DR. NGUYEN DAN QUE'S
BIOGRAPHICAL HIGHLIGHTS

1942 Born in Hanoi, Vietnam.

1945 His father, a member of the Vietnamese Nationalist Party, was assassinated by the Communists.

1954 The family, the mother and five children, migrated to Saigon after the Geneva Accord.

1966 Dr. Que graduated from Saigon Medical School and joined the faculty as an assistant professor.

1968-1974 Dr. Que received a scholarship from the United Nations' World Health Organization (WHO) for special training in medicine in Belgium (1968), French (1969), and England (1972).

1974 Dr. Que refused a job offer from WHO to return to Vietnam to teach at Saigon Medical School as Assistant Professor of Endocrinology.

1975 Communists took over South Vietnam. Dr. Que was then Chief of Nuclear Medicine at Cho-Ray Hospital in Saigon. He had the opportunity to leave the country but chose to stay to provide medical care to the poor.

1976 Dr. Que was removed from the position of Administrator of Cho-Ray Hospital after he criticized the Communist Party's discriminatory health care policies.

1978 He formed the National Progressive Front. Published two underground newspapers, The Uprising (Vung Day) for the youth and The People's Uprising (Toan Dan Vung Day) for the people of Vietnam, to question the government's violations of basic human rights and to ask the government to reduce military spending to invest in social welfare and health care for the people .

1978-1988 Dr. Que and 47 associates were arrested and imprisoned without trial; they were tortured and five died in captivity. When Dr. Que demanded improvement in the treatment of political prisoners, he was incarcerated in a five-by-six foot cell without sanitary facilities for two months.

1988 After his release, Dr. Que became the first Vietnamese member of Amnesty International.

1990 Dr. Que formed the Non-Violent Movement for Human Rights (Cao Trao Nhan Ban).

On May 11, 1990, Dr. Que issued the Manifesto urging the communist regime to respect human rights, to accept political pluralism and free and fair elections.

Dr. Que was re-arrested, imprisoned and held incommunicado.

1991 Under intense international protest and pressure, Hanoi brought Dr. Que to a half-hour sham trial in November and sentenced him to 20 years of hard labor followed by 5 years under house arrest for "trying to overthrow the government".

1993 Dr. Que was transferred from one prison to another. Currently he is in a prison camp in the rural area Xuan Loc, about 50 miles northeast of Saigon. Despite poor health, he was forced to perform hard labor and kept in solitary confinement.

1994 Still a prisoner of conscience.

Dr. Que has been adopted as a "Prisoner of Conscience" by Amnesty International. His unrelenting non-violent struggle for human rights, freedom and democracy for the people of Vietnam gained him national reputation as a "Si Phu", a Vietnamese tribute to an intellectual who heroically dedicates his life to the welfare of the people and the country. US Senator J. Robert Kerrey likened Dr. Que to Vaclav Havel and the President of AFL-CIO, Mr. Lane Kirkland, has compared Dr. Que to Andrei Sakharov, Lech Walesa and Nelson Mandela. Dr. Que has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992, 1993 and 1994. He was nominated for the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award on June 6 by the Physicians For Human Rights. On June 12, Dr. Que was awarded, in absentia, the Raoul Wallenberg Award from the US Congressional Human Rights Foundation.

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