BPSOS launches multi-year campaign to demand restitution of Vietnamese-American properties that have been expropriated by the Vietnamese government.

                





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BPSOS launches multi-year campaign to demand restitution of Vietnamese-American properties that have been expropriated by the Vietnamese government.


Press Release
August 17, 2012

Today, BPSOS, a national Vietnamese-American organization based in Falls Church, Virginia, officially announces a nationwide campaign to ensure that the U.S. Administration effectively protects and defends the interests and properties of U.S. citizens of Vietnamese origin. Over the past 37 years, the Vietnamese government has seized, expropriated and nationalized the properties of potentially as many as half a million Vietnamese after their being naturalized as U.S. citizens.

Some 145,000 Vietnamese evacuated to the United States at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. Most of them had become U.S. citizens by late 1980. In the years 1975-1988 over a million Vietnamese escaped the communist tyranny in their homeland by sea and some by land. The vast majority of them resettled to the United States. By 1990, a quarter of a million Vietnamese had become naturalized U.S. citizens. By 2000 this number exceeded half a million.

Vietnam's land law of 1993 nationalized lands left vacant by these refugees turned U.S citizens. Its land law of 2003 nationalized houses left vacant by an even larger number of already naturalized U.S. citizens. The Vietnamese government continues to expropriate additional properties of U.S. citizens, including properties that Vietnamese-Americans have inherited from their deceased parents in Vietnam in recent years.

This campaign seeks to ensure that the U.S. Administration protects and defends the rights, interests, and properties of U.S. citizens, including U.S. citizens of Vietnamese origin, and upholds the law of the land.

The Trade Act of 1974 (19 USC 2462(b)(2)) stipulates that the President shall not grant Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) status to a government that has "nationalized, expropriated or otherwise seized property of U.S. citizens or corporations without providing, or taking steps to provide, prompt, adequate, and effective compensation, or submitting such issues to a mutually agreed forum for arbitration." Reportedly, the current Administration is negotiating GSP with Vietnam and aims to conclude the negotiation by year's end.

Likewise in compliance with the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, as amended in 1964 (22 USC 2370(e)), the President shall suspend all assistance to a country the government of which has expropriated the properties of U.S. citizens, and the U.S. government shall vote against loans to that government from international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.

A petition drive to the White House will be the first act in this multi-stage campaign. It will be followed by an all-out effort to seek Congressional support and intervention. Legal experts are studying the feasibility of a class action.

Campaign information and materials can be accessed at: www.bpsos.org and doitaisan.wordpress.com .

Questions should be addressed to:  land@bpsos.org 



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