Đoàn Viết Hoạt, Ph.D.
Dr. Đoàn Viết Hoạt is a Vietnamese educator, journalist, and political dissenter. A college professor during the fall of Saigon, Đoàn spent twelve years imprisoned without trial in a re-education camp. Following his release, he founded an underground, democratic newsletter Freedom Forum. The communist government placed him and his fellow journalists on trial for reactionary conspiracy in 1993. The two day show trial resulted in a fifteen-year prison sentence. Đoàn continued writing in prison. Mounting international pressure came to a peak in 1998 and the Vietnamese government relented, releasing Đoàn and expelling him to the United States. In 2000, Đoàn Viết Hoạt was awarded the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation’s Truman-Reagan Medal of Freedom. He had previously received the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award in 1995.
