Police have arrested several people for their involvement in a terrorist organisation called Vietnam Canh Tan Cach Mang Dang (Vietnam Reform Party) or Viet Tan, timely crushing the plots by the group of reactionaries in exile to sabotage the Vietnamese State.

Those arrested in mid-November included Nguyen Quoc Quan, who used a fake passport under the name of Ly Seng for entry into Vietnam. Quan was assigned by the Viet Tan to return to the country to conduct anti-government activities in association with other elements.

On November 29, Quan was confirmed by the US to be a US citizen and that he used a fake passport to enter Vietnam’s territory.

Also in mid-November, police detained three foreigners and two Vietnamese in an investigation in terrorism and confiscated 7,000 anti-government leaflets published by the Viet Tan.

The arrested included Nguyen Thi Thanh Van, a French national; Truong Leon, an US national; and Luong Ngoc Bang, a Thai national. 

Van, 51, confessed that she had joined the Viet Tan in 1990 and that she has always written fabricated information-in articles undermining the Vietnamese State in a number of reactionary newspapers such as the 'Democratic Vietnam' and the radio 'New Horizon.' 

Van admitted that she brought the leaflets and copies of the Viet Tan logo to Vietnam under the instruction of Tran Duc Tuong, a senior member of the Viet Tan Central Committee.

Van conducted these activities in collaboration with Leon (a.k.a Truong Van Sy), 54, who was admitted to the Viet Tan in 2005; Bang (a.k.a Khunmi Somsak), 67; and two people inside the country, namely Nguyen The Vu, 30, and his young brother, Nguyen Viet Trung, 27.

In another development, on the afternoon of November 23, police detained Le Van Phan, a 52-year-old US national of Vietnamese origin, and his wife, Nguyen Thi Thinh (a.k.a Le Helen), at the Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Ho Chi Minh City after discovering a militarily-use handgun and 13 bullets in their luggage.

Investigation is being conducted into Phan and Thinh’s purpose of bringing weapons to Vietnam to see if they are involved in a terrorist organisation such as  the Viet Tan.

The Ministry of Public Security has worked with the US on its failure to detect weapon holders and letting them on board a flight to Vietnam and asked the US side to join in the investigation.

In an attempt to sabotage the Vietnamese revolution, Hoang Co Minh, a Commodore of the Navy in the former Saigon regime, who fled to the US in 1975 together with elements hostile to socialism in Vietnam, set up a counter-revolutionary organisation in southern California on April 30, 1980, called the National United Front for the Liberation of Vietnam.

Two years later, Hoang Co Minh organised a congress in his base in Udon Thani, Thailand , to establish the Viet Tan as the nerve-centre directing all activities of the front. The creed of the Viet Tan is to abolish the people's socialist State of Vietnam.

For its activities against society, including terrorist activities against Vietnamese residing abroad, the Viet Tan has been categorised by Vietnam as a terrorist organisation which must be stopped in order to ensure security. (VNA)