"Well ... We shocked each other. They had experience with students from the previous generation, that they were allegedly not good at talking to. And now they knew me and said about me that they were completely shocked, because (my) opinion was very similar (to theirs). "
"One of the reasons why we translate is that what [Václav Havel] wrote about is still quite relevant in Vietnam. Today, the Vietnamese dissent is fighting in a similar way. This means building (on) the fulfillment of treaties and agreements and laws that the regime has formally declared to look normal before the world. In fact, they owe it and never have done it. So this strategy also applies there. Havel is well known there as well as the Charter. "
"The truth is, on the one hand, this community, even though it lives here in a free country and has all its rights, is practically not free. The reason is simple, because about 85% still have Vietnamese citizenship. The regime has leverage over people. It also has certain leverage over us - Czech citizens of Vietnamese origin. We still have most of the family there and the need to visit them. So they have an advantage in this. But the average is worse in the sense that Vietnamese here may support the regime more than the people in Vietnam. "
"As I said, we lived by the sea and the bombing was not directed at villages, but at inland cities. So, as children, we watched planes and sat and guessed which city they were flying to and where the bombs would fall. At the beginning we were instructed that when we hear the alarm, we all have to hide in the ditch, but then we got used to it. Then practically no one ever hid again and just watched day and night. You just got used to it. Only after the end of the war, maybe it is due to age, one begins to think about the consequences ... It is interesting that when the war raged, it did not seem so terrible to us. "
Pham Huu Uyen was born on April 1, 1962 in North Vietnam, where there was a war in 1955–1975, practically throughout his whole childhood. The witness graduated from a school for talented children. In 1980, he received a government scholarship and traveled to what was then socialist Czechoslovakia, where he began studying at the Czech Technical University. Here, during an internship at the Research Institute of Mathematical Machines (VÚMS), he became friends with dissidents Václav Trojan and Jan Sokol, and became acquainted with samizdat literature. The year 1989 marked a significant turning point for the witness - he continued the legacy of Czechoslovak dissent in the Vietnamese community and began publishing magazines with other students, criticizing the communist regime in Vietnam and promoting democratic principles in the Vietnamese community. Vietnamese officials tried to combat such activities and tried to get the witness back to Vietnam. In the Czech Republic, he first received political asylum and later Czech citizenship. In 2000, he founded the organization Van Lang, promoting the principles of civil society among Vietnamese in the Czech Republic. At the time of filming (2016), the witness lived in Prague (2016).
Debate in the Vaclav Havel Library: Václav Havel and Vietnam. Vietnam today. (2014) From left: Jáchym Topol, Václav Trojan, Pham Huu Uyen and Tran Quang Thanh
Debate in the Vaclav Havel Library: Václav Havel and Vietnam. Vietnam today. (2014) From left: Jáchym Topol, Václav Trojan, Pham Huu Uyen and Tran Quang Thanh
The film Little Bears (1957), in which Vietnamese children from an orphanage star: little Vietnamese pioneers bring a baby elephant as a gift to Czech pioneers. In return, they get a bear cub Brumla...
The film Little Bears (1957), in which Vietnamese children from an orphanage star: little Vietnamese pioneers bring a baby elephant as a gift to Czech pioneers. In return, they get a bear cub Brumla...
