Refugee Viet
A MAN whose pledge to ''pull down the existing Vietnamese communist government'' was accidentally delivered to Vietnamese authorities, is listed for forced repatriation this week.
United Anti-Communist Group member, Pham Van Phong, his wife and two sons, are due to board the repatriation flight, code-named Drumbeat, which leaves Hong Kong on Tuesday.
Mr Pham was a founder of the 39-member United Anti-Communist Group, formed in Hong Kong's Whitehead camp in 1991, which aimed to combat Vietnam's communist leadership.
The group assembled a membership list and outlined proposed activities in Vietnam and posted them to the New Vietnamese Democracy Movement and Provisional Vietnamese Government in California.
But an apparent US postal service blunder sent the letter astray.
It was returned opened and with documents missing to Whitehead in late 1991, bearing the Ho Chi Minh City postmark.
Lawyer Michael Darwyne said Mr Pham, his family and the remaining group members were ''very concerned'' for their future in Vietnam.
The UN requirement that refugees have ''a well-founded fear of persecution'' should apply to them, Mr Darwyne said.
''The last hope they had, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, has been dashed,'' he said.
''The UN always took the position the letter's postmark was a forgery, even though the Vietnamese Post Office has said it is not.''
