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Huu Dao was born in Hai-Phong. He and his family moved to Saigon in 1954, when the Communists took over the north of Vietnam. He moved to Liège in 1970 to pursue his studies. He never returned to his country of origin. Since his arrival, he has been involved in various Belgian and European associations campaigning for democracy in Vietnam. He is the President of the Vietnamese Community of Liège since 2005.When I arrived in Liège in 1970, I held conferences on Vietnam for the Lions and Rotary Clubs. There was always someone who questioned me about my choice to move to Belgium. At first, I said that I had studied at the French high school Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Saigon, and that I had the choice between four French-speaking countries to continue my studies. Switzerland was too expensive, Canada was too far and too cold, and it was impossible to go to France. In 1968, France refused to welcome students from north and south Vietnam out of a concern for neutrality. The only country remaining was Belgium, which I knew because the NATO headquarters were located there. This version was not very flattering, as it presented Belgium as a default choice. I reflected, discussed with my comrades, and explained my choice to come to Belgium in the following way: the Belgian ambassador to Vietnam was the only one to receive Vietnamese students himself, and to encourage them to study in Belgium. This act led me to choose this country (this was my first ‘lesson in communication...’).The Vietnamese community of Liège was formed at the end of the 1960s, with the arrival of many students from Vietnam. Most of them arrived between 1968 and 1973, a period during which Liège welcomed up to 1,000 Vietnamese students. Of the 1,000, 400 used their Belgian residence cards to go to France. They preferred to study and live in France. For years, we were close to 600 Vietnamese students in Liège. We had to meet several criteria, including academic excellence. We were supposed to go back to Vietnam after our studies. We did not want to stay in Belgium anyway. We were here only for the quality of the training. We wanted to return to Vietnam to build the country. This is the reason why the Vietnamese government sent students to Belgium during the Vietnam War. Just under the heading ‘Kingdom of Belgium’, it was written ‘Ban on staying after studies’ on our residence card. On my identity card, it was noted that my name was ‘Le Huu Dao’, and that ‘masc’ for ‘masculine’ was my first name. In fact, my name is ‘Le’, and my two first names are ‘Huu’ and ‘Dao’. All the girls had the same first name—‘fem’ for ‘feminine’. The Belgian government did not consider it necessary to specify our surnames because we were supposed to return to Vietnam.There was an association of Vietnamese students in Liège, but the president was pro-communist. In response to this first association, some students and I created the&#160;Ligue des étudiants vietnamiens anticommunistes(‘League of Vietnamese Anti-Communist Students’). The two associations coexisted in Liege for a while. We were children and did not realize that the name was not the wisest. If I were to create a similar movement today, I would give a name such as the ‘Free Democrats’. I would not use the word ‘anti’ because it is a negative term. As a matter of fact, the&#160;Ligue des étudiants vietnamiens anticommunisteshas been renamed the&#160;Communauté Belgo-Vietnamienne(‘Belgian-Vietnamese Community’).Following the Fall of Saigon in 1975, many families arrived in Belgium through family reunification. My family was one of the first in Liège. In 1975, thousands of Vietnamese fled by sea and tried to reach American ships. The communist regime bombed the boats, which ended up immobilized under the weight of the corpses. The sea was red with blood. The media have never really reported this part of the story. Family arrivals intensified from 1978, with the Boat People wave. After three years under the communist regime, the population was trying to flee the country. Departures were organized by networks of smugglers and were very expensive in addition to being very dangerous. The Pacific Ocean has become the largest Vietnamese cemetery on the planet. A total of around 20 Boat People were welcomed in Liège.Today, the&#160;Vietnamese community of Liegeis organized like a dome. It includes several associations, each operating in a specific area:&#160;Communauté Belgo-Vietnamienne, Association des vietnamiens libres de Liège, the Catholic Community, the Bouddist Association with a pagoda, the Vovinam-Viet Vo Dao association, the Viet Tân Party). The&#160;VietnameseCommunityof Liègeconducts, for example, many cultural actions—which are, of course, anti-communist. Every year, all these associations gather and propose seven activities: the commemoration of Trần Văn Bá on January 8, the Vietnamese New Year at the end of January/beginning of February, the Hung Kings Festival in April, the commemoration of the Fall of Saigon on April 30 in Brussels, the Mid-Autumn Festival in September, an evening to raise funds for pro-democracy dissidents in Vietnam in October, and the Human Rights Day in Brussels on the December 10. We have our own flag, which is yellow with red stripes.[1]The functioning of the Vietnamese community of Liège is unique.Let us now look at the European level. Before the Fall of Saigon, there was an association called the&#160;Congrès des Etudiants Vietnamiens en Europe (‘Congress of Vietnamese Students in Europe’), which in 1976 was renamed&#160;Congrès des Vietnamiens en Europe (‘Congress of Vietnamese in Europe’). This association only dealt with the organization of the Vietnamese Olympic Games. They oppose the Vietnamese communities of several cities. At that time, it was very difficult to be in contact because mobile phones and the internet did not exist. Personally, I had to use the student’s home phone. Trần Văn Bá was president of the&#160;Association Générale des Etudiants Vietnamiens de Paris. I knew him but we did not see each other a lot. At the Fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, he contacted me with the will to reshape the European Vietnamese community in the light of the recent events. On May 7, 1975, the first meeting of the&#160;Congrès des Etudiants Vietnamiens en Europe&#160;was held in Darmstadt. Seven Vietnamese associations were present. The second meeting took place in October in Liège. We were determined to continue our fight against the communist regime. We formed a unique network on the planet. It ceased activities after 2001 because there was no real succession. Potential successors were instrumentalized by Vietnamese political parties, which were more structured and organized than us. The Vietnamese community in Europe continues its fight for democracy in Vietnam but is not organized into political parties. It rather supports existing political parties.The rest of the world, aside from the United States, has not hosted as many Vietnamese students as Europe. This explains the specificity of the European Vietnamese community. The Vietnamese community living in the United States is very important numerically but structured in a different way. It was formed with the tragedy of the Boat People, who were older and already trained when they arrived in the United States. They were quickly able to rebuild their lives.In parallel with this community opposing the regime, there is also a community that left the country after 1975 and is still under the influence of the regime. Its members must renew their visas each year. This community is smaller and less visible because it has no struggle to carry out. Every April 30, the Vietnamese embassies celebrate the victory of Saigon. The pro-regime community does not go there, just as it does not attend our events. In Liege, few people claim to be communists. However, some Vietnamese refuse to participate in meetings of the Vietnamese community of Liège. They fear the consequences this could have for their relatives and for themselves, starting with a visa refusal to travel to Vietnam. In reality, they affirm their neutrality. They have no interest in taking a stand because they want to return to Vietnam to visit family and friends.There are always students from Vietnam who come to study in Belgium, because the quality of education is high. They come for just one or two semesters, not for a whole cycle as before. The dialogue between them and students of Vietnamese origin who have always lived in Belgium is complicated. There is always some discomfort. We do not know whether they are afraid, or simply oppose our political views. All these students are selected and watched by the regime. The young Vietnamese generation is usually not interested in politics. That is the reason why young people can leave the country. They still have to pay a deposit in order to leave the territory, which is a guarantee for their return. When they are in Belgium, it is rare to meet them alone. In appearance, the Vietnamese regime is moving in the right direction. We need to delve further to see if the situation has really improved.When I began to carry out actions criticizing the communist regime, many people reproached me for doing so, accusing me of political ambition. I accepted these accusations with a smile because it had nothing to do with reality. I wanted to go back to Vietnam; my fiancée was still living there. Ultimately, I never went back, and my fiancée married another man. At the end of 2018, the Vietnamese police rummaged in the affairs of one of my nephews when he mentioned my last name. We do not have the same last name and he has a very Belgian name. Once a month, I send an email announcing the next activities of the Vietnamese community of Liège. The email does not directly criticize the regime, but the organized activities are obviously against it. My recipients are in three cities, including Hanoi. I send this email to all politicians as well as to major industrialists. I am aware that it is the secretary and not the person in charge who will read my email, but it is precisely this part of the population that we are trying to reach.If I want to go back to Vietnam, there are many ways. The first would be to go to the Vietnam Embassy in Brussels and apply for a visa. My file would be sent to the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry, which would make a decision. The answer would surely be ‘no’, because my presence in Vietnam would be embarrassing for the Vietnamese government. The second possibility would be to enter Vietnam with a false passport. The third would be to cross the Cambodian border. In both cases, I could act as a tourist without problems, but would not be able to participate in any demonstration or initiative for democracy. If I get arrested, I would be in a very problematic situation.The current regime is authoritarian and corrupt. There are many videos on YouTube in which the Vietnamese people revolt against state officials, such as police officers. The internet is the only way to do journalism in Vietnam because all the media are controlled by the regime, which directly appoints the chief editors. Whether in the north or in the south, people are no longer afraid. Of course, there are different mentalities, since the north has always been under the communist regime, which is not the case of a whole generation in the south. The south also remembers the cleansing carried by the regime after 1975. Hundreds of thousands of people have been tortured and sent to re-education camps. This fear is rather hatred in the north, because the population feels betrayed. It has lived under the communist regime for several decades and has finally begun to open its eyes, partly thanks to the internet. It is very difficult, however, to explain something to someone who has no perspective or tools to build his own critical vision. Living under a dictatorial or democratic regime means nothing to the people of the north, since they have always lived under the same regime and have no element of comparison. There is also a difference between hearing about a situation and living it.Today, no direct criticism of the regime is tolerated in Vietnam. It censors many things and has recently put in place a law controlling the internet. The pro-democracy activists arrested are sent to prison, where they are tortured. Associations for the defence of human rights are mobilizing across the planet to put an end to these abuses. Along with the arrests, the relatives of the prisoners lose their jobs.The Vietnamese community of Liege regularly sends money to the families of these activists because they are completely excluded from society and live in precarious conditions. Currently, more than 100 people are imprisoned, but the figure is much higher if we take into account all those who have not yet been tried or who have already been in prison. People released from prison are under house arrest and cannot work. It is impossible to know the exact number of people incarcerated because the government does not provide any information. For people residing outside Vietnam, the only way to get information is to communicate with relatives still living under the regime. With new technologies, like Facebook, it has nevertheless become easier to obtain information. The regime cannot censor everything, and more and more people can dare to express their political views despite the repression. The new generation of Vietnamese immigrants has also begun to make its voice heard. These young people have never lived in Vietnam but can understand and express themselves in Vietnamese. It is necessary that they have these bases, because Vietnam will need competent personnel to rebuild the country the day we win the revolution.In parallel with its political struggle, the Vietnamese community of Liège is committed to the memory work of the history of Vietnam. We have notably inaugurated a stele in memory of the Boat People in the Avroy Park in 2006. This stele is the result of an initiative led by the European Vietnamese communities. Each community has contacted the authorities of its own city to request the installation of a stele commemorating the Boat People. In the end, only Geneva and Liège succeeded, because it is a question of public relations. A few years ago, the mayor of Paris had accepted the installation of a plaque in memory of Trần Văn Bá in the 13th arrondissement. The Vietnamese embassy intervened with the French authorities, who eventually renounced the plate. In Liège, the installation of a stele was made possible thanks to the support of the political party&#160;cdH, with whom we have good relations. The stele was inaugurated on June 30, 2006, three months after Geneva, even though both requests were made at the same time. The explanation is again political. In Liège, municipal elections are held every six years in October. Three months before the elections, the parties are not allowed to organize demonstrations that are likely to bring them votes. The&#160;cdH, therefore, had to ensure that the stele was installed before the three-month deadline, but also as close as possible to the deadline.We promoted the stele, which has been positively welcomed in Liège, and more broadly in Belgium. Local and national newspapers such as&#160;Le Soir,La Libre Belgique, and&#160;La Meusehave published articles on this subject as well as on the Boat People. From now on, we organize a commemorative ceremony around the stele every 10 years. Protests arose about the foreseen location of the stele. We wanted to place it next to the stele in memory of the destruction of Guernica. We finally had to place it further in the park. It was not possible to mix the different events.The stele has a memorial function. It has the shape of a boat. We asked our friends in Geneva if it was possible to copy the shape of their stele. We have also adopted the same text, replacing ‘Switzerland’ with ‘Liège’ and ‘Belgium’ (‘Vietnamese refugees thank Liege, Belgium and the host countries’). We added an engraving representing the Boat People carrying an SOS flag. There are Boat People in Liège because Belgium welcomed 3,000 of them following the Geneva conference in July 1979. They were split between Brussels and Liège, two large French-speaking cities where Vietnamese students were already studying. These students served as guides and coaches for the Boat People, as about 90% did not speak French. At the beginning of the Boat People crisis, people fleeing Vietnam were fishermen with their own boats, not people from the upper classes. People in the city were reluctant to leave because their families were scattered, while fishermen lived in small villages and could directly leave the country with their entire family. People tend to overlook these events because it was a very hard time for the Boat People. It is impossible to forget, but they prefer to avoid talking about it in their daily life. In addition to the stele of the Boat People, Liège has a stele in memory of Trần Văn Bá, located on the Park Street. He was an anti-communist militant who returned to the bush and was shot. This stele has a connotation and a political goal, which is to overthrow the current regime. We wish to continue Trần Văn Bá’s fight year after year.Interview conducted by Julie Wagner on July 4, 2018, in Liège, under the direction of Ann-Sophie Schoepfel.[1]Flag of the Republic of Vietnam, which existed from 1955 to 1975.