By Huong Nguyen
5 years,
your voice I couldn’t hear
your smile I couldn’t see
My heart filled with memories
and the shared moonlight, only…
I write these words with extreme sadness, as of September 5, I know my fiancé, Nguyen Tien Trung, a prisoner of conscience in Viet Nam, is not being released as part of the amnesty issued by the Vietnamese government to mark National Day (September 2nd). Only 5 “national security” prisoners were released on this occasion, and only one of them is a well-known dissident – blogger Phan Thanh Hai (aka Anhba SG) of the Freelance Journalist Club – whose term of imprisonment would end in one month anyway.
Trung’s parents visited him on September 5 for a short 30 minutes, during which Trung only had time to list the books he wanted his parents to send him. As if he had no anticipation of an early release. Yet, September 16, his birthday, is approaching. And it is still difficult for me to think of Trung having to spend his 30th birthday in prison.
SEE THE REST OF THIS POST