Cao meets with top officials during Vietnam visit

He tells of concerns over human rights

Thursday, January 14, 2010

By Jonathan Tilove

Washington bureau

via CAAI News Media

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Anh "Joseph" Cao, R-New Orleans, who left wartorn Vietnam as a boy and became the first Vietnamese-American to serve in Congress, made an official visit to the country last week.

But in order to get a visa from the Vietnamese government, Cao, an outspoken critic of the Communist regime that imprisoned his father for seven years, had to promise he wouldn't stir up trouble while he was there.

"The government did not want to issue a visa because they felt that my visit potentially could be explosive," Cao said in a conference call with reporters Wednesday.

"In order to get the visa I had to go quietly into Vietnam and to leave quietly," he said. "We could not do a press conference; we could not do a press release." He also said he had to promise that "we would not visit dissidents and we would not visit human rights advocates."

But Cao said he was able to press his concerns about human rights abuses and the suppression of religious freedom in Vietnam during a series of meetings with top officials, including Vietnam's foreign minister, deputy general for America, standing vice minister for foreign affairs, vice minister who chairs the committee for overseas Vietnamese and director general for Ho Chi Minh City, the city once known as Saigon that Cao left in 1975 as an 8-year-old as it was about to fall to the Communists.

Cao's visit to Vietnam was part of an 11-day trip he made with two other members of the Congressional Asian-Pacific American Caucus, Rep. Mike Honda, D-Calif., and delegate Eni Faleomavega, D-American Samoa. It included stops in Laos, Cambodia and Japan.

In addition to talking about human rights issues, Cao returned home with a new passion for helping the governments of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia remove the vast quantity of unexploded ordnance left over from the Vietnam War that continues to kill and maim people, especially children.

"The United States dropped millions of tons of bombs on Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam; much of that came in the form of cluster bombs" of which "approximately 30 percent failed to explode," Cao said.

Before his visit, Cao said, "I was not aware of the issue."

Cao said he was also interested in expanding higher education opportunities for Vietnamese students, including increasing the availability of visas to the United States, so that they are better able to fill technology jobs at home being provided by foreign companies, including U.S.-based firms.