mình tại Việt Nam.
Linh Phạm
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