Nelson Mandela’s Captive Audience: Path of Most Resistance (from communist Vietnam)

NY Times ^ | February 7, 2010 | NGUYEN DAN QUE

[neverdem]

It was back in the 1970s, when I was doing diabetes research in Britain, that I first learned of the political drama surrounding Nelson Mandela. At the time I never would have predicted that one day I, too, would be imprisoned by a repressive regime for advocating human rights and democracy.

By the time of his release from prison many years later, I had already spent 10 years in many labor camps and prisons in Vietnam, and was under house arrest. The Vietnamese communist government had never held a trial.

As I listened to the BBC on a small portable radio with earphones, the word of Mr. Mandela’s release illuminated my mind like a lightning flash. The end to his 27 years in prison had come as a result of concerted international pressure on the government in Pretoria. Bravo, I thought, for the victory of dignity and hope over despair and hatred, of self-discipline and love over persecution and evil...

[neverdem]

Nguyen Dan Que is a doctor in Vietnam who has been imprisoned three times.

The NY Times giving a voice to a victim of communism. Will wonders never cease?

[ChrisInAR]

Maybe I missed something, but after reading the article it seems like the author is taking a critical look @ the brutalities of communism rather than socialism was a whole. The fact that Mandela was a hero to him makes me think that he doesn’t believe in capitalism & individual rights, but thinks that wealth should be shared rather than earned.

Could I be wrong?

[AliVeritas]

You’re not wrong.

[neverdem]

Maybe I missed something, but after reading the article it seems like the author is taking a critical look @ the brutalities of communism rather than socialism was a whole. The fact that Mandela was a hero to him makes me think that he doesn’t believe in capitalism & individual rights, but thinks that wealth should be shared rather than earned.

"At the time I never would have predicted that one day I, too, would be imprisoned by a repressive regime for advocating human rights and democracy."

I thought he was lamenting life in a corrupt, commie tyranny.

[ChrisInAR]

Maybe I have a different view of democracy than he & most everyone else does. I don't consider it to be a proper form of government, & neither did the Founders...but in his Communist Manifeato, Karl Marx said that he wants "to make the world safe for democracy", & even today most people on the political left talk about democracy all the time (especially the progressives).

[RolandTignor]

I thought Mandela was a communist.

[ChrisInAR]

He is / was. I remember seeing pics of him in The New American magazine standing in front of flags that had the hammer & sickle on them, & he was raising his right fist in the air, which I guess is the communist salute (???).