The Committee to Protect Journalists will hold a news conference this week to call on police to reopen the cases of five Vietnamese American journalists murdered between 1981 and 1990.
The murders were the subject of a Frontline/Pro Publica documentary which aired in November and can still be seen in its entirety online.
Using information compiled from a Freedom of Information Act request, reporter AC Thompson revealed the FBI believed the National United Front for the Liberation of Vietnam was linked to the violence and that the murders were political.
The killings took place in in San Francisco, Houston, Garden Grove, Fairfax County and Bailey’s Crossroad. The last two are both in Virginia.
Among those scheduled to speak at the news conference is Tu Nguyen, the son of Nguyen Dam Phong, a publisher and reporter murdered in 1982.
You can watch the emotional moment when Frontline/Pro Publica presented Nguyen evidence of who killed his father in this clip.
Phong founded Tu Do, which he operated out of his home in Houston. According to Wikipedia, he began receiving death threats because his paper was critical of right wing exile groups from Vietnam.
A year earlier, Duong Trong Lam was killed in San Francisco. He published Cai Dinh Lang, a paper critical of the Vietnam War. The group called the Vietnamese Organization to Exterminate Communists and Restore the Nation(VOECRN), claimed responsibility
VOECRN is also blamed for the death of Tap Van Pham who died in 1987 in an arson fire in Garden Grove, CA. Pham did editorial work for Mai and other Canadian companies.
Nhen Tron Do, a layout designer for Van Nghe Tien Phong , was shot dead in his car in Fairfax County, VA in 1989.
The final murder occurred a year later also in Virginia, but in Bailey’s Crossroad. Triet Le was was a columnist known for his controversial opinions about the Vietnam government. He worked for Van Nghe Tien Phong.
The news conference will be held June 1 at National Press Club in Washington, D.C at 1 pm.
The entire 60 minute documentary is posted below.
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