“I will immediately want a marriage certificate first and foremost. If he still wishes to pursue his chosen path, I will then accompany him on every leg of his journey. And if, unfortunately, mishaps reoccur, he will be more bound to receive my complete attention, as we are then a legally married couple,” Ms. Tuyết thinks of the day when Mr. Trung is released.
Ms. Tuyết is Mr. Đỗ Nam Trung’s fiancée. They scheduled the postponed wedding until early 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The plan was, however, unfinished because Mr.Trung was arrested in July 2021. Since then, Ms. Tuyết has been preoccupied with looking after his parents, his family visits, and mostly her constant feelings of missing him.
Back in 2015, they first met at a photography club. Mr. Trung made the first move and sent a Facebook friend request, but he was ignored. “ ‘Gosh, who is this Mr. Reactionary?’ I was so afraid,” Ms. Tuyết couldn’t hold back her laughter, recalling her first impression on Trung’s social networks.
A few months later, they had a little online chat and started to fall for each other at the first club meeting in Thai Nguyen. While dating, Tuyết gradually got to know more about the social injustice he was fighting against at the time. The relationship slowly deepened their understanding and empathy, which replaced Ms. Tuyết’s previous reservation and hesitation.
Later on, Ms. Tuyết became the dearest companion of Trung on multiple journeys, from the roads in the Northwest to participating in social activism and building a family. When the couple planned to live together, Ms. Tuyết consulted with her two children. Both of them supported the idea; her eldest son addresses Mr. Trung as “uncle”, while her little daughter refers to him as “dad”.
In the current troubled time, lacking her husband-to-be’s support, Ms. Tuyết is in charge of numerous tasks, along with mental stress and the responsibility to look after many people. Night after night, she keeps thinking of him and can’t hold back tears. She can only look at his belongings and listen to Buddhist sutras, praying for health to take good care of his family on behalf of him.
A period of 10 years is actually a whole decade, and it gets even longer when filled with loneliness and uncompleted plans. Those 10 years began with his arrest and would end with a wedding where Mr. Trung, Ms. Tuyết, Bi, Bông, and puppy Kent reunited as a family. “I will immediately want a marriage certificate first and foremost. If he still wishes to pursue his chosen path, I will then accompany him on every leg of his journey. And if, unfortunately, mishaps reoccur, he will be more bound to receive my complete attention, as we are then a legally married couple,” Ms. Tuyết thinks of the day when Mr. Trung is released.
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Đỗ Nam Trung is an activist participating in peaceful protests against China, Formosa Plant, the Special Economic Zone law, and wrongful toll booths on highways. On July 7, 2021, Mr. Trung was arrested for charges of “making, storing, and disseminating information, documents, items, and publications with contents against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam” under article 117 of the Penal Code 2015. At present, after legal procedures are completed, he is detained at Detention Camp no.6 in Thanh Hoa province, Viet Nam.
