Minh Phan '96 may never know for sure,
but his father's recent release after sixteen years as a
political prisoner in a Vietnamese detention camp may
have had its start with a letter-writing campaign last
spring by about 800 students and staff at the College.
The elder Phan's release came
unexpectedly on Aug. 24 as Minh Phan, a graduate student
in the College's Graduate Management Institute, was
visiting his family in Saigon. Local police never
mentioned anything about the letter-writing campaign,
Phan says, “but I think it helped a lot.”
Hien Dinh Phan, who held a variety of
posts with the South Vietnamese government before the
fall of Saigon in 1975, was taken prisoner by the
Socialist Republic of Vietnam in 1981 for
“counter-revolutionary” activities after not
reporting to a political reeducation camp. The family had
become increasingly concerned about the toll that prison
camp life was taking on the elder Phan (age
seventy-seven) and agreed last spring to the Union
letter-writing campaign.
More than 800 letters appealing for the
elder Phan's release were sent to the president and prime
minister of Vietnam and the Vietnamese embassy in
Washington.
Members of the Amnesty International
chapter at the College held a reception in mid-September
as a “victory party.” It was the president of
the chapter, Jody Mousseau '97, who suggested the
letter-writing campaign. The younger Phan, who lives
off-campus caring for two teenage nephews, told about
fifty students and staff members at the reception,
“I'm very happy and very touched by the fact that
you all made it here today.”