Every winter, Auckland-based priest Fr Andrew Nuu Le Nguyen suffers great pain from the many injuries he received while a prisoner for 13 years in the hell of “re-education” camps in Vietnam.
But every time he feels pain from his injuries suffered during his incarceration from 1975 to 1988, Fr Andrew offers up a prayer for Bui Dinh Thi, “the guy who killed me” in Thanh Cam camp.
The third edition of Fr Andrew’s book “I Must Live” has now been published, and it has some additional supplements from earlier editions, one of which describes the meeting between the priest and his principal persecutor many years later in the United States.
In 1996, Fr Andrew met Dinh Thi and forgave him. But it wasn’t easy.
“This was a very important book for myself because, when I saw him, it was a big event of my life,” Fr Andrew said of his book, which has become a classic of Vietnamese “gulag literature”.
“It is very easy to talk about forgiving your enemies – this is true – but when you step into the house of someone who wanted to kill you, to destroy you, it is very hard, it is not easy. But I tried my best. I came to see him and I forgave him.
“I shook hands and I said ‘I forgive you’. I think this sends a very strong message. I hope that, when people read my book, it strengthens their faith.”
As described in a NZ Catholic article in 2020 about the second edition of the book, Bui Dinh Thi had been one of the detainees responsible for enforcing camp discipline. A Catholic parishioner, he murdered two men who had been with Fr Andrew in a failed escape attempt, and he tried to kill the priest too. He beat one of the men (Diep) to death and starved the other one (Vanh) until he died. He dumped the former’s body on top of Fr Andrew.
Among Bui Dinh Thi’s many acts of violence against Fr Andrew was this: “Then the guard seized me, punching my belly, making me fall backwards. Bui Dinh Thi punched me forwards again, and so they continued like two soccer players using me as a ball.”
The accounts in Fr Andrew’s book led to Bui Dinh Thi being reported to US authorities. Fr Andrew was to testify against Thi in court and he was deported back to Vietnam in 2004. But because there was no treaty between the US and Vietnam to enforce this, Bui Dinh Thi reportedly ended up in the Marshall Islands, where he is said to have died in 2011.
Fr Nguyen’s 13 years in the camps left him with impaired vision in one eye, with leg injuries which prevent him from walking freely, and with reduced use of one lung.
What he went through was a form of hell on earth.
There was “baking” heat, with the priest being in a windowless cell with several other men, with the air so hot that breathing was an exhausting struggle. There was being in a prison – the so-called “Gate of Heaven”, near the Chinese border – that was so cold that some men “howled like wolves”, before falling asleep from exhaustion. There was being shackled in a punishment cell in “the bottom of hell” at Thanh Cam camp, and having to live for weeks in one’s own excrement, cleaning oneself with one’s hand and using clothes to clean those hands. There was reeking of the smell of faeces and urine, to the degree that even a fellow priest could not stand being too close. There was being tortured, beaten, starved, nearly dying of thirst, being naked. There was seeing another prisoner’s eye cut out. It is hearing of fellow prisoners’ plans to eat you. There was seeing a friend beaten to death and having his corpse thrown on top of you, so that you couldn’t breathe.
Fr Andrew came to New Zealand in 1990, at the invitation of Bishop Denis Browne, to be chaplain to the Vietnamese community in Auckland. Thirty three years later, his injuries cause him great pain in the cold of the New Zealand winter.
Asked if he prays for Bui Dinh Thi, Fr Andrew said “all the time, especially in the winter time, when my body is very sore because he tortured me a lot. Last winter was the worst of my life. Every time, I pray for him”.
The book also has an added supplement in which Fr Andrew describes how a Master Sergeant Ha gave him a can of water in the “bottom of hell” in Thanh Cam camp. Despite Bui Dinh Thi knocking over the can and half the water spilling out, this act by the guard saved the priest’s life.
Fr Andrew was so moved by this act, that he offered a $5000 reward for anyone who could give him information “about where to find this man who gave a favour to save my life”.
The lesson that can be taken from this is “Do not refuse when people ask to you to do something – your small gift could save another person’s life”.
Fr Andrew said that he wrote the book because it is good for young Vietnamese living abroad to know the past.
“Secondly, for the outsiders, people outside Vietnam, so they know exactly what happened to the Vietnamese people. The Communists make very strong propaganda and tell lies about what it was like,” he added. From 1975, some 400,000 people were put through the camps.
“Why did I survive?” Fr Andrew asked. “Maybe God has given me the opportunity to do something? To personally talk about the reality of the situation for so many people.”
The book is also a reflection by the priest on how God’s providential love was present throughout his many ordeals, enabling Fr Andrew to be an instrument of God’s love and mercy in desperate situations.
Fr Andrew said that word is spreading about his book – and he has even had an approach from Netflix. But he just hopes that as many people read his book as possible.
“I Must Live” by Father Andrew Nuu Le Nguyen is available from outlets like Paper Plus and Amazon.
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