Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
語言:
English /// 中文
Photo Credit: Trịnh Hữu Long
The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted at International Civil Society Week in Bangkok last month.
Brian Hioe: Could you first introduce yourself for readers who don’t know you?
Trịnh Hữu Long: For nine years now, I have introduced myself thousands of times starting with “I am from Vietnam, but based in Taiwan”. Sometimes I think I can write a book and make it the title. Taiwan is my home now as I work as a journalist in exile for two magazines that I co-founded, Luật Khoa and The Vietnamese, covering politics of Vietnam, an authoritarian country in which I was born and grew up in.
BH: How did Legal Initiatives for Vietnam (LIV) start? What is the relation of The Vietnamese and Luật Khoa to LIV?
THL: I co-founded Luật Khoa Magazine in 2014 with three other activist friends (one is in jail in Vietnam now).
Three years later, we registered LIV as a nonprofit in the United States to house and raise funds for Luật Khoa and other projects, including The Vietnamese Magazine.
BH: What were the circumstances that led to your relocating to first the Philippines and then Taiwan? How has the experience been?
THL: I became a protester in the summer of 2011 during an anti-China and pro-democracy demonstration movement in Hà Nội. That was a life-changing experience. I no longer wanted to be a usual corporate lawyer or office worker anymore. I had freed myself from fear, and I wanted to do everything to make Vietnam a democracy.
That was when I met journalist Phạm Đoan Trang, who then worked for a major state media outlet. We both went to the protest and quickly became close. She then trained me in journalism, guided me into a journalism career, writing for both state and overseas media outlets. But at some point, we felt we had enough with both censorship and self-censorship in the media sector. We wanted to create our own newspaper, but we had no money. Then, a Vietnamese overseas NGO in the Philippines called VOICE offered us an internship in Manila to help us form our own project.
January 13, 2013, both Trang and I, and another close friend of ours, boarded a Philippine Airlines plane flying to Manila. I have never been back to Vietnam since.
I cofounded Luật Khoa a year later while working for VOICE. I continued to work for VOICE under the leadership of attorney Trịnh Hội until the end of 2016, and I wanted to focus solely on developing Luật Khoa to be the best political magazine in Vietnam. Leaving VOICE, I needed a place to continue my exile. I could continue living in the Philippines, but something magical happened that year: I had a chance to go to Taiwan for the first time to observe the 2016 election. I was moved to tears witnessing citizens of a true democracy conducting their most sacred ritual: voting. I was with a group of Vietnamese activists, and we all thought and said the same thing: Taiwan was the best example of democratization for Vietnam, and in 30 years, we would make Vietnam a democracy.
Later that year, my cofounder, Trần Quỳnh Vi, and I decided to move to Taiwan.
December 25, 2016, we landed in the country and have never left.
I can talk nonstop about my experience in Taiwan. When I say “I love Taiwan”, it’s not just a tourist saying so in front of a camera about any country they visited. I sure have my observations about things that could be improved in Taiwan, and I am aware of some critical human rights issues here. I say “I love Taiwan” as a way to express my gratitude to a country that offers me and my fellow exiled Vietnamese shelter, freedom, and kindness. And after nine years of living in Taiwan, I am certain I made one of the best decisions of my life relocating to this country.
BH: What current projects are you working on? What are your aims with these projects?
THL: I am running two magazines, Luật Khoa and The Vietnamese, together with a YouTube channel, and some other small projects. We are ambitious. We want to be the leading political media organization in Vietnam, an independent public interest media empire that the country has never seen before.
BH: How does the journalism aspect of LIV connect to other initiatives of the organization, such as media trainings, internships, and reports? Likewise, how does the article side of the reporting connect to the YouTube channel?
THL: We are working hard to create an ecosystem of journalistic products that reinforce each other. No rocket science here. Like a media house, we cook content in the kitchen and use the kitchen to train new journalists. Vietnamese content is translated into English and converted into videos. In turn, our YouTube channel builds up a large audience that later comes to our websites and becomes our paid subscribers, while English content on The Vietnamese Magazine connects us with international players and donors.
BH: How do you balance English and Vietnamese language reporting between The Vietnamese and Luật Khoa? What kind of content do you focus on? In the choice of content, is there any consideration on appealing to specific demographics, such as Gen Z?
THL: We translate a number of selected Vietnamese articles into English, considering topics that the international audience is interested in, such as human rights, political developments, tech governance, new laws and regulations. While Luật Khoa focuses on highly educated young people in urban Vietnam, The Vietnamese targets diplomats, INGOs, foreign investors, overseas researchers, etc.
BH: What do you hope that people in Taiwan should know about LIV? How has LIV sought to connect to Taiwanese civil society?
THL: It’s more like what LIV should know more about Taiwan. We are not done learning and studying about Taiwan yet. We have kept writing about Taiwan and trying to inform the Vietnamese public about both the democratization and the tension with China. I am forever in debt of the kindness that my local friends have offered LIV. If there is one thing I hope people should know is that the presence of LIV in Taiwan–a Vietnamese pro-democracy media organization–tells a story of a country that is very much similar to Taiwan during the martial law era, and there are Vietnamese people fighting for democracy as the dangwai people did many years ago in Taiwan.
LIV relocated to Taiwan thanks to our good friends in the civil society. And we have been able to stay here for nine years because of their help. We got to know them when Taiwanese NGOs approached us to join forces in demanding justice for victims of the 2016 environmental crisis caused by a Taiwanese company called Formosa Steel Company in Vietnam. And then we became friends and partners, advocating for human rights in China, Myanmar, Vietnam, and many other countries.
BH: Anything you’d like to say in conclusion to readers, Taiwanese or otherwise?
THL: Have I mentioned that Taipei’s rain is one of the most severe forms of crimes against humanity? Whoever designed this climate needs a really good lawyer.