Nguyễn Chí Thiện (27 February 19392 October 2012) was a

North Vietnam North Vietnam, officially the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV; vi, Việt Nam Dân chủ Cộng hòa), was a socialist state supported by the Soviet Union (USSR) and the People's Republic of China (PRC) in Southeast Asia that existed f ...

ese

dissident A dissident is a person who actively challenges an established political or religious system, doctrine, belief, policy, or institution. In a religious context, the word has been used since the 18th century, and in the political sense since the 20th ...

, activist and poet who spent a total of twenty-seven years as a

political prisoner A political prisoner is someone imprisoned for their political activity. The political offense is not always the official reason for the prisoner's detention. There is no internationally recognized legal definition of the concept, although nu ...

of the communist regimes of both

and of post-1975 Vietnam, before being released and allowed to join the large

Overseas Vietnamese Overseas Vietnamese ( vi, người Việt hải ngoại, or ) refers to Vietnamese people who live outside Vietnam. There are approximately 5 million overseas Vietnamese, the largest community of whom live in the United States. The oldest ...

community in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

Biography

Thien was educated in private academies and was a supporter of

Viet Minh The Việt Minh (; abbreviated from , chữ Nôm and Hán tự: ; french: Ligue pour l'indépendance du Viêt Nam, ) was a national independence coalition formed at Pác Bó by Hồ Chí Minh on 19 May 1941. Also known as the Việt Minh Fro ...

revolutionaries in his early life. In 1960, however, he challenged the official history of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

– that the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

had defeated the

Imperial Army of Japan The was the official ground-based armed force of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945. It was controlled by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office and the Ministry of the Army, both of which were nominally subordinate to the Emperor ...

Manchukuo Manchukuo, officially the State of Manchuria prior to 1934 and the Empire of (Great) Manchuria after 1934, was a puppet state of the Empire of Japan in Manchuria from 1932 until 1945. It was founded as a republic in 1932 after the Japanese ...

, ending the war – while teaching a high school history class. Thien told the class that the

defeated Japan when they dropped the

atomic bomb A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions ( thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb ...

s on

Hiroshima is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 1,199,391. The gross domestic product (GDP) in Greater Hiroshima, Hiroshima Urban Employment Area, was US$61.3 billion as of 2010. Kazumi Matsui ...

and

Nagasaki is the capital and the largest city of Nagasaki Prefecture on the island of Kyushu in Japan. It became the sole port used for trade with the Portuguese and Dutch during the 16th through 19th centuries. The Hidden Christian Sites in the ...

. He was sentenced to two years imprisonment, and served three years and six months in re-education camps. Thien began composing

poems Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings ...

in prison and committed them to memory. After a brief release in 1966, he was jailed again for composing politically irreverent poems. He denied the charges, and spent another eleven years and five months in labor camps. In 1977, two years after

Saigon , population_density_km2 = 4,292 , population_density_metro_km2 = 697.2 , population_demonym = Saigonese , blank_name = GRP (Nominal) , blank_info = 2019 , blank1_name = – Total , blank1_ ...

fell A fell (from Old Norse ''fell'', ''fjall'', "mountain"Falk and Torp (2006:161).) is a high and barren landscape feature, such as a mountain or moor-covered hill. The term is most often employed in Fennoscandia, Iceland, the Isle of Man, pa ...

, Thien and other political prisoners were released to make room for defeated officers from the South Vietnamese military. Thien used his release to write down the poems he had thus far committed solely to memory. Two days after

Bastille Day Bastille Day is the common name given in English-speaking countries to the national day of France, which is celebrated on 14 July each year. In French, it is formally called the (; "French National Celebration"); legally it is known as (; "t ...

, on 16 July 1979, after having been thwarted from his initial plan to enter the French embassy because of the closely guarded compound, Thien dashed into the British embassy in Hanoi with his manuscript of four hundred poems and the cover letter drafted in French as it was meant for the original destination.

British Foreign Office The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) is a department of the Government of the United Kingdom. Equivalent to other countries' ministries of foreign affairs, it was created on 2 September 2020 through the merger of the Foreig ...

diplomat A diplomat (from grc, δίπλωμα; romanized ''diploma'') is a person appointed by a state or an intergovernmental institution such as the United Nations or the European Union to conduct diplomacy with one or more other states or interna ...

s welcomed him and promised to send his manuscript out of the country. When he left, the Vietnamese secret police (MPS) agents were already waiting and arrested him at the embassy gate. He was imprisoned yet again, this time in the

Hỏa Lò Prison Hỏa Lò Prison (, Nhà tù Hỏa Lò; french: Prison Hỏa Lò) was a prison in Hanoi originally used by the French colonists in Indochina for political prisoners, and later by North Vietnam for U.S. prisoners of war during the Vietnam War. ...

(known among American POWs as the "

Hanoi Hilton Hanoi or Ha Noi ( or ; vi, Hà Nội ) is the capital and second-largest city of Vietnam. It covers an area of . It consists of 12 urban districts, one district-leveled town and 17 rural districts. Located within the Red River Delta, Hanoi is ...

") for six years, then six more years at other prisons in northern Vietnam. During this imprisonment, Thien's poems which made their way to the West were translated into English by Huỳnh Sanh Thông of

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the w ...

. The work won the International Poetry Award in

Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Rotte (river), Rotte'') is the second largest List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Netherlands. It is in the Prov ...

in 1985. He was also adopted as a prisoner of conscience by

Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says it has more than ten million members and s ...

in 1986. Twelve years after bringing his manuscript to the British Embassy, he was released from jail. He lived in Hanoi under close surveillance by the authorities, but his international followers also kept an eye on Thien.

Human Rights Watch Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human ...

honored him in 1995. That year he was also permitted to emigrate to the United States with the intervention of Noboru Masuoka, a retired

U.S. Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Sign ...

colonel and career military officer who was drafted into the U.S. Army following internment in Heart Mountain camp for

Japanese Americans are Americans of Japanese people, Japanese ancestry. Japanese Americans were among the three largest Asian Americans, Asian American ethnic communities during the 20th century; but, according to the 2000 United States census, 2000 census, they ...

in 1945. He immediately wrote ''Hoa Dia Nguc II'', poems composed in his memory (as he was not allowed pen and paper in prison) from 1979 to 1988. They were published in bilingual editions (Vietnamese and English) then again in its Vietnamese entirety in 2006. In 1998 Nguyen Chi Thien was awarded a fellowship from the International Parliament of Writers. He lived in France for three years, writing the ''Hoa Lo Stories'', a prose narrative of his experiences in prison. These were translated and published in English as the ''Hoa Lo / Hanoi Hilton Stories'' by Yale Southeast Asia Studies in 2007. Thien's original manuscript was returned to him in early 2008 by the widow of Prof. Patrick Honey of the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degr ...

, who had shared the material with many Vietnamese exiles, but always guarded the original work. Nguyen Chi Thien died in

Santa Ana, California Santa Ana () is the second most populous city and the county seat of Orange County, California. Located in the Greater Los Angeles region of Southern California, the city's population was 310,227 at the 2020 census, making Santa Ana the 13th-m ...

on 2 October 2012.

Awards and honors

*1985 Rotterdam International Poetry Prize *1989

PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award Awards presented by the PEN American Center (today PEN America) that are no longer active. The awards are among many PEN awards sponsored by International PEN in over 145 PEN centres around the world. The PEN American Center awards have been ch ...

References

Sources

*Hoa Lo, ''Hanoi Hilton Stories by Nguyen Chi Thien.'' Yale Southeast Asia Studies, 2007. *Hai Truyen Tu, ''Two Prison Life Stories; Nguyen Chi Thien's prose in bilingual text.'' Allies for Freedom publishers, 2008.

External links

Nguyen Chi Thien at Viet Nam Literature Project

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nguyen, Chi Thien 1939 births 2012 deaths 20th-century Vietnamese poets 20th-century male writers American poetry in immigrant languages American Roman Catholic poets Amnesty International prisoners of conscience held by Vietnam Catholic poets Deaths from pneumonia in California People from Hanoi Vietnamese democracy activists Vietnamese dissidents Vietnamese emigrants to the United States Vietnamese male poets Vietnamese prisoners and detainees Vietnamese Roman Catholics