How the Czech Republic’s Vietnamese community is rallying for refugees

“When the battle broke out, we thought we needed to do one thing,” remembers Nga Dao of Lam Cha Me, a Vietnamese neighborhood affiliation in Prague, the Czech capital.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24 sparked spontaneous neighborhood exercise throughout central Europe, to the place virtually 4 million million Ukrainian refugees have now fled.

For the Vietnamese neighborhood within the Czech Republic, who make up round one p.c of the inhabitants, it was no totally different.

“We contacted a number of different organizations to ask if we may assist with some issues,” Nga Dao explains. After amassing a truckload of garments for youngsters and ladies, donated by the Vietnamese neighborhood, they drove it to the gathering level however have been advised it was not accepting any extra donations.

So, as an alternative, they opened their very own distribution level. On Fb, they requested native enterprise homeowners if there was any free area; they got entry to an empty retailer subsequent to a metro station. Happily, it is just one cease away on the subway from the refugee registration level, says Nga Dao.

When an attraction went out for donations, they have been inundated: meals; drink; child strollers; college luggage; diapers; and bathe gels. “Not solely do Vietnamese individuals usually convey gadgets to contribute, but additionally Czech passersby who see us there additionally come to assist. I really feel very grateful for this,” she provides.

In addition to handing out necessities, the workforce at Lam Cha Me additionally gives free Czech-language courses for Vietnamese kids who had arrived from Ukraine says Nga Dao. “The category has already began a number of classes, and hopefully they may quickly catch up at school.”

Greater than 300,000 Ukrainians have now entered the Czech Republic, the nation’s prime minister, Petr Fiala, advised parliament on March 23. Moreover, greater than 5,000 Vietnamese nationals have additionally left Ukraine for neighboring nations, with round 300 up to now touring to the Czech Republic, Thai Xuan Dung, the Vietnamese ambassador to Prague, advised Euronews final week.

He estimated that 7,000 Vietnamese individuals have been in Ukraine earlier than the battle broke out, with many having now returned to Vietnam due to flights placed on by the Hanoi authorities.

In accordance with Dung, his employees have collected greater than €20,000 in donations from the Vietnamese neighborhood within the Czech Republic because the battle started. Round half has been despatched to the Vietnamese embassies in Poland and Romania, the place a lot of the Vietnamese nationals have fled to from Ukraine, to assist purchase important provides.

The remaining has been donated to native establishments, equivalent to Prague’s Hearth and Rescue Division, which is aiding Ukrainian refugees.

“This superbly reveals how properly built-in the Vietnamese neighborhood within the Czech Republic is,” says Lucie Pštrosová, a spokesperson for the Czech-Vietnamese Instructional Institute, a non-profit that has additionally supplied help to Ukrainian refugees. “It is nice to observe one minority assist the opposite,” she provides.

In accordance with a 2019 examine, Ukrainians make up the biggest share of the foreign-born inhabitants within the Czech Republic. After the Slovakians, the Vietnamese come third.

Estimates counsel that ethnic Vietnamese account for simply shy of 1 p.c of the nation’s inhabitants. Nguyen, probably the most prevalent Vietnamese surname, is now the eighth commonest within the Czech Republic. Pho, the normal Vietnamese soup, has turn into adopted as a Czech favourite.

Whereas many Vietnamese now dwelling in western Europe, equivalent to in France, fled the nation within the Seventies to flee the communist takeover of South Vietnam, most in central and jap Europe arrived within the Nineteen Eighties due to the friendship offers between Hanoi and the communist Japanese bloc.

The Soviet Union — which Ukraine was a part of till 1991 — was considered one of Vietnam’s few buddies in the course of the Nineteen Eighties when it was seen as a world pariah. The richest man in Vietnam, Pham Nhat Vuong, the founding father of the sprawling VinGroup conglomerate, began out in enterprise promoting dried noodles in Kyiv.

Neighborhood relations within the Czech Republic improved tremendously in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. Within the early months, Vietnamese neighborhood teams and associations have been fast to reply, from donating to native charities to stitching the fabric face-masks that have been generally worn within the nation.

In Ústí nad Labem area, within the northwest, the Vietnamese neighborhood raised greater than €30,000 to purchase synthetic ventilators for 3 native hospitals.

The neighborhood teams in Prague who spoke to Euronews didn’t need to discuss geopolitics. Russia is the biggest provider of army arms to Vietnam, and shut bilateral relations date again to the Soviet Union, when Moscow was one of many few buddies of communist Vietnam after the Seventies. At two votes this month within the UN Basic Meeting to reprimand Russia for its invasion, Vietnam abstained.

“The Vietnamese authorities has been attempting to be impartial on the difficulty,” says Le Hong Hiep, a senior fellow on the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, a think-tank in Singapore. But Vietnam’s ruling Communist Celebration has not taken such a strict

line internally. Vietnam’s state-run media has relative freedom to report on the battle, Hiep famous, and public opinion is split.

“Whereas nearly all of the individuals condemn Russia and Putin for the invasion of Ukraine, some persons are sympathetic with them and blame NATO and the US for ignoring Russia’s safety considerations,” he stated. “Some even blame Zelenskyy and his authorities for being naïve and ignorant, which created this disaster for themselves.”

For Vietnamese nationals dwelling in Europe, with far larger entry to impartial media and nearer to the battle, anecdotal proof suggests there may be way more opposition to Putin’s invasion. However geopolitics and questions of who-is-to-blame are secondary. For a lot of, the response is about widespread humanity.

“I believe the present actions to assist and help refugees are occurring in all places, not simply within the Vietnamese neighborhood within the Czech Republic,” says Nga Dao, of the Lam Cha Me group. “That’s the motion of the individuals within the civilized world.”