HOUSTON, TX -- October 4, 2004 -- BPSOS-Houston will be launching a national initiative to help former Vietnamese torture camp survivors become U.S. citizens. The workshop features Dr. Robert Weigl, a Clinical Psychologist, who has developed a manual to guide service agencies and doctors through the process of obtaining disability waivers.

The workshop will take place on Wednesday, October 6 at 6pm. It will be held at the Chinese Community Center, 5855 Sovereign Dr.

After the last of the U.S. troops left in 1975, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam began to target Vietnamese nationals to be placed in internment camps. All except for the lowest ranking military and civil servants were targets for incarceration in prisons, and concentration camps referred to misleadingly as “re-education camps.” Most of those imprisoned were tortured, especially for the first two years after the war; forms of torture included beatings, mock executions, prolonged solitary confinement, watching the mutilation and execution of former colleagues, being worked to death. In later years, starvation, isolation in jungle encampments, forced labor, withholding of medical treatment, and forced public confessions became more common forms of mistreatment. By best estimates, between 50,000 and 60,000 men died in the prison camps.

As amended in 1997, the Immigration Naturalization Act allows medical doctors, clinical psychologists to evaluate and certify the disability of the applicant seeking an exception from the civics requirement for naturalization. The campaign seeks to acquaint doctors with unique circumstances such as Vietnam’s political conditions and the types of torture commonly used in re-education camps.