Policeman accused of kidnapping Miss Vietnam

LONDON DAILY TELEGRAPH

BANGKOK — The reigning Miss Vietnam, who was preparing to study at Luton University in Britain, has been kidnapped, and the accused is the son of a senior police officer upset at her desire to leave her communist homeland.

Pham Thi Mai Phuong, 18, who won her title in September, disappeared a week ago in the northeastern port city of Hai Phong while on her way home from an English class at a language school. The state-run Tien Phong newspaper said she was stopped by a group of men who bundled her into a car.

Her mother said that the family has since received threats that Miss Mai Phuong could be killed, but that her daughter had telephoned several times, sounding nervous and unable to give her location.

The boyfriend — Nguyen Binh Khanh, a police officer and the son of Hai Phong’s police chief — had repeatedly said he did not want her to go to Britain, her mother told Vietnamese newspapers.

The U.S.-government-run Radio Free Asia, citing a close family source, said Mr. Khanh had threatened to kill his girlfriend and then himself if she tried to leave. The family has received no ransom demand.

Miss Mai Phuong was awarded a scholarship worth $60,000 to study for a degree in business management at Luton University, where the fall term starts Sept. 15.

She said last month that she was honored to be able to attend a university abroad but would return to Vietnam after graduation.

Miss Mai Phuong was persuaded to study in Luton by Tim Boatswain, the university’s pro-vice chancellor, at an open day it held in Hai Phong in April.

“We were delighted she chose to study with us. She is a very intelligent and serious young woman, far from the stereotype of a Miss World candidate. Although she has not been to the campus, she was in London for last year’s Miss World” pageant, Mr. Boatswain said yesterday.

“I hope she is reunited with her parents soon and that she will be able to study with us from the start of term.”

Miss Mai Phuong was due to begin a year’s business-foundation course and then take a three-year business-administration degree.

For some years Vietnam has discouraged beauty pageants as a promotion of “undesirable values,” and Miss Mai Phuong is not the first Vietnamese to fall foul of official or unofficial resentment for succeeding in Western arenas.

Last year, one of the country’s most prominent actors was branded a traitor, threatened with jail and banned from filming for five years for his portrayal of a North Vietnamese general in the film “We Were Soldiers,” starring Mel Gibson.