Vietnamese activist places rare national spotlight on Gaza’s suffering
Activist Bao Ngoc draws attention to plight of Palestinians in country where protest is tightly controlled. Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam – Earlier this year
Activist Bao Ngoc draws attention to plight of Palestinians in country where protest is tightly controlled. Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam – Earlier this year, Vietnamese social media was overtaken by a name: Tieu Nguyen Bao Ngoc. The 28-year-old from Vietnam’s largest city, Ho Chi Minh, was said to be the first and only Vietnamese national to have joined the Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF), which sought to break Israel’s siege of Gaza by delivering aid to the territory by sea. Two weeks before setting sail across the Mediterranean in May, Bao Ngoc, also known as Ashley, had announced her participation in the mission to reach the war-torn enclave where Israel has killed more than 73,000 Palestinians. News of her exploit circulated online among young Vietnamese who began to closely follow her journey on social media. In a country where civil society has remained subdued beneath that powerful Vietnamese Communist Party, Bao Ngoc emerged as a rare figure to achieve public visibility on a political matter: the fate of Palestinians under Israel’s occupation. “As a Vietnamese who has endured the same sufferings and war crimes committed by Western imperialists, especially the US, I feel tremendous sympathy for the Palestinian people,” Bao Ngoc told Indonesia’s Republika Online in an interview from aboard her aid vessel during the voyage to reach Gaza. Those words went viral in Vietnam. Messages of support, including digital artwork featuring the young activist, flooded social media platforms as Bao Ngoc’s message of solidarity with Palestinians struck a chord among young people in the country. But on May 18, the Gaza flotilla live tracker, which many had followed to chart Bao Ngoc journey towards Gaza, sent an alert that her vessel had been intercepted by Israeli forces in international waters west of Cyprus. A prerecorded SOS video message from Bao Ngoc was released shortly afterwards on the flotilla’s website, and then on Vietnamese social media, confirming that she had been abducted by Israeli forces and urging people to call on the Vietnamese government to intervene and get her released. Her supporters heeded the call, flooding social media with the demand to “release Bao Ngoc!” With the outpouring of support in Vietnam that Bao Ngoc had inspired, many expected that the episode would make headlines in the local media. But it didn’t. All major media outlets in Vietnam remained silent during Bao Ngoc’s two days of detention by Israeli forces. The unofficial silence from the media, as well as the Vietnamese government, stood in contrast with that of neighbouring Malaysia and Indonesia, which immediately responded, along with many other governments, by condemning Israel for the abduction of their citizens while in international waters aboard the flotilla.
The BriefWire