Dear friends

The Vietnamese Community in Australia organized a mass protest today in commemoration of April 30, 1975 by going to the Vietnam Embassy, then to the Thai Embassy, to seek the release of Vietnamese American Ly Tong, who was a pilot in the Air Force of the Republic of Vietnam's Black Eagle squadron.

In April 1975, the last days before the fall of Saigon when the USA did not honor its promise to help South Vietnam under attack, Ly Tong was shot down by a Soviet anti-aircraft rocket while he was valiently flying an A-37 in combat. He was imprisoned in a concentration prison camp in North Vietnam (called a "re-education" camp) and escaped through Cambodia to Thailand, then to Singapore where he successfully petitioned the U.S. Embassy for political asylum.

In becoming a Vietnamese American he earned a Master's Degree at the University of New Orleans. In 1984, he received a letter from President Ronald Reagan for his heroic escape for freedom.

In 1992, Ly Tong hijacked a Vietnamese Airlines airliner and forced the pilot to fly over Saigon, whereupon he dropped anticommunist leaflets. Ly Tong then parachuted from the plane (no passengers or crew were endangered) whereupon he was captured by Vietnamese soldiers and sent to prison once again.

He was released in an amnesty program in 1998, and returned to the U.S.

In January, 2000 he rented a small plane in Florida and flew over Havana, dropping thousands of leaflets encouraging Cubans to overthrow the Communist dictatorship of Fidel Castro. He was greeted by a parade of Cuban Americans in Florida after this successful event, but his pilot's license was suspended.

In November, 2000, Ly Tong hijacked a plane in Thailand, once again dropping leaflets over Saigon and not harming anyone. He was jailed in Thailand, who have now instituted proceedings to extradite him to Vietnam on May 17, 2006. He began a hunger strike in the Thai prison at Raydong on March 28, 2006.

Ly Tong managed to get a note to the Vietnamese Diaspora via a prison guard with the information that he was to extradited and that the Thailand government had agreed on the charge of "violating Vietnamese air space."

This resulted in the protest by 2500 people of the Vietnamese community in Australia today, April 30, 2006, seeking prison transfer for Ly Tong to the USA rather than trial and imprisonment in Vietnam.

Background material in English is gathered from the following website:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ly_Tong There are links on Wikipedia (which is an Internet phenomenon of free and immediate publishing) to Vietnamese language sites and articles about Ly Tong.

Thank you to Nguyen Chi Thien, the poet, who is in Canberra speaking and meeting with the Vietnamese community and is pictured in this photograph. Permission is granted to publish it by any media or individual who will honor the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) on this commemorative day.

Thank you, Vietnamese community in Australia for transmitting the photograph and the story for Viet-Am Review. You can ready the story and see the photograph at the Viet-Am Review blogsite, below.