"Hagel meets an old foe in Vietnam" Associated Press, June 03, 2013
SINGAPORE — Forty-five years ago, as the Vietnam war raged on, Army Specialist Chuck Hagel and Nguyen Tan Dung were on opposite sides of combat serving in the Mekong Delta — both wounded more than once.
This weekend the two men — now America’s defense secretary and Vietnam’s prime minister — met at a formal dinner at the start of an international security conference here, working to help build America’s growing military partnership with Vietnam.
Hagel’s first trip to Asia as Pentagon chief has been a bit of a walk down memory lane for the former infantry soldier.
While Hagel and Dung knew of each other’s service in Vietnam, they had never met. So when they spoke on the sidelines of the dinner Saturday, they had the chance to exchange war stories....
Related: Victims of Vietnam
According to defense officials, the two men talked briefly about their time at war and the fact that both had bled for their countries. Dung invited Hagel to visit Vietnam, and the secretary said he looks forward to going.
On Sunday, Hagel toured the Navy’s new small combat ship, the USS Freedom, the first of a new class of warships recently deployed to Asia.
Docked at Changi Naval Base in Singapore, the Freedom has been participating in naval exercises with countries in the region.
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"Vietnamese beginning to flee by boat once again" by Chris Brummitt | Associated Press, May 10, 2013
HANOI — Nearly 40 years after hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese fled the country’s Communist regime by boat, a growing number are taking to the water again.
This year alone, 460 Vietnamese men, women, and children have arrived on Australian shores — more than in the last five years combined. The unexpected increase is drawing fresh scrutiny of Hanoi’s deteriorating human rights record, though Vietnam’s flagging economy may also explain why migrants have been making the risky journey.
The latest boat carrying Vietnamese cruised into Australia’s Christmas Island one morning last month, according to witnesses on the shore. The hull number showed it was a fishing vessel registered in Kien Giang, a southern Vietnamese province more than 1,400 miles from Christmas Island, which is much closer to Indonesia than it is to the Australian mainland.
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Indonesian Immigrants Flood Australia
Australian Outback
Many Vietnamese who have reached Australia have been held incommunicado. The government does not release details about their religion and place of origin within Vietnam, both of which might hint at why they are seeking asylum.
Some Vietnamese reach Australia via Indonesia, following the same route that the far more numerous asylum seekers from South Asia and the Middle East have blazed for more than a decade. Others set sail from Vietnam itself, a far longer and riskier journey.
In separate statements, the Australian and Vietnamese governments said the overwhelming majority or all of the arrivals were economic migrants, which would make them ineligible for asylum. Several Vietnamese activists in Australia and lawyers who have represented asylum-seekers from the country dispute that categorization or raised questions over the process Australia uses.
Those activists say that neither Australia nor Vietnam wants the refugees.
‘‘Vietnam’s attitude is that, ‘These are people who will never be our friends, so why should we take them back?’ ’’ said Trung Doan, former head of the Vietnamese Community in Australia, a diaspora group.
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