BAUGHMAN & WANG
Attorneys at Law
111 Pine Street, Suit 1350
San Francisco, CA 94111
Telephone: (415) 576-9923
Facsimile: (415) 576-9929
Ms. Huynh Tieu Huong and the Que Huong Charity Center
Justin X. Wang
Steve W. Baughman
Peggy Shih
Trent Goulding
James McPherson
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The Que Huong Charity Center and its founder and president, Ms. Thi Man Huynh, have recently won public retractions from two San Jose-based Vietnamese language newspapers.
Ms. Thi Man Huynh, also known by the name Tieu Huong Huynh, was abandoned shortly after her birth in Vietnam sometime in the late 60’s and spent her formative years on the streets as an abused and neglected orphan. In spite of the many challenges and obstacles that she faced, she was able to achieve success at a variety of occupations. Even before the arrival of material success, Ms. Huynh was active in efforts to ease the burdens of the abandoned and the afflicted, and by the late 1990’s, she was contributing substantial time, energy, and money to the support and education of orphaned and disabled children. In 2001, she established the Que Huong Charity Center as a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) under the auspices of the Relief Organization for Disabled Children of Vietnam, another NGO. Shortly thereafter, Ms. Huynh was able to come to the United States, where she and a group of like-minded humanitarians in the San Jose area incorporated the Que Huong Charity Center in November of 2003. The Center was granted status as a non-profit by the IRS under section 501(c) (3) of the Internal Revenue Code in April of 2004. In the U.S., the Center is headquartered in Santa Clara County, California.
Unfortunately, just as Que Huong was starting to establish its fund-raising base in the San Jose area, it attracted the attention of the virulently anti-communist Vietnamese-language press. On December 2, 2004, Mr. Tan Van Nguyen, the proprietor and lead writer/editor of the Tin Viet News, published the first in a series of front page articles written under his pen name of “Cao Son.” These articles made various inflammatory allegations, casting aspersions on the character of Ms. Huynh and accusing her and the Que Huong Charity Center of being puppets of the Communist government of Vietnam, sent to dupe the good-hearted expatriates of the Bay Area Vietnamese community. The fifth installment appeared on January 6, 2005 and asserted Que Huong’s newly dedicated shelter for handicapped and abandoned children in Vietnam was in fact a front for a house of debauchery where foreigner visitors could avail themselves of entertainment, massage, and prostitutes. The article further insinuated that the orphans taken in by the charity were in reality future victims of the prostitution industry.
A second paper, the SaigonUSA News, followed Mr. Nguyen and the Tin Viet News’s lead in publishing allegations about Ms. Huynh’s duplicity and Communist Party affiliations. An article published on December 31, 2004 asserted that Ms. Huynh was a “senior spy” for the Vietnamese government, and that she had been uncovered as a spy engaged in propaganda under the guise charitable works.
Ironically, Ms. Huynh and U.S. members of the Charity Center were in Vietnam on a charitable mission to deliver over five hundred wheelchairs when these articles appeared. Upon their return in late December, they immediately consulted with attorneys, and a demand for retraction was sent to both papers. When these demands were ignored, actions for libel were filed against both Tin Viet News and SaigonUSA News in the Superior Court for the County of Santa Clara. Trial dates in February of 2006 were eventually scheduled for both lawsuits.
On the eve of trial, both newspapers ultimately agreed to settle the actions against them by publishing a front page statement, in English and Vietnamese, which addressed allegations in their articles.
Tin Viet News published the following statement on February 23, 2006:
NOTICE TO OUR READERS
Regarding the January 6, 2005 article about Ms. Huynh Tieu Huong and the Que Huong Charity Center, we wish to make the following announcement:
1) We originally published an allegation that Ms. Huynh and the Center built a house that was to be used as a place for selling women’s flesh, and for massage and debauchery. We have been informed that this was a hasty conclusion and that the Center is not engaged in such activities, but that the Center operates for purposes of providing shelter and training for orphans. We admit that we made a hasty conclusion in our article.
2) Further, when we said in one paragraph of the article that Ms. Huynh had a history of a struggling childhood, we did not and we do not mean imply any criminal activities on her part.
SaigonUSA News published the following statement on April 7, 2006 (English) and April 11, 2006 (Vietnamese), and further posted the statements on their website
(http://www.saigonusanews.net/) on April 18, 2006:
NOTICE TO OUR READERS
Regarding the December 31, 2004 article about Ms. Huynh Tieu Huong, we wish to make the following announcement:
The article makes the allegation that Ms. Huynh is a “senior spy” for the Vietnamese communists. Although we had reasons to be wary, we admit that we do not have the specific evidence of Ms. Huynh’s status as a “senior spy,” and that using this term in the article was the result of a hasty conclusion on our part.
Ms. Huynh and the officers of the Que Huong Charity Center believe that publication of these statements represent a vindication of their efforts to clear their names and to rehabilitate the reputations that were badly injured by these papers’ publication of scurrilous, false, and defamatory statements about Ms. Huynh and the Center.
Ms. Huynh and the officers of the Que Huong Charity Center affirm that they have no extraordinary or untoward ties with the Communist government of Vietnam, or any particular officials of that government, and that their sole purpose is to help, educate, and protect the orphaned, the abandoned, and the handicapped children and adults of Vietnam. They are anxious to reestablish in the minds of the public their reputation for charitable works and a confidence that their motives are unassailably humanitarian in nature. Only then will they be able to fully draw upon and channel the charitable impulses of the public-spirited citizens of the San Jose area and fulfill their mission to give aid to their compatriots in Vietnam.
For further information, please contact:
Steve Baughman
Baughman & Wang
(415) 576-9923 (phone)
(415) 576-9929 (fax)