By Max Constant
BANGKOK
A Vietnamese man whose family was among the many separated in the wake of the Vietnam War has filed a police complaint in Thailand in hopes of finding his sister, abducted by pirates at age 15.
Vo Hoang Dao, 49, filed the complaint in Pattaya, a resort station east of Bangkok, and offered a 500,000 baht ($15,000) reward to anyone who could provide information helping to locate his younger sister, the Bangkok Post reported Wednesday.
A flyer leaflet requesting information bears a picture of Vo Hoang Thuy Ai at 15 and a computerized image of what she would look like now if she were alive at 48.
Dao and his family were among the “boat people” who fled Vietnam from the late 1970s through the 1980s after what was then Saigon fell to communist forces on April 30, 1975.
They embarked on a ship with other Vietnamese in May 1981 hoping to reach Thailand before being resettled in a third country – only for their vessel to be intercepted by pirates on two fishing boats off the Thai coast.
The pirates seized the valuables of the over 80 Vietnamese, and also abducted eight young women including Dao’s sister.
Since then, Dao -- who was resettled with his remaining family in the United States – has traveled to Thailand several times to try to be reunited with his sister -- but to no avail.
He expressed to Thai police his belief that his sister is still alive and living in the country, married to a Thai man.
Stories of the tragic separation of families following the fall of Southeast Asian governments to communists in 1975 are common across the region.
In 2010, a Vietnamese man living in Paris who had been separated from his elder brother -- a soldier in the pro-U.S. South Vietnamese navy -- when Communist forces overran southern Vietnam sent an email to a Yahoo account with his brother’s name.
Dung Quoc Do’s email was answered by his brother, who had resettled in the U.S., and both were reunited several months later.
In another case in June 2011, Phyrun Peou, a Cambodian living in Canada, was able to find his 83-year-old father -- who had been arrested by the Khmer Rouge -- after 36 years begging at a market near the Thai-Cambodian border.
