[1]

THAM HUY VU

The SERIOUS CRIMES of HO CHI MINH

and
The VIETNAMESE COMMUNIST PARTY
against
The VIETNAMESE PEOPLE

Xay Dung

2018

[2]
 The Serious Crimes of Ho Chi Minh and
The Vietnamese Communist Party against
The Vietnamese People
by
THAM HUY VU

ISBN 978-09896535-3-4
Library of Congress Control Number:
2018909478

Printed in the United States of America

[3]
 Contents

Dedications and acknowledgements..…………….……....04

Preface…………………………………………..…. ….…06
01. Relationship between Ho Chi Minh and the
Vietnamese Communist Party ………………… ……. 11
02. Elimination of Political Opponents. ……………….....28
03. Anti-French Resistance War.……………………....... .54
04. Vietnam War and Paris Peace Accord …………….….71
05. Cambodia and Vietnam War………………………..…92
06. Land Reform Revolution in the North Vietnam …….110
07. A Hearing of the Special People’s Court at
Son Lung Village…….…………………………….....135
08. Tet Offensive Massacre at Hue ………………….. .. 148
09. Memoir of a Survival Victim of the Tet Offensive
Massacre at Hue ….…………….………………….…165
10. Concentrated Reeducation Camps………………. ....186
11. Currency Exchanges in Vietnam after 1975………. 206
12. Industry and Commerce Reform ………………….. ..215
13. New Economic Zones in South Vietnam after
1975……………………………………..………..... . 228
14. Economic Subsidy Period …………………………. .239
15. From the Diplomatic Note 1958 to the Secret
Chengdu Conference 1990………………. ……....... 259
16. The most serious crimes of Ho and his communist
Men…….………………….. …………….……...... 278
Epilogue …….…………….……………………………. .300
Book order….………………………………….………. 304

[4]
Dedications and Acknowledgements
I dedicate this book to:

 The souls of hundreds of thousands of the

soldiers, cadres and officials of the Former Republic of
Vietnam, who sacrificed their lives in the war against the
invasion of Vietnamese communists to defend the
Freedom, Democracy, and Human Rights for the South
Vietnamese people.
 The souls of thirty-nine New Zealand
soldiers and civilians, 351 Thai soldiers, 521 Australian
soldiers, 4,687 Korean soldiers, and 58,282 American
soldiers and civilians who came to my country and
sacrificed their lives to help my people fight against
Vietnamese Communist Forces, and defend the Freedom,
Democracy, and Human Rights of my people during the
time between 1955 and 1975.
 The souls of all my unfortunate compatriots
who perished in the sea, as well as by land, on their way to
seek freedom in the Free World after April 1975.
 The souls of the Vietnamese who had
followed the fabricated propagandas of Ho and his men
and had wastefully sacrificed themselves to them but still
thought to have sacrificed their lives to fight against the
Republic of Vietnam and its Allies and to save the
country.
 The soul of my wife, Nguyet-Hong Le, who
had to bear all kinds of bitterness; worked hard to feed my
three children, visited and fed me during my five years in
concentration camps of Vietnamese Communists. Without
her, I would have surely died in the hands of the
Vietnamese Communists a long time ago.
[5]
 I acknowledge:

 All of the wounded and disabled soldiers of

the Republic of Vietnam who had sacrificed parts of their
bodies to defending the freedom of South Vietnam before
1975 and are still living in the country under the feud of
the Vietnamese communist government.
 All of the soldiers and officials of the United
States of America who had come to South Vietnam before
April 1975 to help the Republic of Vietnam fight against
the invasion of the Republic Democratic of Vietnam or
North Vietnam Communists.
 The American Government and People, who
allowed and helped my family and I resettle in America
and live happily and freely under the shade of the Statue
of Liberty.
 My Vietnamese and American friends who
helped me a lot during the time I was writing this book.
 My granddaughters, Christina Vu and Vivian
Nguyen, who read and edited my book. Without their help
my book may not be published in the 2018.
 Mr. Han Pham and Mr. Nhuan Le who
helped me with layout and publishing the book.
 All of the authors who have articles or
illustrations to be quoted in my book. It is necessary to say
that: “Please forgive me for doing so without your
previous approvals.”

Tham Huy Vu

[6]
 Preface
In the olden day of my country Vietnam, we told
a fable, “Five Blind Soothsayers Touching an
Elephant”. This is the story.

“There were five blind men working as

soothsayers in a rural market. One day, they heard the
people in their market telling each other that there was an
elephant from a circus passing through the market. Being
blind from birth and growing up in the countryside, they
were only able to understand something they could hear
or touch. They knew what an elephant was but they had
never had a chance to touch one. In their imaginations,
they believed an elephant must be a huge animal, but they
could not imagine its shape or its size. So, when the circus
elephant was nearby, their curiosity was aroused. They
pooled their money and then gave it to the mahout and
asked him to stop his elephant right at the market so that
they might touch it.

[7]
 Their request was accepted and they had an
opportunity to touch an elephant. After touching the
elephant, they got together and talked with one another
about the elephant’s shape:
The first who touched the elephant’s trunk said:
“An elephant is like a giant bloodsucker.”
The second who touched the elephant’s tusk
said: “An elephant is like a bamboo carrying pole with a
sharp end!”
The third who touched a foot of the elephant
argued: “Both of you are wrong. An elephant is like a
pillar of a medium-sized house.”
The fourth who touched the elephant’s tail
retorted: “The elephant is just as simple as a feather
duster.”
The fifth who touched an ear of the elephant
exclaimed: “All of you are wrong. The elephant is like a
large rice paper fan.”

Each of the five soothsayers had a chance to

touch just only a separate part of the elephant; therefore,
each of them believed the elephant’s shape that he touched
and described was more accurate than the others because
[8]
he touched it with his own hands. For that reason, they got
into a fight.”
The reason I mention the fable above here is that,
I would like to tell my readers that, an elephant itself has
many different parts and the five soothsayers in the fable
did not describe all parts of the elephant but only the one
that each of them had a chance to touch. It is similar to the
fable, Ho Chi Minh and his communist men caused many
serious crimes against the Vietnamese people, but in my
book I did not report all of their crimes but only the ones
that I was either a victim or a witness during the time I
was living in Vietnam.
In 1945, right after seizing power, Ho and his
Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP), also known as
Vietminh, killed a lot of people who were accused of as
hunting dogs or henchmen of French Colonialists or
Japanese Militarists.
In late 1945, Ho and his men began eliminating
many members of the Vietnamese Nationalist Party (VNP)
and opponent political groups by accusing them of as
reactionaries, traitors, unpatriotic Vietnamese and so on.
They tied them up and threw them into the Red River.
In 1945-1946, almost every day in the rainy
season, I saw several distended dead bodies that drifted
cumbrously with the currents of the Red River. According
to reliable resources, these dead bodies were the VNP’s
members and other parties to be killed by Vietminh.
In 1954, a Land Reform Campaign launched in
Lam Thao district including my village by Ho and his
men, in which my parents and several farmers of my
village were classified into the landlord class, and were
[9]
denounced or “đấu tố” by poor farmers. Their houses and
rice fields were confiscated and distributed to poor
peasants.
In mid 1954, when I was a student of the Xuan
Huy Middle School, I had a chance to attend a hearing of
the Special People’s Court at Son Lung village. A farmer
named Nguyen Viet Dao, a landowner of Son Lung
village, was on the trial for the exploited crime of poor
farmers. He was sentenced to death and was executed right
on the post. I saw with my own eyes Nguyen Viet Dao
who was writhing on the grassplot for a few seconds then
laid motionless.
After being occupying by the Northern
Communist Forces in April 1975, my southern
compatriots and my family had to live in the so-called
Socialist Republic of Vietnam in which the Vietnamese
Communist Party carried out many programs such as
Concentrated Education, Currency Exchanges, Industry
and Commerce Reform, Economic Zones, Economic
Subsidy and so on. According to senior communist
leaders, these programs were necessary to put the whole
country in a fast- strong-steady progress to the Socialist. In
practice, they put hundreds of thousands of people in the
South into a destitute circumstance, and transformed
Saigon City from the “Precious Pearl of Far East” before
1975 into a “Dead City” after 1975.
After April 1975, the Socialist Republic of
Vietnam was called by my people: “The largest prison in
the world” and members of the Vietnamese Communist
Party were called “the fiendish jailers”.

[10]
 In short, I had more than twenty years to live
together with Vietnamese Communists; therefore, I am
able to say that I could be one of the Vietnamese who
deeply know the true face of Ho and his men. For that
reason, all of the crimes of Ho and his communist men
committed that I mention in this book are the true ones,
because they are the ones I had to face and pay by blood
and tears of my family and myself.
During the thirty years living as a political
refugee in the United States of America, I tried my best to
look for a book in English that described honestly about
the crimes of Ho and the VCP, but I failed. Probably,
there’s no any book like that to be published. This is the
reason that forced me to write this book in English to help
young Vietnamese generations who cannot read
proficiently Vietnamese but English only know clearly the
true face of Ho and the VCP and a darkest historical
period of the Vietnamese People.
When knowing them clearly, they will recognize
Ho and the VCP are the dangerous foe who caused many
serious crimes and disasters to Vietnamese people. At the
same time, they also clearly know their predecessors, the
former soldiers, officials and cadres of the Republic of
Vietnam, were people who struggled arduously and
untiringly against Ho and the VCP in order to protect the
Republic of Vietnam’s people to live in a society in which
freedom, democracy and human rights were respected.

Tham Huy Vu
Fall 2018

[11]
 Relationship between Ho Chi Minh and
The Vietnamese Communist Party
According to books and newspapers published
inside and outside Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh (Ho) was the
first founder of the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP).
Therefore, the biography of Ho and the relationship
between him and the VCP is going to be briefly reported
in this chapter.
Ho’s biography:
Ho Chi Minh was born Nguyen
Sinh Cung in 1890 in his mother’s village
of Hoang Tru. Cung’s father was Nguyen
Sinh Huy or Nguyen Sinh Sac (1862-1929)
and Cung’s mother was Hoang Thị Loan
(1868-1901). Both Hoang Tru and Kim
Lien village belonged to the Nam Dan
district, Nghe An Province.

Cung was the third of four children of Mr. &

Mrs. Nguyen. His oldest sister was Nguyen Thi Thanh or
Nguyen Thi Bach Lien (1884-1954). His elder brother was
Nguyen Sinh Khiem or Nguyen Tat Đạt (1888-1950). His
youngest brother was Nguyen Sinh Nhuan or Nguyen Sinh
Xin, who just lived for a year (1900-1901).
As a young child, Cung studied Chinese
characters at home with his father before moving to a
formal Chinese character class in the local area. Cung was
intelligent and quickly mastered Chinese writing. On the
other hand, He also studied Vietnamese. Cung therefore
[12]
was proficient in both reading and writing Vietnamese as
well as Chinese.
In 1898, Nguyen Sinh Sac assumed a low-rank
mandarin of the Nguyen Court in Hue. On this occasion,
Sac took his wife, Hoang Thị Loan, and his two sons,
Khiem and Cung, to Hue to live together with him.
In 1901, Sac’s wife, Loan, died of an illness after
giving birth to Nguyen Sinh Nhuan. Because Sac was
unable to work for the Nguyen Court and take care of his
three children at the same time, he therefore sent them
back to Nghe An to live with their maternal grandmother
in Hoang Tru village where Khiem and Cung had to take
turns to embrace Nhuan to the mothers whose babies were
breast-fed to beg some milk for their young brother. For
that reason, Nhuan’s nickname was Nguyen Sinh “Xin” or
“Beggar”. At the same time, Khiem and Cung continued
to attend a Chinese characters class and their names were
to be changed; Nguyen Sinh Khiem became Nguyen Tat
Đat and Nguyen Sinh Cung became Nguyen Tat Thanh.
In 1906, Dat and Thanh were sent back to Hue to
live with his father again and to go to the local elementary
school then to Quoc Hoc High School. However, Thanh
was expelled from Quoc Hoc not long after that.
According to the Vietnamese communist historians, the
reason Thanh was expelled from school because he was
involved in an anti-tax demonstration of poor farmers in
Hue in 1908.
In 1910, after being expelled from school,
Thanh traveled to Phan Thiet, where he took a job as a
teacher at the Duc Thanh elementary school where he
taught Chinese and Vietnamese for students of the 3rd and
[13]
4th grade. He spent about six months at Duc Thanh, and
then left for Saigon.
In 1911, while living in Saigon, Thanh got a job
as a kitchen helper on a French steamer and when the ship
returned to Marseille where he wrote a petition to the
French President asking to be a student at the French
Colonial Administrative School that professionally trained
young men who came from colonies of France. After
graduating from this school they would became officials
and served the French colonialist authorities. Below is the
hand writing petition of Thanh:

His petition was rejected and he therefore had to

continue working on a ship that travelled around the
world, including some cities in the United States where he
claimed to work as a baker for a hotel, a gardener for a
wealthy family, a line worker for General Motors, a waiter

[14]
for a restaurant, and so on. He also claimed to work in
some cities in the United Kingdom.
In 1817, Thanh left United Kingdom for France
where he joined a Vietnamese revolutionary group that
included Phan Chu Chinh, Phan Van Truong, and Nguyen
The Truyen. This group wrote and published several
newspaper articles advocating Vietnamese independence
under the pseudonym Nguyen Ai Quoc, which means
“Nguyen Patriot”. Thanh was an apprentice and regularly
delivered the group’s articles to newspaper offices.
Sometimes, Thanh convinced editors that Nguyen Ai
Quoc was his own name. Thanh became an active socialist
at the time and used the name of Nguyen Ai Quoc to join
the French Communist Party. This name would later
figure prominently in his rise to power.
In 1923, he became interested in Communism as
a political power. Nguyen Ai Quoc, under a new Chinese
name of Chen Vang, traveled to Moscow for the first time
and Quoc was trained as an agent of the Communist
International Organization (CIO), also known as
Communist International or Comintern. Quoc quickly
became an active member of the Comintern. From June 17
to July 8, 1924, he attended the Fifth Congress of the
Comintern in Moscow, deepening his commitment to
Communism and confirming his belief in his ability to rise
to power.
Ho Chi Minh and the formation of the
Vietnamese Revolution Young Association
In 1924, the Comintern decided to launch a
national liberation movement in Indochina (Vietnam,
Cambodia and Laos). The person who was selected to
[15]
carry out this mission was Quoc, because he was a
Vietnamese and a Comintern insider who could do and
complete whatever the Comintern asked him. And the
thing that the Comintern asked him to do was to infiltrate
into the Vietnamese nationalist revolutionary groups or
parties to seize the power then transform them into
communist organizations.
At the time, there was an advisory team of the
Soviet Union headed by Mikhail Borodin (1884-1951)
which was working with Sun Yat Sen, the president of the
Republic of China and the head of the Chinese Nationalist
Party, in Canton. Taking advantage of this occasion, Quoc
was appointed by the Comintern to assume the position as
a Chinese interpreter of this team. In reality, his main
mission was to set up a pro-communist-Vietnamese
organization in Canton.
At Canton Quoc changed his name to Ly Thuy
and began contacting several Vietnamese revolutionaries
who were living as political exiles in Canton, convincing
them to join his pro-communist organization that was
called the “Viet Nam Thanh Nien Cach Mang Hoi” or
“Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth Association” (VRYA).
The mission of this organization was to propagandize the
communism and mobilize Vietnamese rising up to fight
against the French colonialists. Because of that, the VRYA
is considered as the first Vietnamese communist
organization established by Quoc or Ly Thuy. It was also
considered to be the predecessor of the Vietnamese
Communist Party. Right after forming, the VRYA began
returning its members to Vietnam to recruit new members

[16]
and form all of the local association’s committees such as
regions, provinces and districts.
From 1925 to 1927, the regional association
committees recruited so many new members and opened
several courses to train them. The lectures for these
courses were drawn out from a book titled “Đường Cách
Mạng” or the “Revolutionary Path” written by Quoc. The
French colonialist authorities inside the country closely
kept tract of the VRYA and several its members were
arrested, sentenced to life imprisonment or executed.
In April 1927, when Chiang Kai-Shek, then
commander of the Chinese National Army, made an anti-
communist coup repressing Chinese communists in
Canton, members of the VRYA in Canton also faced
reprisals. Mikhail Borodin was officially allowed to return
to Russia, but Ly Thuy had to flee to the Soviet Union.
Several key members of the VRYA were arrested and its
Central Association Committee in Canton was forced to
evacuate to Hong Kong.
In 1928, Quoc was appointed as an envoy of the
Communist International in South Asia. He left Moscow
by the way of Berlin, Switzerland, and Italy where he
sailed to Bangkok, the capital of Thailand. During the time
in Thailand, Quoc was staying in the village named
Nachok where there were several Vietnamese-Thai
citizens. At the time in this village, Quoc began setting up
a communist movement in Thailand.
In May 1929, the first congress of the VRYA
was held in Hong Kong. At the congress, the
representatives of the northern regional association
committees recommended for dismissing the VRYA and
[17]
establishing the Indochinese Communist Party, but their
recommendation was rejected. They therefore stood up
and left the meeting.
Responding to the walkout of the northern
delegation, the congress issued a resolution which stated
that “The general conference considered that, a
revolutionary organization could not accept any
undisciplined activity of its members. For that reason, the
three members of the northern regional delegation were
eternally excluded from the Association.”
The first congress of the VRYA did not achieve
any success. And the exclusion of nort hern
representatives presaged its eventual fragmentation in the
near future.
In June 1929, the northern regional committee of
the VRYA gave a conference in which it officially
declared to dissolve the association then establish the
Indochinese Communist Party (ICP).
In September 1929, the Central regional
committee of the VRYA held a meeting and stated to
dismiss the VRYA then set up the Indochinese Communist
of League (ICL).
In October 1929, the southern regional
committee of the VRYA also declared to dismiss the
VRYA and established the Annam Communist Party
(ACP).
At the end of 1929, the Vietnamese
Revolutionary Youth Association was completely
disbanded and its three regional associations became three
different Vietnamese communist organizations: the ICP in

[18]
the North, the ICL in the Central, and the ACP in the
South.
This situation could be accepted by the
Comintern. For that reason a letter was sent to the
Indochinese communists, the Comintern emphasized that:
“The important obligation of all Indochinese communists
at the time is to build up a communist party in full of
proletarian characteristic. It means that a communist
party belonging to Indochinese people and this party is the
sole one in Indochina.”
Ho Chi Minh and the formation of the
Vietnamese Communist Party:
In late 1929, the Comintern recalled Quoc back
to Hong Kong from Thailand to unify the three different
Vietnamese communist organizations into a single one.
Quoc held and presided over the unification conference.
Three delegations, the ICP, the ACP and the ICL, were
invited to the conference, but for some reason the ICL
could not attend; therefore, the conference had only the
ICP and ACP attending. At the conference, Quoc strongly
criticized the factionalism and localism of these parties.
After a much debate, the delegates agreed to merge ICP
and ACP into a single party called the Vietnamese
Communist Party (VCP). The conference also approved
the party’s political programs drafted by Ho. Later the
ICL requested to become a member of the Vietnamese
Communist Party and its request was approved.
At the First Central Committee Conference in
November 1930 in Hong Kong, by the advice of the
Communist International, the VCP changed into the
Indochinese Communist Party (ICP). At the conference,
[19]
Tran Phu was elected to be the General Secretary of the
ICP.
Major events in the life of Ho:
In June 1931, Quoc was arrested and found
guilty of subversion in Hong Kong. On this occasion, the
French police obtained the permission from the British
authorities in Hong Kong for his extradition to Vietnam,
because Quoc had been condemned to death in absentia by
the court of Vinh Province on November 10, 1929.
Thanks to the help of a famous British lawyer, Frank
Losevy, Quoc regained his freedom.
Soon after being released, Quoc left Hong Kong
for Singapore where Quoc was arrested again and was sent
back to Hong Kong; however, Quoc was released just a
few days after that. A rumor at that time has it that, Quoc
was released because he agreed to work for the British
Intelligence Service.
In 1932, Quoc returned to Moscow where he
spent several years for recovering his tuberculosis and
studied at the Lenin Institute. During this period, Quoc
lost his positions in the Comintern, because he was to be
dubiously betrayed this organization. Quoc therefore had
to appear before a disciplinary committee; however, two
of three members of this committee were in sympathy
with him so he was acquitted.
In 1935, the seventh Congress of the Comintern
was held in Moscow where Quoc was living so he was
officially nominated by the Indochinese Communist Party
as one of its representatives to attend the congress.
However, the nomination was rejected by the Comintern
with the reason that: “Quoc would have to study seriously
[20]
in the next two years to prepare for a special mission. He
therefore could not assume any job at the time.”
In 1938, Quoc traveled to China again and served
as a military officer in the Chinese Communist Armed
Forces. During that time, his name was Ho Quang and his
military rank was a major.
In 1940, France in Europe was defeated by
Germany, and French colonial authorities in Indochina
agreed to allow Japanese to occupy Indochina under the
condition that the French colonial administration in
Indochina not be dismantled. Quoc and his communist
men considered that, it was an opportunity to return to
Vietnam and launch a movement against both French and
Japanese.
On 28 January 1941, Quoc set foot on
Vietnamese soil for the first time in thirty years, and
resided in the cave of Pac Bo in Cao Bang Province.
On 19 May 1941, Quoc and his comrades
formed an organization called “Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong
Minh Hoi” or “League for the Independence of Vietnam”
(LIV), also known for short, the Viet Minh or the
Vietminh Front. The reason that made Quoc and his
comrades form the new organization was that most
Vietnamese at the time loved their country and wanted to
join a political party to fight against French colonialists
and Japanese militarists, but they hated communists.
Therefore, if Quoc and his communist men continued to
lead the revolution against the French and Japanese to gain
independence for Vietnam under the name of the
Vietnamese Communist Party or Indochinese Communist
Party, they would not receive a large support from the
[21]
Vietnamese people. The League for the Independence of
Vietnam or Vietminh Front was considered as a
coordinated front that consisted of several political groups,
organizations, and parties and the VCP or ICP was only a
member of the front. In fact, the Vietminh Front was only
a camouflaged organization of the ICP or VCP that Ho
used to fascinate other political groups or parties to join in
the front.
In 1942, Quoc traveled to China to seek help for
his Vietminh Front. He was arrested and jailed by
President Chiang Kai-Shek’s local government. During his
time in prison, Quoc began using the pseudonym Ho Chi
Minh (Ho). After several months in the Chinese prison, his
comrades obtained his release by a negotiation with Chang
Fa-K’uei, a warlord in South China, with the promises that
Ho would support the interests of Chiang Kai-Shek’s
government in Indochina in the future. Right after being
released, Ho returned to Vietnam.
Not long after this, Ho travelled to China again
to accompany William Shaw, an American lieutenant pilot
of a B25 airplane, to Kunming, a city in China where the
American Air Forces High Command base was located.
Shaw’s plane was shot down by Japanese troops and he
had been rescued by Ho’s guerrillas. In this journey, Ho
had a chance to meet with General Claire Lee Chennault,
the commander of American Air Forces in China. On this
occasion, Ho asked Chennault to give him a photograph of
Chennault with Chennault’s signature on it. The reason Ho
did that was that he would use the photograph as a specific
evidence to show off and propagandize dishonestly that he
and his front were supported by the American
government.
In this travel, Ho also met with an officer of the
Office of Strategic Services (OSS), Archimedes Patti. In
[22]
the meeting, Ho offered to provide intelligence to the
allies and to collaborate with them against the Japanese.
Patti accepted his request. Not long after that the OSS sent
a military team to Ho’s guerrilla base in Vietnam to train
his men and a medical doctor to treat Ho for malaria and
dysentery.

In 1945, there were two events that helped Ho

and his front eliminate their two main adversaries. The
first was the French colonialist troops in Indochina were
defeated entirely by Japanese troops in March and the
second was the Japanese troops were forced to surrender
unconditionally to the Allies in July by the United States
dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
On August 16, 1945, Ho and his Viet Minh Front
held a general meeting at Tan Trao in Tuyen Quang to
establish a Provisional Revolutionary Government to
prepare for an uprising to seize power. Ho was elected as
president of the new government.
On August 19, 1945, the local Viet Minh front
rose up and seized power in Hanoi without a single bullet
being fired or a drop of blood being shed and even without
Ho. The reason they easily succeeded was that both
French and the Japanese were already out of power.

[23]
 On September 2, 1945, before an enormous
crowd gathered in Ba Đình Square in Hanoi, Ho read the
Declaration of Independence and gave Vietnam a new
name: The Republic Democratic of Vietnam (RDV). In
his statement, Ho paraphrased a sentence from the U.S.
Declaration of Independence: “All men are born equal: the
Creator has given us inviolable rights, life, liberty, and
happiness…”
On November 11, 1945, in order to make
Vietnamese people believe that Ho and his men were not
communists to attract their supports, Ho issued a
communiqué dissolving the ICP, but in reality, the ICP
was not dissolved but just changed its name to the
Marxism Research Association of Indochina (MRAI) and
continued to control and led the RDV government.
On March 3, 1946, Ho signed an agreement with
the French in which the Republic Democratic of Vietnam
was recognized as a free country in the Indochinese
Federation and in the block of French Union with the
privacy of the new government, parliament, army and
financial affairs. In return, the RDV government agreed to
allow 15,000 French troops to enter the North Vietnam
replacing 200,000 Chinese Nationalist troops that were
currently present in Vietnam to disarm the Japanese
troops. On the other hand, France promised to withdraw
all of its troops within five years. The implicit reason that
made Ho agree to sign this agreement was that, he wanted
to replace 200,000 soldiers of China whom Ho considered
as his country’s inherited enemy by 15,000 soldiers of
France whom he considered as Vietnam’s sometime
enemy.
On May 31, 1946, Ho traveled to Paris, with the
RDV delegation headed by Pham Van Dong to attend the
Fontainebleau Conference. The delegation did not harvest

[24]
any significant achievement, for that reason, Ho sent it
back to Vietnam, but Ho stayed in Paris to make a contact
with French politicians for his last effort to avoid a war in
Vietnam. Finally Ho achieved a small success that was a
provisional agreement signed between Ho and Moutet, the
French minister of overseas, at the midnight on September
19. The agreement could be considered as a gift from
Moutet to him before he returned to Vietnam.
In December 1946, after the 15,000 French
troops completely replaced the 200,000 Chinese
nationalist troops in the North, there were several armed
conflicts between the French and the Vietminh troops in
Haiphong and Hanoi. The French troops were victorious
and forced the Vietminh to withdraw from Hanoi to the
mountain areas in North Vietnam.
On December 19, 1946, right after an orderly
withdrawal from Hanoi, Ho launched a National
Resistance War Appeal in which he called upon all
Vietnamese to stand up to fight against French colonialist
and save their homeland. The war between French and
Vietminh officially began.
In 1950, Ho secretly went to Russia to meet
Joseph Stalin, the president of the Soviet Union and the
highest leader of the Comintern. Although Ho was a senior
member of the Comintern and the current president of the
Republic Democratic of Vietnam but Stalin, the head of
the Soviet Union, gave him a cool reception. On this
occasion, Stalin ordered him to restore the ICP and carry
out the Land Reform Revolution (LRR) as soon as
possible.
In February 1951, Ho and his men gave a
General Conference in the mountain area of Tuyen Quang,
one of the Northern provinces that was controlled by Ho’s
government and considered as their safe area. The
conference concluded that the leadership role of a
[25]
communist party in the resistance against French was an
extremely important thing and decided that the ICP was
not necessary to stay behind the scenes anymore. For that
reason, the Marxism Research Association of Indochina
was changed into the Vietnamese Worker Party (VWP)
instead of the Indochinese Communist Party and began
running publicly.
In 1953, Ho and his Vietnamese Worker Party
began launching several large campaigns to carry ou
t the LRR in the areas where they entirely controlled. In
these campaigns, hundreds of thousands of innocent
peasants were killed by Ho and his comrades.
In 1954, an international conference was held in
Geneva, Switzerland, to seek a solution to end the war
between Vietnam and France. In order to end the war, the
conference divided Vietnam into two parts at the 17th
parallel, Communist North and Nationalist South. The
conference also set a nationwide election in 1956 for the
reunification of Vietnam. Thanks to this agreement, Ho
and his communist men completely occupied North
Vietnam with around 15,000,000 people and 60,900
square miles where they could impose the communist
regime and North Vietnam became a communist-led one-
party state from that time onward.
After knowing that the national election
mentioned in the agreement would not occur, Ho and the
political extremists on his side determined to use violence
to reunify the country. In 1957, they ordered their
supporters, both men and women who had been left
behind in the South, to rise up in a rebellion against the
Vietnamese nationalist government. At the same time, Ho
also ordered most political and military cadres who were
regrouped in 1954 in the North to return to the South to
lead and support the uprising.
[26]
 In 1960, Le Duan, a senior member of the
politburo of the Central Committee, was officially appointed
to be the leader chief of the Vietnamese Worker Party and
with the help of Le Duc Tho; the Central Organization head
of the party, Le Duan usurped the power of Ho Chi Minh.
After that Ho became figurehead rather than actually
governing the party and the country.
In the same year of 1960, with the ambition to
control completely the political battles as well as the
military battles inside the country, Duan and Tho forced
Ho to take an extended vacation to China. The ostensive
reason was to restore his health, but the real one was to
prevent him from intervening in their day-to-day affairs.
In early 1968, Ho was recalled to Vietnam from
China to read the New Year Greeting. In actuality it is was
a secret message sent through the Hanoi Radio Station for
calling the communist armed forces in the South to launch
a campaign called the New Year (Tet) General Offensive
and Uprising. This was the last time, Ho made a public
appearance.
In September 1969, the northern people were
informed that President Ho had died from heart failure in
Hanoi on September 3, 1969.
Some mysteries about Ho were disclosed after
his death:
Just a few people in Vietnam knew that in 1967,
Le Duan, and Le Duc Tho had made an unsuccessful
attempt to assassinate Ho. The plot was reported in detail
by Vu Ky, Ho’s confidential secretary, in an article in the
Tet 1998 issue of Nghe An Magazine. Thanks to the
unsuccessful assassinate, Ho lived for two more years.
Ho’s actual death date was September 2, 1969,
but because that day was also the Vietnamese National
Day; therefore, the Politburo of the Vietnamese Worker
Party decided to announce the Ho’s death on the following
[27]
day (September 3, 1969). Twenty years later the Politburo
had officially corrected this date (September 2, 1989)...
According to the book named “Research into Hu
Zhi Ming’s Biography” or “Ho Chi Minh Sinh Bình
Khảo” written by a Taiwanese professor, Hu Junxinong or
Ho Tuan Hung , and published in 2008, Nguyen Ai Quoc
or Ho Chi Minh was killed by his tuberculosis in 1933.
Soon after he died his position in the Vietnamese
proletarian revolution was secretly replaced by a member
of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) named Hu Jizhang
of Ho Tap Chuong or. The secret reason of this fraudulent
exchange is that, the CCP would like to take advantage of
Quoc or Ho’s death to replace him by one of its members
who would run the Vietnamese proletarian revolution in
the future under its leadership.
However, according to several journalists and
writers, who knew Ho for years and had many
opportunities to get in touch and live together with him
such as journalist Bùi Tín, writer Vũ Thư Hiên, writer
Trần Đĩnh, a senior interpreter of Ho’s colonel Đoàn Sự
and so on, all of the arguments that Ho Tuan Hung
mentioned in his book to prove Nguyen Ai Quoc or Ho
Chi Minh after 1933 was Ho Tap Chuong who was his
paternal uncle are childish and reasonless. In other words,
“Ho Chi Minh’s Life Research” is an unreliable book.
Conclusion
The details of Ho’s life clearly prove that he was
an ardent henchman of the Comintern and a devoted
communist whose final purpose was the worldwide
victory of communism. In order to achieve this purpose
Ho did not mind how many people he had to kill.

[28]
 Elimination of Political Opponents

Marxism advocated a class war that would lead

humanity to a classless society in which all property
would be publicly owned. There would be no border
between countries, no discrimination between race and
race and no exploitation between men and men. All people
would work according to their abilities and would be paid
according to their needs. This world is called: “The
Harmonious World.”
Marxism was first carried out successfully by
Vladimir Lenin and his communist cohorts in Russia in
1917. They absolutely believed that Communism was the
best philosophy in the world. It alone would bring
humanity to a happy life. On the other hand, Lenin and his
communist comrades also realized that the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and the Soviet Union
alone could not lead the whole world to the Harmonious
World. In order to achieve their ultimate goal they needed
a large cooperation of all countries in the world.
Therefore, Lenin and the CPSU set up a Communist
International Organization called the Komintern or
Comintern in 1919 to propagandize the communism
throughout all countries in the world. All of its activities
of this organization were managed and financed by the
CPUS. At the same time the Comintern also encouraged
and support all other countries in the world to form their
own communist parties which would cooperate with the
CPSU to build the Harmonious World.

[29]
 For the above reason, several Vietnamese were
recruited and well-trained by the Comintern in Moscow.
Among them were Ho Chi Minh, Nguyen Thi Minh Khai
and Tran Van Giau and so on. They became the faithful
disciples of Marxism and Leninism and absolutely
believed that the Communism was the best way that could
lead Vietnam as well as others in the world to walk abreast
into the “Harmonious World”.
The communist followers absolutely believe that
only their communism can bring people into the
Harmonious World in which they would have peace in
their minds and happiness in their life. They also thought
that all other doctrines are utopian and the existence of
these doctrines and their followers would be a large
obstacle to prevent communists in the world to achieve
their goal. For that reason, these doctrines as well as their
followers need to be eliminated. In other words, if did not
eliminate all opponent groups and parties, the Marxism or
Communism would not achieve great success.
The ultimate target of Ho and his communist
men was a victor of communism in Vietnam. If they did
not eliminate all opponent parties and neutralize all
religions in Vietnam they would not achieve their goal. As
long as these parties and organizations continued to exist,
the National Revolution of the Vietnamese communists
could not be successful and the obligation that the
Communist International entrusted to them could not be
completed.
The ways that Ho and his communist men often
used to eliminate leaders of opponent political parties and
religions were to falsely accuse them of having committed
[30]
some crimes such as traitors, reactionaries or henchmen of
foreign countries, then secretly cutting off their heads,
disemboweling them, and drowning them in rivers or seas.
In this way, they could delude public opinion from the
truth. Through these political murders, Ho and his men
had abolished thousands of members and leaders of the
nationalist parties and religions.
One important thing that needs to be mentioned
here is that, in the killing context, Ho and his comrades
usually applied an unwritten principle: “It would rather
kill wrongly ten than to release wrongly one.” Because of
that, countless innocent Vietnamese were killed by Ho and
his communist party.
Following are some cases in which the political
and religious leaders were murdered by Ho and his
communist party. All following information mentioned
here are extracted or quoted from reliable documents,
newspaper articles, memoirs published by eyewitnesses
and so on.
Ho betrayed Phan Boi Chau (1867-1940):
The first victim of Ho and his communist
comrades was Phan Boi Chau who was
a well-known Vietnamese nationalist
and the first founder of the “Duy Tân
Hội” or “Association for
Modernization”, an anti-French
organization. Phan also was the
founder of the “Phong Trào Đông Du”
or “Going East Movement,” an
organization in encouraging Vietnamese youth to go to
Japan for study. Being relentlessly hunted by the French
[31]
colonialist authorities in Vietnam, Phan had to escape to
Japan in 1905 where he lived as a political refugee. In
1908 when being deported by the Japanese government
Phan traveled to China. In 1912 Phan formed “Vietnam
Quang Phục Hội” or “the Association for Vietnam
Restoration”, a new anti-French organization to replace
the “Association for Modernization”.
On the way from Hangzhou to Guangzhou on
June 6, 1925, Phan was kidnapped by French agents at the
Shanghai train station. A French military ship transported
him to Vietnam where he was convicted of treason and
sentenced to life imprisonment, but his sentence was
commuted to house arrest in Hue.
At first, no one could definitively find out who
had sold information of Phan’s journey to French agents,
but later there were several reliable newspapers and
documents which indicated that the main culprits were Ly
Thuy (an alias of Nguyen Ai Quoc) and Lam Duc Thu (an
alias of Nguyen Cong Vien), a close friend of Thuy.
Among these documents was the “Thành Ngữ
Danh Nhân Tự Điển” or “Idioms–Classic Reference–
Famous Man Dictionary” written by Trinh Van Thanh and
published by Hanoi Literature Publishing House in 2008
with the official permit of the Vietnamese communist
authorities. On page 742, the author had confirmed that
the perpetrator of this crime was Nguyen Ai Quoc or Ho
Chi Minh. In other words, the Vietnamese Communist
Authorities had semiofficially admitted the main culprit of
the betrayal of Phan Boi Chau was Ly Thuy, an alias of
Ho at the time.

[32]
 In his own book “No More Vietnam” President
Richard M. Nixon wrote: “In 1925, he (Ho) betrayed
Vietnam’s most prominent nationalist, Phan Boi Chau, to
the French secret police. Communist historians stated that
Phan walked right into a trap, but did not mention Ho had
set it up, for a payoff of 100,000 Indochinese piasters. At
the time, Ho justified his treachery by telling his comrades
that, Phan was a nationalist, not a Communist, and that he
would be a dangerous rival of the VCP in the future.”
(page 33)
Tran Van Giau and Nguyen Bình chicaned
spiritual and political leaders of the South:
After seizing the power in Hanoi, Ho sent Tran
Van Giau (1911-2010) a senior communist leader and
Nguyen Binh (1909-1951), a general of Vietminh Armed
Forces to the South for seizing power. Not long after
putting their feet on the South, they were aware that the
overwhelming political and military forces of the
Religious Sects and Nationalist Parties in the South could
destroy their control power in the South. They therefore
sought the support from the Nationalist spiritual, political
and military leaders of the United National Front and the
Council of Cochin China. At the Cao Dai Head Quarters
of Militiamen with the present of members of the United
National Front and Council of Cochin China, Tran and
Nguyen earnestly preached national unity and solidarity.
With their rhetoric, they succeeded in convincing these
spiritual, political and military leaders to cede power to
them and dissolve their four militiamen divisions under
their command. Militiamen of these divisions were
allowed to return to their native villages and join local
[33]
militia and guerilla units. Only two companies were
retained to protect the Cao Dai Holly Site.
In fact this was only a trick of Tran and Nguyen
to eliminate them later. One of them was General Tran
Quang Vinh of Cao Dai who resigned from office and on
his way back to his Cao Dai Holly Site was arrested at
Cho Dem, Duc Hoa District, Long An Province by
disciples of Tran and Nguyen and abducted to the
Vietminh Headquarter in Dong Thap and then to a
communist guerrilla base in Ca Mau where he would be
executed. However, he was saved there by Nguyen Van
No, an old militiaman under his command.

Betraying the Vietnamese National Party’s

uprising:
According to Hoang Van Dao, a Vietnamese
historian, in the book Việt Nam Quốc Dân Đảng or
Vietnamese Nationalist Party (second reprint, Saigon,
1970, page 108) Ho and his communist comrades had used
the French colonialist authorities to eliminate the
Vietnamese Nationalist Party.
[34]
 When knowing the Vietnamese Nationalist Party
(VNP) was arranging a general uprising against French
colonialist authorities in February, 1930, the Vietnamese
Communists Party dropped a lot of anonymous leaflets in
several villages of the North. The apparent goal of these
leaflets was to call upon people in the countryside for
directly supporting the VNP’s uprising, but the secret one
was indirectly to let the French colonialist authorities
previously know the uprising of the VNP that would
happen in the very near future. For that reason the French
authorities launched a large campaign to hunt down the
members of the VNP. So many members of the VNP were
arrested and imprisoned; therefore, the uprising had to
start prematurely and fell into a bitter failure. The reason
that made Ho and the VCP do so was that, they wanted to
use the French colonialist authorities to eliminate the
VNP.
After the VNP being eliminated, the VCP would
become the only political party remaining in the country
and all patriotic Vietnamese who wanted to join a political
party to fight against the French colonists must join the
VCP. In other words, when informing the French
authorities the news of the VNP’s uprising, the VCP got
two great advantages, the first was to eliminate an
opponent political party and the second was to recruit a lot
of new members. This is an expedient to kill two birds
with a stone.
According to Chiang Yong Jing, the author of the
book, Ho Chi Minh in China, Nguyen Ai Quoc was
extremely happy when he heard the VNP’s uprising was
destroyed. He knew it would be a prime opportunity for
[35]
his VCP to fill in the vacuum left by the VNP. In a
circulated letter inside the party, Ho wrote that: “The
Uprising of the bourgeois class had lost its influences in
mobilizing the national liberation. For that reason our
party is now freely to recruit new members from the
worker and peasant class. And our party now becomes the
unique one to carry out and lead the revolution against the
imperialism.”
Attacking and occupying structures of other
parties
On September 1, 1945, after the so-called the
August Uprising, the Vietminh armed forces attacked and
occupied the base of the Vietnamese Nationalist Party at
Ninh Bình, and a few days later, the Secretary of the
Interior, Vo Nguyen Giap, signed Decree #8 to dismiss the
Nationalist Socialist Party and the Vietnamese Nationalist
Party with the reason that these parties had secret relations
with a foreign country that threatened the independence of
Vietnam.
On September 7, 1945, the Cuu Quoc newspaper
published an article related to the “divide and rule” policy
of Ho and the VCP. In the article they stated: “Under the
rule of Japanese in the past, several people were to be led
wrongly; therefore, they unintentionally joined in
reactionary parties. The government sympathizes with
their mistakes and is ready to pardon them except their
leaders who had a lot of treasonable actions.”
On 12 September 1954, the Secretary of the
Interior, Vo Nguyen Giap signed Decree #30, to dismiss
the “Viet Nam Hung Quoc Thanh Niên Hoi” or
“Vietnamese National Renaissance Youth Associate” and
[36]
“Viet Nam Thanh Nien Ai Quoc Hoi” or “Vietnamese
Patriot Youth Association” by asserting that the actions of
these associations harmed the independence of the
Republic Democratic of Vietnam.
On 12 September 1945, the Cuu Quoc newspaper
circulated information that three traitors were arrested by
the authorities. Among them was Pham Ngoc Han, the
leader of the Vietnamese Patriot Youth Association.
In the same month, Ho’s southern communist
comrades led by Tran Van Giau killed Mr. Bui Quang
Chieu (1872-1945), one of prominent leaders of the
Constitution Party. According to the letter dated 29 April
1999 of Dr. Henriette Bui (1906-2012), a daughter of
Chieu, to historian Hua Hoanh (1939-2003), Bui Quang
Chieu was killed by the order of Tran Van Giau, Chairman
of the “Ủy Ban Hành Chánh Lâm Thời Nam Bộ” or “The
Southern Provisional Council of Administration” at the
time.

Bui Quang Chieu and his family

Phu Nhuan Saigon in 1921
Mr. Bui was arrested together with his wife and
three sons at his home in Phu Lam, a suburb of Saigon,
[37]
and taken to the temporary Cho Dem prison where he was
killed and buried in the rear garden of the Pagoda Long
Tuyen.
After killing Bui, Giàu ordered his men to arrest
Bui’s oldest son who was a current medical doctor of the
Pulmonary Tuberculosis Hospital in Cho Lon then took
him together with his three young brothers to somewhere
then killed them all. In her letter to Hua Hoanh, Dr.
Henriette Bui also said that until 1999 she still did not
know why, when and where her four brothers were killed.
In the article named “From the Independence,
9/2/45, to the National Resistance, 12/19/46, Vietminh
destroyed to ashes the national solidarity to seize the
exclusive leadership” in Viet Nam newspaper, issue #
082201 on 8/22/2001, the historian Hua Hoanh wrote that:
“A living witness, Huy Vu, described about the murder in
his hometown of Hung Hoa, Tam Nong district, Phu Tho
province as follows:
“In August 1945, when Japan troops surrendered
to the Allies, Mr. Dong, a teacher of the local elementary
school, along with his comrades rose up and seized
control of Hung Hoa Township. A few days later, more
than ten people in the township were arrested by Dong
and his comrades, because they were accused of being
henchmen of the Japanese, or unpatriotic Vietnamese and
put directly into the local prison.
“In order to display the supremacy of the new
regime and to punish ‘unpatriotic Vietnamese’, the new
local authorities held a large meeting at the Flag-Tower
Park. With the help of their relatives, all the detainees
escaped successfully from the prison on the night before
[38]
the meeting given, except Mr. Can Ich Khiem who was
critically ill.
“On the day of the meeting, Mr. Khiem was
taken to the meeting. As soon as he appeared in the
meeting, all attending people began shouting, ‘Down with the
unpatriotic Vietnamese Can Ich Khiem!’ He was accused several
vague crimes that could not be verified. Finally, he was
sentenced to death. The verdict was carried out
immediately by a senior revolutionary member who came
from a den of Vietminh.
“Right after being introduced, a middle-aged
communist cadre stepped out moderately. His skin was
light yellow like a person being affected by chronic
malaria. He introduced himself as Kim Long and stated
unemotionally that: ‘I had already killed 34 unpatriotic
Vietnamese and in a few minutes later I will kill the 35 th’. His words
were not loud and forceful enough but had power to force
the crowd in the meeting to be extremely quiet. It was not
clear that the suffocative silence was to respect for a
national hero or disdain a man who lost all his humanity.
“After ending his words, Kim Long came directly
to Khiem, drew his dagger from its bag on his side, held
Khiem’s hair, pulled Khiem’s head back, then with a
single swift act, Kim Long cut off Khiem’s throat. A jet of
blood from Khiem’s throat spewed up. Khiem was
probably so weak from his illness that his body only
shuddered a few times before it was still. After dropping
Khiem’s dead body, Kim Long put his dagger back into its
bag and received the thunderous applause from the
audience.”

[39]
 In another article titled, “Việt Minh gây cảnh nồi
da xáo thịt” or “Viet Minh created a scene in which
Vietnamese killed Vietnamese” the historian Hua Hoanh
also mentioned the Memoire Book of Mr. Nguyen Viet. In
his book, Viet described a terrible series of murders that
the local communist authorities carried out in November
1946 at Hai Phong City’s prison, before they completely
withdrew from the city:
“The first thing that the Haiphong communist
authorities had to face in the later of 1946 was where they
could move their thousands of prisoners who were
arrested and imprisoned because they were accused of
reactionaries, traitors, henchmen of foreigners and
unpatriotic Vietnamese. According to their inherent
policy, these prisoners would be freely liberated from the
world; it means they will be killed all.
“An army unit encamping in a military post next
to the city prison and soldiers of this unit heard almost
every night some sound like the one of a large hammer
hitting into a hard thing, and the scream of a person
crying out before being killed unexpectedly, and the sound
of a man falling down suddenly to the ground. Because of
curiosity, some soldiers of this unit used a ladder against
the wall to look for something that happened in their
neighborhood and they found out the terrible thing that
could be described as follows:
“The jailer whose name was Rong, also known
as pock-marked-face Rong, was standing with his legs
wide apart and a large hammer in his hands. He aimed his
hammer at the head of each prisoner then strongly stuck
into it. At first every victim was tied up and blindfolded to
[40]
let them know nothing before being killed and had no time
to cry out so loud before falling down to the ground and
died. In later, because the detainees to be killed were
many that Rong worried about he may not kill them all
before the French troops attached and occupied the city,
he therefore said loudly to his men that: ‘Do not need to tie up
and blindfold them anymore’. For that reason, when a prisoner
who had just emerged his head out of the prison door was
immediately received a blow of hammer from Rong into
his head and died instantly.”
Elimination of Trotskyites
In his memoir book “Những Ngày Qua” or “In
the passing Days” Dr. Tran Ngươn Phieu reported the
elimination of the Fourth Communist International group
that was carried out by Tran Van Giau and his men in
September 1945 in Saigon. Phieu wrote:
“Instead of cooperating with the armed forces of
Trotskyites to fight against French troops, Giau and his
men’s troops surrounded them and demanded to disarm
them. Some Trotskyites did not approve their request, but
some others approved it because they did not want a fight
in which Vietnamese killed one another.

Finally, 64 out of 68 Trotskyites agreed to be

disarmed. They had not foreseen that their agreement with
[41]
Giau and his men was actions to tie themselves for being
massacred by Giau and his communist comrades at Long
River in Phan Thiet province later. Among whom being
massacred were two prominent leaders of the Trotskyite
group, Phan Van Hum (1902-1946) and Tran Van Thach
(1902-1946).”
In an article titled “Ta Thu Thau (1906-1945)
died in front of my eyes” in Hồn Việt newspaper, issue #7
and #8 on July 30 and August 7, 1994, written by Nguyen
Van Thiet and published in France
by the Vietnamese Engineer
Association, the author reported
that, when Thau’s train stopped at
Quang Ngai station, on his way
back to Saigon from Hanoi, Ta
Thu Thau, a prominent leader of
the Fourth Communist
International group, was arrested
by local authorities and taken to
the Phu Tho prison located at Mỹ
Khê village in Quang Ngai province.
During his time in prison, Thau was taken three
times from his cell to the beach for executing. Before
being shot, the members of the executed team allowed him
to say his final words. All three times, his eloquence
convinced his executioners that he was innocent and also a
true patriot. For that reason, no one of the team had
enough courage to kill him; they therefore returned him to
the prison. However, on the 4th of returning him to the
prison, a young communist jailer rushed at him from the
prison gate and spoke in a loud voice that: “You are an
[42]
unpatriotic Vietnamese, and the young jailer repeatedly
stabbed Thau with his dagger. He also jeered at the team
members that, “Comrades are so cowardly that dare not
kill an unpatriotic Vietnamese!”
In the memoir, “Ben Giong Lich Su 1940-1965”
(P.41), Priest Cao Van Luan, then the Chairman of the
University Hue reported that in a reception of guests on 25
June 1946 at the Royal Hotel in Paris, France, Ho was
asked about the death of Thau by Daniel Guerin, a
member of the French Socialist Party. At first Ho
answered that: “Ta Thu Thau was a great patriot. We
cried for his death and were so sad when receiving the
news.” However, when being asked who killed him? Ho
answered categorically that: “Everyone who deviates from
my line will be killed.”
Repression of Religions:
Ho and his communist party divided religions in
Vietnam into two categories: International religions such
as Buddhist and Catholicism which have relationships
with so many countries in the world, and Local Religions
such as Cao Dai and Hoa Hao which have no relationship
with other countries. For the international ones, the
repressions were carried out sporadically and secretly and
for the local ones Ho and his men repressed openly and
severely because they did not care about the international
reactions.
Repression of Hoa Hao followers
On September 8, 1945, obeying the order of
Prophet Huynh Phu So, thousands of Hoa Hao followers,
in Can Tho City and its surroundings had taken part in a
peaceful demonstration at Can Tho. The purpose of the
[43]
event was to express their will to struggle against the
French colonialists and protest the establishment of a
totalitarian regime. At the same time, they also expressed
their will to support to the point of view of the United
Nation Front in which Prophet Huynh Phu So was one of
the key leaders. On the morning September 8, 1945, all of
the road and river ways to Can Tho City were full of Hoa
Hao followers who crowded into the city to join the
demonstration.
Local communist authorities were concerned
about the demonstration, and worried that it could turn
into a riot, so they invited the Hoa Hao leaders of the
demonstration to their office to convince them to end it.
However, the negotiation failed and the communist
authorities gave an order to suppress the demonstration by
force. Hundreds of Hoa Hao followers who had joined the
demonstration were killed. Many others were wounded.
So many Hoa Hao demonstrators who just stepped out of
their boats and landed were shot down immediately.
After 1954, Hoang Quoc Ky, a southern
Vietnamese communist, was regrouped in the North
Vietnam in 1954 where he met his old friend, Huynh Van
Nghe, a submachine gun soldier of the communist military
unit that carried out the massacre at the Can Tho City’s
demonstration. Nghe related to Ky that, “The Hoa Hao
followers were so brave. The first wave was gunned down.
The next wave was continuously advanced and so on. The
women and children did the same. We had to pull triggers
of our guns until our hands trembled uncontrollably. Their
blood spread all over the roads but they continued to step

[44]
into our line of fire. We were so frightened, but our
commanders ordered us to continue to shoot at them.”

On September 9, 1945, the local Viet Minh

authorities of Can Tho City held a meeting at the city hall
to react to the demonstration of the Hoa Hao followers on
the previous day. In the meeting Hoa Hao was charged
with carrying out a plot to overthrow the local
government.
In retaliation against the Hoa Hao’s
demonstration, the Viet Minh in Can Tho immediately
launched a series of search operations throughout Can Tho
City and its surroundings to arrest Hoa Hao leaders who
were thought to be the organizers of the demonstration.
Within hours these leaders were arrested. Among them
were Huynh Thanh Mau, the younger brother of Hoa Hao
founder Huynh Phu So; Tran Van Hoanh, the oldest son of
General Tran Van Soai and Nguyen Xuan Thiep, the Hoa
Hao representative who was planning to go to Hanoi to
negotiate with the Viet Minh Central government. They

[45]
were all executed at the Can Tho soccer field a month
later.
On 9 September 1945, Tran Van Giau, the head
leader of Viet Minh in the South, ordered his men
surround the office of Hoa Hao followers on Miche Street
in Saigon where the Prophet Huynh Phu So was living, in
an attempt to arrest him. Thanks to a warning from one of
his confidants, Huynh made a narrow escape.
According to an article in the Thuong Nghiep
Weekly Newspaper issue 106 on 8 December 1999, Lady
Nguyen Huynh Mai reported that, in the letter dated 25
July 1999 to the American executive and legislative bodies
as well as to the International Human Right Organizations,
Mr. Phan Thanh Nhan, 84 years old at the time,
announced that, after the August 1945 Uprising, Ho and
his men massacred a uncounted number of Hoa Hao
Buddhist followers.
In the letter Nhan also said that many mass
graves have been found in several places not far from his
home. In Tan An village belonged Tan Chau district, had
two mass graves containing about 400 bodies. In My Ngai
village, Cao Lanh district had four mass graves. Three of
these contained 180 corpses of political martyrs. In Tan
Thanh village in Tan Hong district had two mass graves
containing 625 corpses. In a lot of ground near the
Common House of Long Thuan village, Long Xuyen
province had nine graves, but he did not know how many
corpses were buried there. The mass graves found at Phu
Thuan village belonging to Chau Doc Province where
around 500 Hoa Hao followers killed by Giau and his
comrades, and a grave of 467 people are still there. At Tan
[46]
Phuoc village in the Dong Thap province, about 100 Hoa
Hao followers were killed. Some victim’s names were still
remembered by villagers such as Phan Van Ben, Nguyen
Van Bao and Tran Van Bang. Some other mass graves
were also found at Long Thanh village in the Dong Thap
province, where hundreds of Hoa Hao followers were
massacred.
On April 16, 1947, the Prophet Huynh Phu So
arranged to meet with the representatives of Viet Minh at
Tan Phu, Dong Thap Muoi to end the bloody tensions
between Viet Minh and Hoa Hao. When nearing the place
where the meeting was arranged, he and his armed escort
was ambushed by Viet Minh soldiers; the Prophet was
arrested and taken to an undisclosed location. No one
heard from him from that time forward.
-Elimination of Cao Dai followers and their
leaders
In the letter dated 4 September 1999 to Kofi
Annan (1938-2018), General Secretary of the United
Nations, Mr. Ngoc Sach Thanh, a Caodai coreligionist
wrote that: “In three continuous weeks, beginning on
August 19, 1945, in Quang Ngai Province, there were
2,791 Caodai dignitaries and followers were killed by
Vietnamese Communists”. The letter goes on to describe
the different ways that were used by Ho and his men to
kill the Caodai followers such as cutting off heads,
burying alive, drowning in rivers, and so on.
In this letter, Mr. Ngoc Sach Thanh also
mentions another case in which Nguyen Phuc Minh, a Cao
Dai preacher was arrested and buried alive along with
some of 100 Caodai followers in a mass grave located at
[47]
Nghia Hanh. Their hands were tied behind their backs, and
they were forced to stand along the edge of a mass grave
and were kicked into it. The screams of the victims could
be heard throughout the village. Even after several
months, the graveside still reeked of an awful odor.
In June 1946, the Viet Minh killed about 60 Cao
Dai followers at Rach Gan, An Ninh village, Duc Hoa
district and Cho Lon province. a witness of the slaughter
named Dan An Ninh reported in his article “A Returning
Journey”. This article was published in the Special Issue
of Giáp Thân New Year (2004) of the Hau Nghia Fellow
Countrymen Association. The followings are some things
described by Dan An Ninh:
“I remember on the night when I returned home,
my father was so sick that he could not leave his bed. It
was a night of terror because each family of Cao Dai
followers in the area had one or more than one members
being killed ruthlessly by Viet Minh. The leader of this
slaughter was a guy named Trieu, the police chief of Duc
Hoa district. On June 6, 1946, Trieu came to the An Ninh
village office of the Resistant and Administrative
Committee, where he and his men set up a list of Cao Dai
followers to be eliminated. At the dusk, his men came to
the homes of people whose names were listed. They
knocked on their doors, took them away, accused them of
traitors, reactionaries or lackeys of French colonialists
and then killed them. In the next morning, when leaving
their homes for markets or for field works, the villagers
saw male dead bodies lying everywhere in the village,
along the paths and on the rice-fields…”

[48]
 On the eve of the Lunar New Year of Dinh Hoi
(January 22, 1947) on the way to withdraw to its
stronghold in the mountain areas, a military unit of
Vietminh Forces went through Long Thanh region where
soldiers of this unit burned down several houses and killed
many Cao Dai followers. On condition of anonymity
because his immediate relatives are still living in Vietnam,
a witness described a scene in which Nguyen Van Dien,
Thi Van Loc, Do Hoang Gian and his wife and two
children were killed by Vietminh soldiers:
“After Nguyen Van Dien being executed, the
murders searched his clothes but found nothing valuable,
so they threw his body into a nearby ditch. They then cut
off the heads of Giam and his wife. When seeing their
parents to be killed barbarously, these children cried so
loudly in horror that made these soldiers up set they
therefore threw them into the flames of the wreckages of
their homes. After that, they took Loc into forest. A few
days after, the arms and legs of Loc were found in the
forest.”
A Vietnamese boatman named LVN, who is
currently living in Australia and was a resident of Tram
Vang hamlet, Thanh Phuoc village, Go Dau Ha district,
Tay Ninh province, related that on a night of 1947, a
squad of communist soldiers broke into his hamlet, set fire
to the houses, and killed his villagers who were Cao Dai
followers. At the time he was only twelve years old, until
now many years past by, but he still remembers that while
hiding in a small forest near his home, he saw his house as
well as his neighbor ones were on fire; his uncle was
killed together with several others. He also recalled that
[49]
his neighbor whose house was on fire saw the flame could
endanger his oxcart nearby he therefore tried so hard to
pull the oxcart away. While he was trying so hard to do so,
a communist soldier ran up and killed him. The next
morning, his father gathered all of his family members
together. His mother carried her youngest child in her
arms. LVN himself carried his younger brother on his
back and they began leaving their village for the Cao Dai
military post. During the time of walking, they saw many
houses being burned and dead bodies lying along their
way.

In the letter dated 02 February 1994 to the

historian Hua Hoanh, the writer An Khe, Nguyen Binh
Thinh, told him about the massacre that was carried out by
Viet Minh troops in 1947 when they attacked Cao Dai
Holly See. Their attack was defeated; therefore, on the
way retreating to their powerbase, they killed so many Cao
Dai followers. This massacre was described by An Khe as
follows:
“The next morning, several press
correspondents of Saigon had an opportunity to see with
their own eyes the bodies of innocent people to be killed
[50]
barbarously by Viet Minh troops. All the victims, men –
women - children, had been stabbed or shot to death while
they sheltered themselves in straw huts that were burned
to the ground.”
The annihilation of Buddhist leaders
In the letter dated 19 August 1994 to Do
Muoi, General Secretary of the Vietnamese Communist
Party, Thich Quang Do, a Buddhist
Superior Monk, described the scene in
which Ho’s communist comrades killed
his religious father, Superior Buddhist
Monk Thich Duc Hai, who was living
in Linh Quang pagoda belonging to
Thanh Sam village, Ung Ho district,
and Ha Dong province.
The following were details of the slaughter: “….
on August 19, 1945 at 10pm, I witnessed the scene in
which my religious father (sư phụ) was killed by
Vietnamese communist followers. His arms were tied
behind his back with iron wire and his neck was hanged
with two posters, one in front and another behind, in each
poster had only three words: “An unpatriotic Vietnamese”.
He was forced to stand in the center of the Common
House’s courtyard of Bat village. Surrounding him was a
crowd of people with sticks, canes, spears, lances,
longhand sickles and rakes in their hands. A group of
people who were called the judges of the People’s Court
appeared on the common house’s veranda to begin a trial
of my religious father. They ordered him to kneeled his
knees and bow his head, but he did not obey their orders.
One of members of the People’s Court came next to him
[51]
and said: ‘‘You are a recalcitrant unpatriotic Vietnamese’ then he
punched continuously into his jaws. A blood stream began
running from his mouth to his chest and bathed the ‘An
unpatriotic Vietnamese’ poster. Right after that they
sentenced him to death. They escorted him to a grassplot
in front of the Common House. His blood continued
running down, made his long-shirt’s tail soaked and
dropped to the common house’s courtyard. When going to
the grassplot, they pushed him down with his left side on
the ground then they used a hand gun to open fire three
shots at his parotid. A stream of his blood vomited out
straight in the air and he died immediately on the post. All
images on that day, such as his blood streams were
running down to the ground; his arms were tied behind his
back; his dead body laid motionless on the grassplot; his
head, face, arms, feet, long shirt’s tails even two ‘A
unpatriotic Vietnamese’ posters were soaked with blood,
are still fresh in my mind, even though 49 years passed by.
It really is a nightmare.”
Elimination of Cambodians Buddhist Monks
The Vietnamese communist party not only killed
Vietnamese religious leaders but also Buddhist
Cambodian monks who were currently living with their
followers on the soil of Southern provinces of Vietnam.
Below is a scene in which the Cambodian Buddhist monks
were massacred barbarously by Ho and his communist
men that was reported by Van Nguyen Duong.
In the article titled, “Tết Chạy Giặc Sau Mùa Thu
Nhiễu Nhương” or “A New Year Evacuation after a
Troubled Autumn” the writer Van Nguyen Duong recalled

[52]
the murder of Cambodians and Cambodian Buddhist
monks he saw with his own eyes in Ca Mau in 1945:
“The way they massacred Cambodian Buddhist
monks was so terrible. Because a rumor has it that, all
Cambodian monks had “cà tha” or “witchcraft” so
bullets cannot penetrate their bodies and knifes or swords
cannot cut their skins. For that reason, Viet Minh
“invented” a new way to kill them. Here was the new
killing method in which, they did not need to use guns and
swords or knife. They tied their arms, blindfolded their
eyes and used sharp pointed bamboo sticks to stabbed
directly into their anuses then dumped them into river
even they were still alive. The execution was carried out in
front of many people. It really was a terrible thing.”
The details of this mass murder were reported by
the author as follows:
“The Quay Bridge is a place where Ca May
River and Doi Cuong Canal met each other. It was a
popular site for executions of Cambodian monks. With
their lower parts naked, their arms tied and their eyes
blindfolded, they were tied along the three long and strong
bamboo lengths. The first was firmly tied to their neck; the
second was firmly tied to their waist and the third was tied
strongly to their ankles. Six strong guerillas kept firmly the
end of each bamboo length. The first bamboo length was
put down to make victims’ heads into a low position and
victims’ buttocks project into the air. A number of
guerillas, who were equal to the number of victims, stood
silently in a line behind the victims. In each guerilla’s
hands was a long and pointed bamboo stick to wait the
order of their commander.
[53]
 When the executed order was given, guerillas
aimed their pointed sticks at the victims’ buttocks, and ran
quickly to them then stabbed straightly and deeply into the
victim’s amuses. After doing that, they dumped the whole
victims into the Ca May River; even all of them were still
alive.”
Conclusion
In fact, one cannot but admit that Ho and his
VCP were successful in their policy to eliminate political
opponent groups and parties. In Vietnam today, there’s no
any political party besides of the VCP. Any political
opponent group appeared would be accused having
activities in an attempt to overthrow the SRV government
and would be punished according to the article 79[1] of the
Vietnamese Criminal Law.

1
Article 79: Any person who establishes or joins an organization to
overthrow the people's administration shall be subject to the following
penalties:
1. Organizers, instigators, persons who have had serious activities or
caused serious consequences shall be sentenced to between twelve and
twenty years of imprisonment, life imprisonment or capital punishment.
2. Other co-signatories shall be sentenced to between five and fifteen
years of imprisonment.

[54]
 Anti-French Resistance War
(First Indochina War)
In Vietnam at the time the war was called “Anti-
French Resistance War”. In France it was called the
Indochina War, and in the West it was known as the
First Indochina War. It officially began on Decembe 19,
1946, the day when Ho Chi Minh, Chairman of the
Republic Democratic of Vietnam (RDV), read the
National Resistance War Appeal. It ended on August 1,
1954, the day when the Geneva Armistice came into effect
in the entire Vietnam territory.
At the beginning, the conflict happened between
two forces, the French troops, also known as the French
Union’s French Far East Expeditionary Corps, and the
Vietminh troops, also known as the People’s Army of
Vietnam. In later, the French were supported by the State
of Vietnam and the aid of the United States of America;
the RDV was supported by Communist China and Soviet
Union. Most of the battles between two sides happened on
the Vietnam territory.
The background of the war:
Before World War II (1939-1945), Indochina,
including Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, was under the
rule of the French. During the World War II, France was
occupied entirely by German troops that made the French
colonial administration in Indochina fall into a difficult
situation like a snake without a head. For that reason, the
Japanese troops invaded and occupied all of Indochina in
1940 without spending a bullet; they then quickly drove
the French Colonial Administration in Indochina into a

[55]
corner. However, they left the French Colonial
Administration intact and directed it from behind the
scenes.
On March 9, 1945 in Saigon, the Japanese
ambassador, Masumoto, handed an ultimatum to Admiral
Decoux, the French Indochinese Governor, demanding
him to put his army under the command of Japanese
troops. When Decoux failed to respond, Japanese troops
attacked and toppled the French Colonial Administration.
After overthrowing the French Colonial
Administration, Japan began carrying out its political
policy called “Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” by
forming the Japanese-sponsored Vietnamese Government
under the leadership of Emperor Bao Dai and headed by
Prime Minister Tran Trong Kim. In fact, the Kim
government did not have the real power and it was used to
justify the occupation of Japan.
In July 1945, a month before the Japanese
official surrender, the Allies leaders had met in Potsdam
(Germany) to plan for the future. One of the plan’s items
was dividing Vietnam into two zones, North and South, at
the 16th parallel, for disarming the Japanese troops. The
Chinese National troops would disarm the Japanese troops
in the North, and the British troops would disarm the
Japanese troops in the South.
On August 15, 1945, the surrender of Japan to
the Allied Forces was announced and the formal surrender
ceremony was performed on aboard of the battleship USS
Missouri. Taking advantage of this occasion, Ho and his
men, also known as Vietminh, seized the power in Hanoi
on August 19, 1945 and declared independence of
[56]
Vietnam on September 2, 1945. At the same time, Ho and
his men established the Republic Democratic of Vietnam
(RDV).

A section of the Potsdam conference including

Joseph Stalin and Harry S. Truman

In September 1945, the Chinese troops entered

the North and accepted the current Viet Minh Government
under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh. The British troops
landed at Saigon but refused to do likewise and on the
other hand, they allowed the French troops to restore their
colonial territory called Cochin-China, also known as
South Vietnam.
On 23 September 1945, with the help of the
British Commander in Saigon, the French troops
overthrew the local government of the RDV in Saigon,
and the guerrilla war immediately began around it.
In February 1946 the Chinese Nationalists agreed
to withdraw from North Vietnam and let the French troops
return to the North of the 16th parallel in exchange for
French concessions in Shanghai and other Chinese ports.

[57]
 On 6 March 1946, a preliminary agreement was
signed between Jean Sainteny, representative government
of the French Republic and Ho Chi Minh, representative
of the government of the DRV. One of the main clauses of
the agreement stated that: The RDV agrees to allow 15,000
French troops to reenter the North Vietnam to replace
200,000 Chinese Nationalist Troops with the mission to
continuously disarm the Japanese troops. On the other
hand, France promised to withdraw all its troops within 5
years, each year to withdraw 3,000 troops.

Ho Chi Minh, president of the Republic Democratic of Vietnam and

Jean Sainteny, the French representative in North Vietnam, aboard a
seaplane on their way to Ha Long Bay in 1946
On May 31, 1946, a delegation of the RDV
headed by Pham Van Dong departed for Paris, the capital
of France, to attend the Fontainebleau Conference to
negotiate with the French government for the
independence and unification of Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh
accompanied the delegation to Paris to contact French
politicians and the Vietnamese community in France. The
Fontainebleau Conference lasted from July 6 to September
10 and finally reached no specific result. The deadlock of
the conference was because the French delegation
determined to separate Cochin China or South Vietnam
[58]
from the unification of Vietnam.

Chairman Ho Chi Minh with Marius Moutet (hand to ear),

Minister of Overseas France, in Paris for the
Fontainebleau Conference, Summer of 1946

After several weeks of haggling without specific

result; Ho sent his delegation home but he and two other
members of the delegation, Hoang Minh Giam and Duong
Bach Mai, stayed in Paris to make one last effort to avoid
a war in Vietnam. After trying to finish a drafted
provisional agreement on September 11, Ho and his men
sent it to Marius Moutet, Minister of Overseas France.
Three days later, Moutet sent back to Ho a new
provisional agreement. Ho realized that the articles in the
new one could be accepted. At midnight on September 19,
Ho came to the private apartment of Moutet to sign the
provisional agreement which they entitled a “Modus
Vivendi.”
In October 1946, Ho returned to Hanoi and the
provisional agreement that he signed with Moutet was
interpreted by a lot of people as a document to sell out the
country and it was also acclaimed by his men as a great
wisdom of Ho. At the same time, General Etienne, the
French Troops’ Commander, circulated a secret

[59]
memorandum among his officers in which he proposed a
coup d’état against Ho. Meanwhile Vietminh troops also
prepared intensely to cope with French’s machinations.
The Modus Vivendi signed by Ho and Moutet in
September left some unclear matters that led to several
clashes between Viet Minh and French in various places.
The most serious one occurred in Haiphong City on
November 20, when a French patrol boat was intercepted
by Vietminh and three crew members of the boat were
arrested. Because of that, Colonel Piere Louis Dèbes, the
French commander in Haiphong, ordered his soldiers to
assault the Vietminh. By afternoon, the fights spread
throughout the city.
On the morning of November 23, Colonel Dèbes
sent an ultimatum to the Vietminh local authorities
demanding that they evacuate their armed forces from
Haiphong within two hours. After two hours, he did not
have any answer; he then automatically gave them an
additional forty-five minutes. However, he still did not
receive any feedback from Vietminh local authorities.
Dèbes therefore ordered his cruiser Suffren, in the harbor
to lob shells into the city. Several thousands of the city
residents were killed. After that, Dèbes ordered his troops
to overflow into the city and attack the Vietminh Armed
Forces. The French troops had to cope with the
courageous fighting of Vietminh. The battle lasted for
several days. Finally the Vietminh Armed Forces were
forced to withdraw from the city.
In December, a lot of clashes occurred in Hanoi
between French and Vietminh troops. One of the serious
clashes was the one in which Vietminh militias broke into
[60]
 the French Residential Area in Hanoi on the evening of
December 19, 1946 and killed and arrested a number of
residents. In the book “Deliver Us From Evil” [2] Dr.
Tom Dooley (1927-1961) reported this clash in page 55
that:
“On December 19, 1946, the Vietminh forces
started the war Anti-French by disemboweling more than
1,000 native women in Hanoi because they had been
working for, married to, or living with the French.”
In order to retaliate against the action of
Vietminh militias, the French sent an ultimatum to Ho
demanding that he had to disarm his militias and put the
security of Hanoi in the hands of French Troops. Hanoi
quickly became a battlefield between French and
Vietminh troops, and Ho and his government was forced
to evacuate from Hanoi to its surroundings then to remote
mountain areas in the North Vietnam near the Chinese
border.
On 19 December 1946, Ho launched the National
Resistance War Appeal in which he called upon
Vietnamese people to fight against the French colonialists
and save the nation. He did so with very strong words as
follows:
“Compatriots throughout the country:
Because of love for peace we have made
concessions, but the more concessions we made, the
further the French colonialists encroached up because
they are resolve to invade our country once again.
No!

2
Published in 1961 by the New American Library
[61]
 We would rather sacrifice everything than lose
our country than return to slavery.
Compatriots! Rise up!
Men and women, old and young, regardless of
creeds, political parties, or nationalities, all the
Vietnamese must stand up to fight against the French
colonialists to save our Fatherland.
Those who have rifles will use their rifles. Those
who have swords will use their swords. Those who have
no swords will use their spades, hoes, and sticks. Everyone
must endeavor to oppose the colonialists and save our
country.
Soldiers, self-defense guards, militiamen!
The hour of national liberation has struck! We
must sacrifice to our last drop of blood to save our
country. Whatever hardships we would meet, we are ready
to endure them. With the determination to sacrifice,
victory will be ours!
Long live and independent and unified Vietnam!
Long live the victorious resistance!”
The National Resistance War Appeal of Ho on
December 19, 1946, was considered as the official
declaration of war against French Troops of the RDV.
Countries Involved in the War:
At first the war happened between France and
Vietnam or Vietminh only. Later, the French were
supported by State of Vietnam (SOV) government and its
forces called the Vietnamese National Army (VNA) and
by the United States. The Vietminh was supported by
Communist China and the Soviet Union. The reasons
these countries became involved the war were different:
[62]
 The goal that the French Troops pursued in the
war was to recover their colony. At the beginning, they
believed with elite soldiers and modern weaponry they
would quickly reoccupy their colony in a short period.
However, they met so much violent oppositions from the
Vietminh.
The ostensible reason of Ho and his men’s
involvement in the war was to gain independence for
Vietnam, but their real and secret reason was to carry out
and complete the national revolution in Vietnam, because
Ho and his communist comrades were members of the
Comintern and it also was the precondition to put Vietnam
into the orbit of the Communist International. In the war,
Ho and his men used the label “Resistance against French
to gain independence” for deceiving Vietnamese
compatriots and inducing them to join the war. In order to
strengthen their deceit to the Vietnamese people, Ho also
had publicly announced to dismiss the Indochinese
Communist Party (ICP) or the Vietnamese Communist
Party (VCP) on November 11, 1945.
In 1947, frustrated by a lack of progress in the
war, the French changed their tack. They began looking
for a political solution by negotiating with the former
emperor, Bao Dai, to lead a pro-French government. On
June 5, 1948, É Bollaert, a representative of the French
government, and former emperor Bao Dai, the State of
Vietnam’s Head, signed Ha Long Agreement on the
battleship Duguay Trouin at Ha Long Bay in which France
solemnly admitted the independence of Vietnam.

[63]
 Bao Dai and É Bollaert sign the Ha Long
Agreement on June 5, 1948 on battleship

On 8 March 1948, Vincent Auriol, the French

President, and the former emperor, Bao Dai, signed an
agreement at the Elysée Palace which gave Vietnam
greater independence from France and admitted that the
State of Vietnam (SOV) could conduct its own foreign
affairs, control its finances and form a new military forces
called the Vietnamese National Army (VNA), and to
begin fighting against the Vietminh along with French
troops. In theory of the Public International Laws, the
Elysée Agreement was considered as the France officially
gave back the independence to the State of Vietnam.

[64]
 Bao Dai, former emperor of Vietnam who became the Chief of
the Vietnamese State after the Elysee Accords, shaking hands
with French President Rene Coty

Right after being formed, the government of the

SOV was supported by most anti-communist Vietnamese
who believed that the present situation in the world had
changed significantly, so the colonialism could not exist
for long. Therefore, sooner or later, the French colonialists
would have to return the real independence to the
Vietnamese people. On the other hand, they also believed
that, if Vietnam completely fell into the hands of the
communists, the Vietnamese people would be sunk in
darkness forever and could never raise their heads to see
the sun.

[65]
 In 1949-1950, after seizing power across the
mainland, Communist China began supporting the
Vietminh in fighting against the French, because the VCP
was a member of the Communist International. All of the
countries that were members of the Communist
International had duties to help each other carry out and
complete the National Revolution. For the same reason, a
few months later, the Soviet Union also began supporting
Ho and his men.
After a chain of French military posts just south
of the border with China were overrun, the Vietminh was
no longer isolated and they began receiving a large
amount of military aid from Communist China and the
Soviet Union. At the time, the United States believed that
French troops would eventually be defeated in Vietnam
and that Vietnam would fall into the realm of
Communism. The “domino theory” adopted by
Americans posited that if Vietnam fell into Communist
hands, the other countries in Southeast Asia would fall one
by one into the Communist World. Even though America
did not back the French in their effort to reoccupy their
colony in Indochina, but it still supported French troops to
stop the expansion of Communism in the Southeast Asia
by providing military aid to French troops.
Progression of the War:
The war between France, a major power country,
and the Republic Democratic of Vietnam, a poor
backward country, was previously described by Ho as
follows:
“This is a war between an elephant and a tiger. If
the tiger were stationary, it would be trampled to death by
[66]
elephant. But tiger does not do that. During the day it
hides in the forests and gets out during the night to jump
on the elephant’s back and tear some large pieces of the
elephant’s skin then run back into the forests. Gradually,
the elephant will bleed to death.”
The war really proceeded as Ho described. The
Vietminh troops were armed with the rudimentary
weaponry while the French troops had modern weapons.
For that reason, the Vietminh forces could not confront
with French troops in a regular war. They had to withdraw
from Hanoi to its surrounding areas and to remote rural
areas and forests. On the other hand, they also knew that
French troops were able to attack and occupy any area that
was still in their hands. Therefore, they strictly
implemented the “scorched earth” policy in which they
destroyed anything that might be useful for the French
troops. Because of this policy all towns and cities that
were controlled by Vietminh forces after December 19,
1946 were leveled to the ground.
The French Resistance War lasted for years and
finally ended by the Geneva Accord on August 1, 1954.
Consequences of the War:
Vietnam was divided into two zones at the 17th
parallel, North and South. The RDV occupied the North
and the SOV and French occupied entirely the South. Laos
and Cambodia obtained their complete independence.
* Human cost:
- French Union: 74,581 dead, 64,127 wounded,
- State of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia: 18,714 dead
- Vietminh: 175,000-300,000 dead.
- Civilians: 125,000 -400,000 killed
[67]
 Property cost:
- One million northerners had to leave behind their
houses, rice fields and native villages to move to the South
because they did not want to live under the Communist
regime.
- Most material damage in the Central and North
part of Vietnam were not caused by the fights between two
sides but were caused by the “scorched earth” policy of
Ho and his men.
The Scorched Earth Policy, in which Ho and the
VCP ordered and forced people who lived in their
controlled areas to destroy everything that might be useful
to French troops. As a result, all private houses and
buildings, public offices, schools, temples, pagodas,
(except Catholic churches) that located in cities and towns
that were controlled by Ho and the his men after
December 19, 1946 were completely destroy or burned
down to ashes. Millions of people were lost their homes
and had to evacuate to remote rural areas and live in
situation of deprivation and misery. All bridges were
destroyed by mines; all roads were dug into ditches or
built up into earth mounds of different sizes by
conscripted laborers with the goals to hinder the motorized
militaries and tanks of the French troops. All areas
controlled by Vietminh became the free-fire zones where
military airplanes and artilleries of French forces could
fire at any time.
In fact, the Scorched Earth policy did not cause
much difficulty for French troops during the war, but
caused so much difficulty for Vietnamese people who
lived in the Vietminh areas. All movements in these areas
[68]
had to be accomplished by travelling in a zigzag pattern on
roads that were full of ditches or earth mounds and other
obstacles. All transportation of heavy materials had to be
accomplished by human laborers because there were no
roads for motor vehicles. All boats could only use
waterways at night. All schools and markets could only
open at night time. All routine work that required a group
of people to work together had to be done at night. During
the day, the French military airplanes flew back and forth
in the air space above the Vietminh controlled areas, firing
at any living targets they found, even at a few farmers who
were working together in their rice fields and herds of
water buffaloes grazing in meadows. All people from 18
to 45 years old who were living in the Vietminh controlled
areas had to do conscripted labor duties of a month per
year. This made all of people who were living in these
areas extremely miserable.
The implementation of the “Scorched Earth”
Policy in the French Resistance War gave an example of
the ignorance, childishness, and backwardness of Ho and
his communist men. The scorched earth is useful in classic
war but less useful for the modern one. After Communist
China seized the power across the main land in 1949, Ho
sneaked in through a French controlled area to the
Communist China for reporting his VCP’s actions in the
French Resistance War to his two senior communist
international comrades, Mao Zedong (Chairman of the
Chinese Communist Party), and Liu Shaq, (Chairman of
the People’s Republic of China). At the meeting, Ho was
criticized by Liu Shaoqi that the implementation of the
Scorched Earth Policy in the Vietnam War was a wasteful
[69]
thing, because it was not appropriate with modern war.
Liu Shaoqi also explained directly to Ho that: “Any place
is a strategic position, even if it located in a desolate area,
enemies would find any way to occupy it. Any place isn’t a
strategic one even if everything is still intact they would
not try to occupy it.”
Is the war necessary to obtain independence?
In general, there are two main ways to gain
independence for a country, a violent way and a non-
violent one. After World War II (1939-1945), several
colonial countries knew that times had changed and that
colonialism couldn’t exist. Colonial empires, sooner or
later, must return independence to their colonies. For that
reason, several countries used non-violent means to gain
their independence. The non-violent way required the
leaders of these countries to be enduring and patient
during the time of struggle with their opponents. These
countries finally obtained their independence without
spilling a drop of blood. Following are some countries in
Asia which obtained their independence by the non-
violent struggles:
- Indonesia: August 1945
- Philippines: July 1946
- Pakistan: August 1947
- Burma and Ceylon (Sri Lanka): January 1948
- India: January 1950
- Malaysia: August 1957
-Singapore: June 1959
In theory, the agreement that was signed between
Vincent Auriol, the French President, and Bao Dai, the
Head of the Sate of Vietnam on March 6, 1948 at the
[70]
Elysée Place was considered as the official document in
which the France officially gave back the independence to
the State of Vietnam.
Finally we might conclude that without the
interference of Ho Chi Minh and his Communist Party,
Vietnam could have, in time, gained its independence
without a single drop of blood. The history of the world
had demonstrated this. For that reason, in Vietnam today,
there is a fold song which laments that:
Trách ai sinh thứ họ Hồ
Làm cho cả nước thành đồ vứt đi
Or
Blame whom to be bore Ho Chi Minh
Who made the whole country become the waste things.

[71]
 Vietnam War and
Paris Peace Accord
There are four different names to call this war. In
North Vietnam or the Republic Democracy of Vietnam
(RDV), it was called the “Resistance War against the
Americans to Save the Nation.” In South Vietnam or
Republic of Vietnam (RVN), it was called the “War
against Communists.” In America it was named the
“Vietnam War” and in the West it was called the
“Second Indochina War.” Even though it has several
different names, the nature of this war was the Fratricidal
War between the Vietnamese Nationalists and the
Vietnamese Communists. It was restored by the Peace
Paris Accord.
This war protracted from 1954 to 1975 at first
between the RVN and RDV, and later, the RVN was
supported by the United States and the DRV was
supported by Communist China and the Soviet Union. It
occurred not only in Vietnam but also in Laos and
Cambodia; therefore, it was called the Second Indochinese
War.
The cause of the Vietnam War:
In theory, the Vietnam War was considered to
originate from the Geneva Accord signed on July 21, 1954
in Geneva, the Capital of Switzerland that ended the First
Indochina War and divided Vietnam into two zones, North
Vietnam and South Vietnam, at the 17th parallel. The
reason that was ascribed to cause the Vietnam War is that
the Geneva Accord had three things that could be
considered as the origination of the Vietnam War:
1. Vietnam would be temporarily divided into
two zones, North and South. The boundary between two
zones is the Ben Hai River that enters the South China Sea
[72]
at 17 degrees 0 minutes 54 seconds N latitude and
followed this river to its headwater around 55 km West
Southwest and thence to the Laotian border, also generally
known as the 17th parallel.
2. The northern zone would be controlled by Ho
Chi Minh and his communist men, also known as the
RDV. The South would be controlled by Bao Dai, the
chief of the State of Vietnam (SOV), and his Prime
Minister Ngo Dinh Diem (later through a referendum on
October 23, 1955, the SOV became Republic of Vietnam
and Ngo Dinh Diem became its president).
3. A general election would occur on both sides
on July 20, 1956 under the overseeing of the International
Commission for Ceasefire Supervision (ICCS) to decide
the political regime of unified Vietnam.
After signing the Accord, Ho and his communist
men believe that if the general election scheduled by the
Geneva Accord occurred on July 20, 1946 they would
certainly win by the following reasons:
- The population in the North at the time was
higher than the one in the South about two million and
their huge and strong propaganda machine and their
totalitarian rule were more than enough to force at least
90% of the population in the North to vote for them.
- When regrouping their forces from the South to
the North according to the stipulation of the accord, Ho
and his men intentionally left in the South about 100,000
political and military cadres. These cadres would be the
key force to propagandize, mobilize and force at least 50%
of the southerners to vote for them.
In contrast, the South Nationalist Government at
the time did not welcome the general election, because
they knew that:
- A genuine and free election was impossible to
be held in the North even though it was put under the
supevision of the International Commission for Ceasefire
[73]
Supervision (ICCS) or the United Nations, because Ho
and his communist men were deceitful and dishonest
people and they had many shifty tricks to fool the
members of these international organizations. For that
reason, there would not be 90% but 100% of the
northerners to vote for the communist North.
- A number of people in the South at the time did
not know the true face of Ho and his men who were only
henchmen of the Communist International; therefore, they
still believed that Ho and his men fought against French
colonists to gain independence for the Vietnamese people.
As a result, the rate that the Southern people would vote
for the side of Ho and his men was not inconsiderable.
With the confidence, the RDV would win the
general election, in the middle of July 1945, Pham Van
Dong, Prime Minister of the RDV, sent a letter to Ngo
Dinh Diem, Prime Minister of the SOV (then RVN) to
request holding a conference on July 20, 1955 to discuss
and negotiate about the general election. In order to
respond to this request, on July 20, 1955, the People’s
Revolution Council, a pro-SOV organization, held a large
demonstration to protest the request of the RDV, and the
presence of the military delegation of RDV headed by Van
Tien Dung residing at the Majestic Hotel in Saigon. On
this occasion, demonstrators surrounded and set fire to the
hotel. If the International Commission for Ceasefire
Supervision (ICCS) did not timely intervene, Van Tien
Dung and his delegation’s members would be burnt alive.
On July 16, 1955, Ngo Dinh Diem, Prime
Minister of the SOV, stated flatly through the Saigon
Radio Station that, the SOV did not accept the general
election by citing that the SOV did not sign the accord;
therefore, the SOV would not be bound by it.
In fact, Diem and his nationalist men wanted the
general election to be carried out under the conditions of
freedom and knowledge. In the interview with Cao Xuan
[74]
Vy (1920-2013), a close assistance of Ngo Dinh Nhu
(President Diem’s brother), in 2013, the journalist Phong
Tran reported that Cao had told him that, when talking
about the unified negotiation, President Diem had
emphasized many times that, in order to unify the country
by a general election, both sides needed to first carry out
five following steps:
1. People on both sides were allowed feely
exchange correspondences.
2. People on both sides were allowed to freely
visit each other.
3. People on both sides were allowed to freely
resettle on any side they want.
4. The authorities of both sides start to share their
economy.
5. After carrying out the steps above, both sides
begin negotiating about the general election to reunify the
country.
In June 1956, after realizing their ambition to
reunify the country under a single communist regime by
the general election was failed, Ho and his Vietnamese
Worker Party (VWP), a camouflaged name of the
Vietnamese Communist Party, held a meeting to issue a
resolution to their duties in the South. In the meeting, they
asserted that:
“The duty of our current revolution in the South
is anti-imperialist and anti-feudalism and our struggled
form is not an armed struggle but a political one. It
doesn’t mean we absolutely do not use the armed ways to
self-defend in the necessary circumstances and we do not
take full advantage of the religious sects’ armed forces in
the South to fight against Diem and his men. On the other
hand, we need to fortify our current armed and semi-
armed forces and establish our dens for future used. At the
same time, we build up substructures strongly in
grassroots to maintain and develop our armed forces; we
[75]
also need to organize militia forces to protect grassroots’
struggles and save our cadres when the situation
required.”
In August 1956, Le Duan, the South Vietnam
party committee secretary, drafted the Political Platform of
the South Vietnam’s revolution, and until 1959 this
Political Platform was approved by the 15th Central
Conference Committee. The main contend of the Political
Platform asserted that:
“The duty of the South Vietnam’s revolution is to
overthrow the totalitarian and fascist government of Ngo
Dinh Diem, henchman of the American Empire, to liberate
southern people from the ruling yoke of Empire and
Feudal. On the other hand, we also need to establish in
the South Vietnam a coalition government which will
cooperate with the North Vietnam government to unite the
country.”
In December 1956, the South Vietnam
Communist party committee gave a conference in
Cambodia and issued a decision that:
“The policy to carry out the revolution in the
South is to use the violent way to seize power …In current
situation we need an armed force to support our political
struggles now and to overthrow Americans and Ngo Dinh
Diem later. On other hand, we also need to build up the
secret and armed propaganda forces to propagandize and
induce the remaining armed forces of religious sects, after
they were defeated by Ngo Dinh Diem troops, to join our
armed forces. We also take advantage of the names of
these religious sects to decimated fiends in the Diem
authorities.”
On January 1959, the Central Committee of the
VWP or VCP held the 15th conference and issued the
decision that: “The South regime is a colonialist, semi-
feudal, reactionary and cruel regime; because it is a
totalitarian and warlike government, for that reason, the
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revolution of the southern people has to use the violent
way to liberate themselve from the slave yoke.”
After recognizing their ambition to reunify the
country by the general election was going totally fail, Ho
and his communist men determined to use the violent way
to attack and occupy the South at any cost. They ordered
their men and women who were intentionally left in the
South to unearth the weapons that were buried by the
communist forces before regrouping in the North, and rise
up to fight against the South authorities or the RVN
government. At the beginning, they attacked the local rural
officials of the RVN government, and their guerrilla war
gradually increased with time and spread over the South.
In addition, Ho and his men ordered their
military men and political cadres who were regrouped in
the North during the 300-day period to secretly return to
the areas where they lived and worked before regrouping
in the North to get in touch with their old comrades and
relatives to form sanctuary and guerrilla bases. On the
other hand, Ho and his men also built the Ho Chi Minh
trail through Truong Son forest and a secret waterway on
East China Sea to supply weaponry, men and material
resources to their forces in the South.
In order to cheat and make people in the country
and in the world believe that the cause of the Vietnam War
or the Fratricidal War was not derived from Ho and his
communist men in the North but from the spontaneous
movement of people in the South who spontaneously rose
up and fought against the oppression of the RVN
government. On the other hand, Ho and his men also
grouped many Diem’s opponents and their senior
communist cadres in the South to form the National
Liberation Front (NLF), the National Liberation Armed
Forces (NLRF) and the Provisional Revolutionary
Government of South Vietnam (PRG/SV). In reality the

[77]
NLF, NLRF and PRG/SV were camouflaged
organizations of Hanoi.
The events, documents and information above
clearly proved that the chief culprits of the Vietnam War
or Fratricidal War were Ho and his communist men. In
other words, the main goal of Ho and his men in the war
was to occupy the RVN to dedicate the whole country of
Vietnam to the Communist International or the Comintern.
And the war against communist of the RVN and the
southern people was the act of self-defense only.
The reasons that made the United States and
others involve in the war were that:
After the World War II, the USA had realized
that the expansion of the Communist International or
Comintern was a threat to the safety of the USA. For that
reason, the USA supported French colonialists to reoccupy
its colonies in Indochina although it did not want the
colonialism to be existed in the world.
After the First Indochina War ended, Vietnam
was divided into two parts, North and South. The North
became a communist country and the South became a
nationalist one and sooner after that the South or the State
of Vietnam had become a target to attack and occupy of
Ho and the VCP as well as the Comintern. For that reason,
President Dwight D. Eisenhower had supported President
Ngo Dinh Diem and his nationalist government in training
and equipping their military forces to defend the State of
Vietnam and using it as an outpost to stop the expansion
of Chinese Communist
Working under the “domino theory”, that means
if the RVN fell in to the hand of the Communist World,
many other countries in the Southeast Asia would follow
one by one in the same way, President John F. Kennedy in
1961 was advised to increase military, economic and
technical aid to President Ngo and his government to deal
with the threat of the Northern Communists.
[78]
 In fact, the Vietnam War began when President
Kennedy sent American troops to Vietnam. The real
purpose that made Kennedy do so was that, besides the
one to protect the Vietnamese people from the aggression
of the North Vietnamese Communist Forces, he also
wanted to respond to the two things:
The first was that in his inaugural address on
January 20, 1961 President Kennedy solemnly stated that:
“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill,
that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any
hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the
survival and the success of liberty.” Not long after that
Kennedy had to accept two failures one in Laos and
another in Cuba. Because of that, Kennedy did not want to
accept the third one; therefore, he sent American Troops to
Vietnam to seek a victory.
The second was that in the summit meeting
between President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Primer
Nikita Khrushchev at Vienna on June 3, 1961, Kennedy
was pushed around by Khrushchev and at the final
meeting Khrushchev directly told Kennedy that, “It is up
to the U.S. to decide whether there will be war or peace.”
After the summit meeting, Kennedy said of Khrushchev as
follows, “I never met a man like that”, “He beat the hell
out of me” and “He savaged me”. Because of this,
Kennedy decided to send the American troops to Vietnam
to prove that the U.S. had not yielded to the Soviet Union.
However, Kennedy’s decision met a strong
objection of Ngo Dinh Diem, the president of the RVN,
because he knew exactly that if the American combatants
were present on the soil of the RVN, the war against
Communist of his Nationalist Government would be
distorted by Ho and his communist men as henchmen of
the American Empire. For that reason, Kennedy was
advised to overthrow President Diem.

[79]
 In November 1963, the coup d’état by some
generals of the RVN army with the secret approval of the
U.S. Embassy in Saigon in toppling and killing President
Ngo Dinh Diem was successful. Its consequence created a
political and military instability in the South Vietnam.
This was a convenient occasion for President Lyndon B.
Johnson to carry out the decision of President Kennedy to
send American troops to Vietnam without the previous
agreement of the Current Vietnamese Government at the
time.
One of the odd things I cannot but mention here
is that in his diary on July 27, 1966, when visiting the
Vietnam War General Moshe Dayan, an Israeli military
and political leader wrote that: “My impression of
American troops to be sent to Vietnam at the time was not
to fight against the aggression of the Northern
Communist Forces, not to fight against communist
guerrillas and even not to fight against Ho Chi Minh but
to fight against all of countries in the world, including
United Kingdom, France and Soviet Union to let them
know that, once the Americans decided to participate a
war, there is nothing to prevent them to do so.”
In other words, according to Moshe Dayan’s
impression, the reason that made President Kennedy send
American Troops to Vietnam was not to stop the
expansion of the Communist China and the Soviet Union
but to show the arrogance of the United States of America.
In my opinion, perhaps this is an excessive criticism.
By June 1965, 82,000 U.S. combat troops were
stationed in South Vietnam. By December 1965, the total
number of American soldiers in South Vietnam was about
180,000. By the end of 1966, the total number of
American soldier was around 500,000.
On the other hand, South Korea, Thailand,
Australia and New Zealand also sent their troops to help
the RVN in fighting against Vietnamese communist forces
[80]
because they did not want the expansion of Communism
in South East Asia.
The reasons that made the Soviet Union,
Communist China and some other countries of the
Communist World become involved in the war:
The Vietnamese Communist Party was a member
of the Communist International or Comintern and this
organization advocated to expand communism throughout
the world. The Geneva Accords divided Vietnam into two
halves, North and South, and helped the VCP occupy the
North. For that reason, the Soviet Union and Communist
China as well as other countries in the Communist World
had the international obligation to help the VCP occupy
the left-half of Vietnam.
Communist China or People’s Republic of China
(PRC) began escalating its support to the RDV in the early
1960s. In 1965 Communist China sent several thousand
engineering troops to the North Vietnam to assist in
building and repairing roads, railroads, airports and
defense infrastructures. Between 1965 and 1971, there
were more than 320,000 Chinese troops to display all over
North Vietnam. Communist China or PRC also supplied
RDV with a large amount of weapons and military
equipments.
The Soviet Union’s began supporting to the RDV
in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but the support was still
lukewarm. It just supplied Hanoi with information,
technical advisors and moral supports. After Aleksei
Kosygin became the Prime Minister, the support of Soviet
Union to the RDV began increasing remarkably. He was
more eager to assert his power and to placate the
hardliners in the Soviet military. In November 1964, he
[81]
sent a public message of support to the National
Liberation Front in the South and announced a visit to the
RDV in the occasion of the Vietnamese New Year. He
arrived in Hanoi in February 1965 and met with members
of the VWP or VCP Politburo and commanders of the
Vietnamese People’s Army. They signed a defense treaty
in which the Soviet Union pledged to provide the RDV
with financial and military aid. A public statement from
the Kosygin delegation said:
“The RDV , the outpost of the socialist camp in
southeast Asia, is playing an important role in the struggle
against American imperialism and is making its
contribution to the defense of peace in Asia an throughout
the world. The governments of the Union Soviet of
Socialist Republic (USSR) and RDV have examined the
situation… Both governments resolutely condemn the
aggressive actions of United States on August 5th 1965,
and especially the barbaric attacks by American aircraft
on the RDV territory on February 7th and 8th 1965…The
USSR will not remain indifferent to ensuring the security
of a fraternal socialist country and will give the RDV
necessary aid and support.”

Paris Peace Accord:

The Paris Peace Accord (PPA) was signed on

January 27, 1973 among the RDV, Provisional
Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam (PRG/SV),
RVN and USA to end the war and restore peace in South
Vietnam. In fact, the PPA completely failed to bring the
true peace in South Vietnam. It only helped the United
[82]
States to withdraw all Amercian troops and advisors out of
South Vietnam in the honor and bring home all American
prisoners of war.
The PPA at the time was critized by the USA
Senator Ronald Regan then President that: “Ending a
conflict is not so simple, not just calling it off and coming
home. Because the price for that kind of peace could be a
thousand years of darkness for generation’s Vietnam
borned.”

Henry Kissinger (left), U.S. National Security Advisor, and

Le Duc Tho, a member of North Vietnam politburo, in
Paris on November 23, 1972. Two months later, January
27, 1973, the Paris Peace Talks reached the 'Agreement on
Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam.

The main acticles of the PPA were compromised

in a secret meeting between Kissinger, National Security
Advisor of President Nixon, and Le Duc Tho, a member of
the VWP or VCP’s politburo. In reality, one part of the
PPA was secretly arranged in Bejing between Kissinger,
National Security Advisor of President Nixon, and Zhou
[83]
Enlai, Prime Minister of the RPC on July 1971 or in the
meeting between President Nixon and President Mao
Zedon in Beijing on Febuary 1972.

Kissinger secretly met with Zhou Enlai in Bejing July

1971 to set the stage for President Nixon to meet with
President Mao in 1972

The documents being noted by assistants of

Kissinger disclosed that, in the meeting with Zhou Enlai in
Beijing, Kissinger had told Zhou that:
“We will set a deadline for withdrawals, and
during withdrawals there should be a cease-fire and some
attempts at negotiations. If the agreement breaks down
then it is quite possible that the people in Vietnam will
fight it out. If the RVN government is as unpopular as you
seem to think, the quicker our forces are withdrawn the
quicker it will be overthrown. And if it is overthrown after
we withdraw, we will not intervene . We can put on a time
limit, 18 months or some peiod for a cease-fire. (National
Secrurity Advisor Henry Kissinger, Beijing, July 9, 1971)”
In addition to that, Kissinger also told Chinese
Premier Zhou Enlai that: “... a takeover (South Vietnam)
[84]
by force might be tolerated if it happened long enough
after a U.S. withdrawal.”
According to a secret material that was recently
made public, President Nixon also made on March 17,
1973 a similar statement: “The country (the U.S.) would
care if South Vietnam became communist in a matter of six
months. They will not give a damn if it is two years.”

Chairman Mao met President Nixon on

February 21, 1972 in Chungnanhai

The above statements reveal clearly that

Americans had already intended to abandon South
Vietnam in 1972. The collapse of the RVN on April 30,
1975 was the consequence of the previous arrangements
between Kissinger and Zhou Enlai as well as Nixon and
Mao.
Looking at the accord under a certain angle, one
could realize that Nguyen Van Thieu, the President of the
RVN, was put under heavy pressure by the United States
to sign the accord, because he knew that the PPA would
make his government face many difficulties. For that

[85]
reason, he strongly refused to accept it. In the meeting
with General Alexander Haig (a deputy of the National
Security Advisor) in Saigon, Thieu spoke directly to Haig
that:
“In the proposal, you have suggested our
goverment will continue to exist. But it is only an
agonizing solution, and sooner or later the government
will crumble and Nguyen Van Thieu will have to commit
suicide somewhere along the line.”
A document was recently disclosed that the
refusal to sign the PPA of President Thieu made President
Nixon so angry that he threatened to kill him:
“I don’t know whether the threat goes too far or
not, but I’d do any damn thing, that is, or to cut off his
head if necessary” (President Richard Nixon, January 20,
1973)
Finally, President Thieu agreed to accept and
sign the PPA, because some articles were changed and
President Nixon promised to intervene if the RDV would
violate the PPA.
The following are some top secret letters from
President Nixon to President Thieu in which Nixon
pledged a severe retaliatory action if the RDV fails to
abide by the terms of the accord.
In the letter dated October 16, 1972, Nixon
wrote: “In the period following the cessation of hostilities
you can be completely assured that we will continue to
provide your Government with the fullest support,
including continued economic aid and whatever military
assistance is consistent with the ceasefire provisions of the
agreement.”
[86]
 In the letter dated November 14, 1972, he wrote:
“You have my absolute assurance that if Hanoi fails to
abide by the terms of this agreement it is my intention to
take swift and severe retaliatory action.”
In the letter dated January 5, 1973, he wrote: “…
you have my assurance continued in the post-settlement
period and that we will respond with full force should the
settlement be violated by North Vietnam.”
In the letter dated January 17, 1973, he wrote
that: “… Let me state these assurances once again in this
letter:
- First, we recognize your government as the sole
legitimate Government of South Vietnam.
- Second, we do not recognize the right of foreign
troops to remain on South Vietnam soil.
- Third, the U.S. will react vigorously to
violations of the Agreement …”
In summary, the Paris Peace Accord could be
considered as a monstrous work produced by a collusion
between Kissinger, a crooked diplomat, and Le Duc Tho, a
communist ruffian, in Paris in 1972, and between
Kissinger and Zhou as well as between Nixon and Mao
Zedon in Beijing on February 1972. It made the United
States lose its face in the world and acquire a bad
reputation as a traitor to its allies. It also made the RVN
totally colapse, and forced General William C.
Westmoreland to make a bitter statement that:
“On behalf of the United States Armed Forces, I
would like to apologize to the Veterans of South
Vietnamese Armed Forces for abandoning you guys.”

[87]
 After the Geneva Accord was signed in Paris,
Kissinger and Le Duc Tho were hailed for restoring the
peace in Indochina and both were awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize. Even though Tho was a communist ruffian,
he didn’t lose all of his self-respect so he refused to accept
it. On the contrary, Kissinger really was a barefaced guy
so he was very happy to receive it.
The trick that Kissinger and Tho used in the PPA
was that one of the provisions of the Accord stipulated that
all of foreign troops must be withdrawn from South
Vietnam. In other words, this provision tacitly allowed
North Vietnam Communists to retain 150,000 regular
soldiers in South Vietnam, because North Communist
soldiers were not foreign troops. A lot of people thought
that this provision made South Vietnam collapse quickly
in 1975.
It seems like the time of “long enough” of
Kissinger, and the time of “two years” of Nixon was
respected carefully by Vietnamese Communists.
Therefore, in early 1975 North Communists began testing
the reactions of President Gerald Ford by attacking and
taking one village after another, one city after another, one
province after another, but Ford did not have any reaction.
Therefore, they knew that it was an excellent opportunity
to take over South Vietnam and they began launching the
Ho Chi Minh campaign called the General Offensive on
RVN. After 55 days, RVN totally fell into the North
Vietnamese Communists’s hands. Finally the Vietnam
War or the Second Indochina War ended on April 30,
1975.

[88]
 The human cost of the war:

According to documents related to the human-

cost price of the Resistance War against Americans to
Save the Nation in the worldwide Web, we have
relatively accurate numbers of the human cost of the war
as follows:
Nation Killed Wounded Missing
RVN (military) 260,000
RVN (civilians) 500,000
RDV (military) 1,100,000
RDV (civilian) 550,000
NLF (military) 500,000
USA 58,269 153,303 1,672
South Korea 5,099 11,232 4
Australia 506 2,940 0
New Zealand 57 212 0
Thailand 351 1,358 0
China 1,446
The victor of the RDV on April 30, 1975
triggered more than one milion Vietnamese people in the
South to flee from their country to others for freedom
because they did not want to live under the communist
regime. Most of them fled by small fishing boats that were
unsuited to the open sea, and most of these boats were
poorly maintained and were manned by fishing steermen
who were unfamiliar with navigating on the open sea.
Therefore, during the time from 1975 to the 1990, there
were a lot of refugee boats sinking or disintegrating at the
open sea. According to the estimate of the United Nations
Hight Commissioner for Refugees, about one quarter of
[89]
the boat people died on the open sea as a result of
drowning, hunger, thirst or murder by Thai pirates. A lot
of others fled by land from Vietnam to Thailand. They had
to walk accross the Cambodian territory, a very long and
dangerous way. They could be arrested and put into
prisons, robbed, raped or killed anytime and anywhere
along their paths. Almost one million Vietnamese refugees
eventually relocated in America, Canada, Australia,
France and other countries in the Free World.
The Resistance War against Americans is not
necessary.
Three main reasons Ho and his men raised to
launch the war against Americans as follows:
1. Fighting against American invaders to save
the Nation: Calling the war between RDV and RVN under
the name of “Resistance War against Americans to Save
the Nation” was the way to exchange fraudulently between
the cause and the consequence of Ho and his men. The US
sent a half million troops to South Vietnam without any
ambition to occupy it, but just to help RVN against the
invasion of RDV. If RDV did not attempt to invade RVN,
the United States would not send its troops to South
Vietnam. Therefore, the presence of US troops in South
Vietnam was the consequence rather than the cause.
Ho and his men knew very clearly that, the
United States had no ambition to claim territory at all, but
most Vietnamese people did not know that. Therefore,
they believed the label “against American invaders to save
nation” was more than equal to attract Vietnamese people
at the time to rush headlong into the war against
Americans.
[90]
 2. Liberating South people from the yoke of
oppresion and exploitation of the US and pupet
government: In order to induce northerners to positively
join the war, Ho and the VCP labeled the war as the one to
liberate the flesh-and-blood southerners from the poor and
starving situation by the barbarous oppression and the
pitiless exploitation of the American Empire and the
puppet government. Ho and his propaganda machine
described the life of the southerners as an extremely
sombre picture. They had no houses to live in and had to
live under bridges; they did not have enough rice to eat so
they had to eat vegetables and rice porridge to keep body
and soul together. They did not have any personal liberty.
This propaganda is a totally fallacy to encourage the
gentle northerners to rush headlong to the war.
3. Reunifying the country under a single socialist
regime: Reunifying the country is the necessary duty to do
for every Vietnamese, because it is a lagacy of ancestors
from a thousand generations ago and it also is a historical
imperative. Therefore, no one can deny the necessity of
unification. However, an important question that needs to
be mentioned here is that: How should it be done and what
price should be paid for the unification?
After World War II, the world history provides
two lessons to unify a country. North Vietnam and South
Vietnam were unified on April 30, 1975; East Germany
and West Germany were unified on October 03, 1990. If
we contrasted these cases, we would realize that the price
paid for each unification was very different.
The unification of Vietnam had forced the
country to go through a destructive war lasting two
[91]
decades, and cost more than three million people. It also
made two million others look for freedom in the Free
World. On the contrary, the unification of Germany did
not put this country through any war and did not pay for
any drop of blood.
Conclusion:
Through the statements and documents
mentioned above, one can reach the following conclusion:
The American troops had no intention to invade the South
Vietnam but help it fight against the aggression of Ho and
the VCP and stop the expansion of the Communist
International. The presence of Americans in Vietnam
would be a remarkable obstacle for the attempt of Ho and
his men to take over the South Vietnam and the
Communist International to spread the Communism to
countries in the South East Asia. Le Duan, the successor
of Ho Chi Minh had formally confirmed this pretext by
saying that: “We fight against Americans is we fight for
Communist China and the Soviet Union.”
The above statement of Le Duan clearly
confirmed that the main reason of the VCP in attacking
and occupying the RVN in 1975 was not to liberate their
fresh-and-blood southerners from the oppression and
exploitation of the Republic of Vietnam and American
Empire but to complete their duty to the Communist
International or the Comintern.

[92]
 Cambodia and Vietnam War
(Third Indochina War)

In Vietnam, the war was called “The Campaign

of Counter-Invasion at Vietnam’s South-West Border”,
and also known as the “Third Indochina War”. In fact, it
was a conflict between the Vietnamese Communists or the
Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) and Khmer Rouge
Communists or the Democratic of Kampuchea (DOK). At
the beginning, several clashes occurred along the land and
maritime borders between two countries and they
increased gradually from small ones to larger ones.
Finally, on 25 December 1978, the SRV troops launched a
[93]
full-scale invasion of DOK, occupied it, toppled the
Khmer Rouge Communist government, and established a
pro-Vietnamese government and a new country called the
People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) and also known
as Republic of Cambodia (ROC). The war lasted from
1979 to 1989.

The Relationship between Vietnamese

Communists and Cambodian Communists:

In early 1930, Nguyen Ai Quoc, a member of the

Communist International or Comintern, formed the
Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) in Hong Kong. In
late 1930, in accordance with the advice of the Communist
International, the VCP was changed into the Indochinese
Communist Party (ICP). The reason of the change was that
the Communist International wanted to have a single
Communist Party that has duty to fight against the French
Colonialists to gain independence for three countries
(Vietnam – Laos – Cambodia) in Indochina at the same
times. For that reason, the ICP began recruiting members
of the ICP who were Laotians and Cambodians.

In 1951, Ho and his men officially helped their

Cambodian comrades establish a separate Cambodian
Communist Party under the camouflaged name:
Kampuchean People’s Revolutionary Party (KPRP) which
allied with the Nationalist Separatist Cambodian
Movement called the Khmer Serei or Free Khmers, to
struggle against French colonialists to gain independence
for Cambodia.

[94]
 In World War II, French colonialists in
Indochina had been supplanted by Japanese militarists.
After Japan surrendered Allies, French colonialists
returned to Vietnam Ho and his men began initiating the
Anti-French Resistance War or the First Indochina War
(FIW) against the French colonialists. During the FIW, a
lot of military and political cadres of the ICP, who were
Vietnamese, were sent to Cambodia to help the KPRP
fight against the French Colonialists. These cadres were
considered as the key members of the KPRP.
In 1954, the Geneva Accord was signed to end
the First Indochina War. In accordance with the Accords,
the RDV had to withdraw all of these cadres out of
Cambodia. For that reason, the KPRP faced with a serious
deficit of cadres, approximately 5,000.
The deficit made the KPRP recruit a great
number of new members. Most of them were former
members of the French Communist Party who returned to
[95]
Cambodia from France. Among those were Pol Pot, Ieng
Sary and Khieu Samphan who then became key leaders of
the Khmer Rouge and who were heavily influenced by
Maoist ideology.
Right after seizing power from a US-backed
regime headed by Lon Nol in April 1975, the Khmer
Rouge leaders worried that Vietnamese Communist
leaders could control the KPRP by establishing an
Indochinese federation in which the SRV would become
the master of the federation and Cambodia would be only
a subordinate of the federation.

In order to preempt the Vietnamese communist

leaders’ ambition, the KPRP began purging most of its
members who were influenced or trained by the VCP. On
the other hand, they began waging provocations along the
border between Vietnam and Cambodia with the hope to
dispirit the VCP’s ambition and regain their territorial
areas that had been usurped by Vietnam during previous
centuries.
[96]
 Events before the war:

On May 4, 1975, (just 4 days after Saigon fell to

the hands of Vietnamese Communists) the DOK troops
invaded the Phu Quoc island of Vietnam.
On May 10, 1975, the DOK troops invaded the
Tho Chu island where they executed about 500
Vietnamese civilians. The SRV troops immediately
responded to the invasions of the DOK troops by
launching a counter attack and forcing them to withdraw
from these islands.
On April 30, 1977, the second anniversary of the
fall of Saigon, the DOK troops attacked and occupied
several Vietnamese towns and villages belonging to An
Giang Province along the border, executing hundreds of
Vietnamese civilians. The SRV responded to the invasion
of DOK troops by sending its forces to the conflict areas
to dislodge them from Vietnamese territory.
On September 25, 1977, the DOK troops
attacked several Vietnamese towns and villages belonging
to Dong Thap Province. Hundreds of Vietnamese civilians
were killed by DOK or Khmer Rouge troops.
On the same day, September 25, four divisions
of Khmer Rouge attacked and occupied several
Vietnamese towns and villages belonging to Tay Ninh
province where they executed about 1,000 Vietnamese
civilians.
On December 16, 1977, in order to retaliate
against the provocations of the Khmer Rouge and to force
the DOK government to negotiate with Vietnam, the SRV
assembled several infantry divisions and with the support

[97]
of the Air Forces crossed the border and penetrated deeply
into the DOK territory. On the battlefields, the Khmer
Rouge troops could not withstand the ferocious attack of
the Vietnam People’s Army (VPA), so they had to
withdraw to avoid heavy damage. By the end of December
1977, the SRV troops marched through Svay Rieng
Province and stopped when they captured the capital of
the province.
On December 31, 1977, President Kieu Samphan
declared that the diplomatic relationship between the DOK
and the SRV was temporarily interrupted until the SRV
withdrew all of its troops from the DOK territory.
In early January 1978, the SRV Troops began
secretly contacting So Phim who was a Khmer Rouge
military leader in the Eastern Military Zone and also was a
Cambodian communist sympathizer with Vietnamese
communist leaders, to incite him to carry out a secret plan
against Pol Pot. However, this plan was disclosed;
therefore, Pol Pot ordered a Khmer Rouge military unit
from the Southwest Military Zone to move to the Eastern
Military Zone to attack So Phim and his men. As a
consequence of the unexpected attack, So Phim committed
suicide, while his deputy Heng Samrin defected to
Vietnam. Later Heng Samrin became the Chairman of the
People’s Republic of Kampuchea.
On January 6, 1978, even though the SRV troops
were only 24 miles from Phnon Penh, the capital of the
DOK, but the SRV government decided to withdraw its
troops from Cambodian territory, and stated that its
political goal was achieved. While withdrawing, the SRV
troops evacuated thousands of Cambodian civilian
[98]
refugees. Among those was Hun Sen who was the future
Chief of State of the People’s Republic of Kampuchea
(PRK).
On January 18, 1978, when visiting Phnon Penh,
the capital of Cambodia, Deng Yingchao, the vice premier
of the PRC, met with the leaders of the Khmer Rouge and
tried to mediate a talk between the SRV and DOK, but her
attempt did not materialize.
On April 20, 1978, the Khmer Rouge
government declared that the DOK and SRV could
negotiate again with the conditions that the SRV had to
give up its expansionary ambitions and meet some other
preconditions through a seven-month trial ceasefire.
However, the SRV government immediately rejected the
Khmer Rouge’s proposals.
On April 18, 1978, to retaliate against the SRV
government’s rejection, two divisions of the Khmer Rouge
troops penetrated up to 2 miles into the SRV territory and
made an attack of Ba Chuc, a Vietnamese populous village
belonging to Angiang Province, where they occupied for
more than ten days and carried out a terrible massacre of
more than 3,000 Vietnamese civilians who were plain
country people.

The Sources of the Cambodian Provocations:

Besides the purpose to preempt the expansionary

ambition of the Vietnamese Communist Leaders, the
provocations of the Khmer Rouge Troops at the border of

[99]
the SRV and DOK were issued from the historical
diplomatic relations between the two countries.
There was an inherent hatred between
Cambodians and Vietnamese because in past centuries
Vietnamese Kings and Lords always bore in their minds to
trespass on the land of Cambodia. Most of the South
Vietnam territory today was previously the territory of
Cambodia. Prey Nokor (Saigon) fell to Vietnam in 1674.
Mesa (My Tho) and Longhor (Vinh Long) fell to Vietnam
by 1732. Praah-Trapeng (Tra Vinh), Srok Trang (Soc
Trang), Meat Chruk (An Giang) were ceded to Vietnam by
the Cambodian Court in 1735.
Under the Nguyen Dynasty, the Vietnamese
emperor Minh Mang (1791-1841) considered the
Cambodians as barbarian people. He therefore ordered his
general Truong Minh Giang to civilize them. A policy
called the Cultural Vietnamization was applied by General
Truong to force Cambodians to adopt Vietnamese attire,
names, language and so forth.
In history, several times Vietnam dominated and
harshly rules Cambodians and tried to keep Cambodia as a
vassal-tributary-subordinate of the State of Vietnam.
In the minds of Khmer Rouge leaders still
contained a prejudice that the purpose of the Vietnamese
Communist Leaders in establishing the ICP was not only
for struggling against French colonalists to gain
independence for the three countries in Indochina, but also
for their own expansionary ambition to form the
Indochinese Federation under the domination of the VCP.

[100]
 Comparing the contemporary military forces
between the SRV and the DOK:

If compared the military forces of the SRV and

the DOK in 1977, one would be easily to realize that there
was a great disparity. The SRV was estimated to have
615,000 soldiers, 900 tanks, and 300 combat aircrafts.
While Khmer Rouge was estimated to have 70,000
soldiers, 100 tanks, 200 armored vehicles and a limited
number of combat aircrafts. If the war between the two
countries had occurred at that time, the Khmer Rouge
would be quickly crushed. It was believed that the Khmer
Rouge leaders definitely knew this disparity but they still
ordered their troops to engage it, because they believed
that if they were attacked by the SRV, the PRC would
strongly support them to fight against the SRV.

Progression in the war:

On December 25, 1978, the Vietnamese

Communist leaders used 15 divisions, estimated at
150,000-200,000 soldiers, to begin launching a full-scale
invasion of Cambodia, even though the Chinese
Communist leaders warned previously that the patience of
the PRC was limited and the SRV would be punished if
they invaded the DOK.
On January 7, 1979, the SRV troops captured
Phnon Penh and forced Khmer Rouge troops to withdraw
into the areas of mountains and forest near Thailand
border where they continued a guerrilla war againt the
SRV troops.

[101]
 On January 8, 1978, in Phnon Penh, the SRV
troops cooperated with the members of the Kampuchean
United Front for Nation Salvation (KUFNS) to establish a
new state called the People’s Republic of Kampuchea
(PRK) also known as the Republic of Kampuchea (ROK)
with Heng Samrin as the President and the new
Cambodian Communist Party under a camouflaged name
the Kampuchean People’s Revolutionary Party (KPRP)
with Pen Sovan as the first General Secretary. These
establishments marked the beginning of a ten-year period
of the SRV occupying and ruling Cambodia.

Reactions of the international community:

Not long after Phnon Penh fell into the hands of

the SRV and PRK, the DOK’s Representives called for an
emergency meeting of the United Nations Security
Council (UNSC) to discuss the situation of the DOK.
Despite the request of the DOK was strongly
opposed by the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia, but the
UNSC approved it. In the meeting of UNSC, Prince
Norodom Shianouk, a legitimate presentative of the DOK,
accused the SRV as an invader of the DOK. He also
demanded that all country members of the United Nations
to suspend their supports of the SRV and not to recognize
the PRK government which was established by Vietnam.
Seven nonpermanent members of the UNSC
submitted a draft of a resolution in which they called for a
ceasefire and the withdrawal of all foreign troops from the
DOK. The resolution was endorsed by China, France,
Norway, Portugal, the United States and the United
Kingdom, but it did not materialize due to the opposition
[102]
from the Soviet Union, one of the five permanent
members of the UNSC has the right of veto.
Many members of the United Nations criticized
the SRV as an invader of the DOK. However, there were
also several others claiming that, the SRV troops did not
invade Cambodia to carry out their hegemony in
Indochina, but to help Cambodians stop the massacre of
the “butcher clique” of Pol Pot - Ieng Sary - Khieu
Samphan.
In February 1979, a treaty of Peace, Friendship
and Cooperation between the PRK and SRV was signed.
The treaty’s acticle 2 stated that the security between the
PRK and the SRV was interrelated. For that reason, both
sides would have to help each other fight against plots and
acts of sabotage by the internatioal reactionary forces.
Several international observers thought that this treaty
legitimized the presence of the SRV troops on the
Cambodian territory.
Soon afterwards the Soviet Union and some
socialist countries in Eastern Europe recognized the PRK
government. And the Soviet Union stated that it would
fully support the PRK’s attempt to advance towards the
socialism.
At the 34th session of the United Nations
General Assembly (UNGA), the delegation of the DOK as
well as the delegation of the PRK claimed that they were
the sole legitimate representative of Cambodia country
and the Cambodian people.
In order to respond to this knotty problem, the
UN Credential Committee, consisting of nine members,
had to vote for one of the two to be the legitimate
[103]
representative of Cambodia. The result was that the DOK
delegation was recognized as the legitimate representative
by a vote of six to three.
Thailand, a country sharing a 500-mile border
with Cambodia and having a historical concern regarding
the expansionism of the SRV, demanded that the SRV
troops immediately withdraw from the DOK territory so
that the Cambodian people could elect a government
without foreign intervention. Philippines, Malaysia,
Singapore and Indonesia supported the Thailand’s
demand.
The Association of South East Asian Nations
(ASEAN) also believed that the invasion and occupation
of Cambodia by the SRV troops was a considerable threat
to the region’s security and stability.

A lesson for the Socialist Republic of Vietnam:

The People’s Republic China (PRC) considered

that the invasion and occupation of Cambodia was a plot
by the SRV to force Cambodia into an Indochinese
Federation under its control and serve as an outpost of the
Soviet global hegemony. Because of that, the PRC decided
to punish the SRV.
On February 17, 1979, about 200,000 Chinese
soldiers with the support of 200 Type 59, Type 62, and
Type 63 tanks began attacking Vietnamese provinces
along the China-Vietnam border. On March 2, they
captured Cao Bang Province, and on March 4, they
captured Lang Son Province.
On March 6, 1979, PRC troops stated that their
punitive lesson of the SRV had been achieved and they
[104]
began to withdraw from Vietnam. On the way back to the
Chinese border, the Communist Chinese troops destroyed
or looted everything they saw with the purpose to weaken
the economy of the northernmost provinces of Vietnam.

Invasion or Humanity

On December 25, 1978, the SRV launched a

large invasion of DOK. After two weeks, they captured
Phnon Penh, the capital of Cambodia, and forced the
Khmer Rouge retreat troops to the mountain and forest
areas near the Thailand border. The SRV troops occupied
and controlled the Cambodia for ten years to support the
PRK government and the KPRP to restore peace and
stabilize order.
At first, many people thought that, the SRV
troops’ occupation of Cambodia was considered a
humanitarian mission rather than an invasive one because
they liberated Cambodians from the bloodthirsty clique of
Pol Pot, Ieng Sary and Khieu Samphan, who killed
barbarously nearly two millions Cambodian people.
However, if took a close look at the scene, one
would realize that the SRV troops on the attack Khmer
Rouge and occupied Cambodia was not a humanitarian
mission to liberate Cambodians from the genocidal
disaster, but a real invasion. The reason that made them
think so was that the Vietnamese Communist leaders were
extreme fiendish and never had any genuine compassion
toward Cambodians at all. Vietnamese modern history
indicated that the Vietnamese communist leaders never
treated any group humanely not even their compatriots.

[105]
Their final purpose was to usurp the political power for
carrying out their ambition.
During the time from 1945 to 1954, Vietnamese
Communists killed hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese
because they loved their Vietnamese motherland but did
not love Communism. On the other hand, their draconian
rule made more than one million northern Vietnamese had
to leave their homes, rice fields, and ancestral graves to
look for freedom in the South after the 1954-Geneva
Accord came into effect.
In 1975, in the name of liberation they put more
than ten million of their southern compatriots, who were
living in relative peace and happiness, directly into hell on
earth”. And more than two million people, who did not
want to live under the so-called “socialist paradise”, had to
leave Vietnam to look for freedom in other countries.
In short, if the Vietnamese communist leaders
did not have compassion over their own compatriots, how
would they have compassion over the “no-skin”
Cambodians? For that reason, one could conclude that the
SRV troops invading Cambodia did not proceed from the
Vietnamese communist leaders’ compassion but from their
machination to keep Cambodia under their monopolization
and restraint.
The following is evidences to verify that the
machination to attack and occupy Cambodia of
Vietnamese Communist leaders was not originated from
their humanity but their hegemonic ambition. They had
prepared carefully before to carry it out.
On December 2, 1978, the Vietnamese
Communist leaders in Hanoi gathered all Cambodian
[106]
political refugees in Vietnam to establish the Kampuchean
United Front for Nation Salvation (KUFNS), and Heng
Samrin, a member of the Khmer Rouge who was recruited
and trained by the VCP, was assigned by the Vietnamese
Communist leaders to be the chairman of the front. They
praised the KUFNS as an opposite organization to the
DOK authorities or the Khmer Rouge Government. They
then equipped them with weapons and led them back to
Cambodia in the name of a patriotic organization to
liberate Cambodian people from evil. In other words, they
used the KURNS to camouflage their invasion of
Cambodia. This made people in the world wrongly
presume that the SRV had no intention to invade
Cambodia at all, but only to help the KUFNS liberate its
compatriots from the butcher clique of Pol Pot, Ieng Sary
and Khieu Samphan.
In June 1978, the Politburo of the VCP held a
meeting in Hanoi to draw up a strategy against the Khmer
Rouge. The meeting concluded that, Chinese Communist
was the traditional enemy of Vietnam and always used
different trickeries to hamper the SRV in advancing to the
socialist. The Khmer Rouge Government was only lackey
of the PRC because of that the Khmer Rouge government
in Phnon Penh must be removed by SRV troops.
In early September 1978, Le Duan, the first
secretary of VCP, informed the Soviet ambassador in
Hanoi that Vietnam could resolve the Cambodian problem
by early 1979 to seek a political support from the Soviet
Union.
On November 3, 1978, the treaty of Friendship
and Cooperation between the Socialist Republic of
[107]
Vietnam and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic
(USSR) was signed. The treaty guaranteed the SRV that a
vital aid from the Soviet Union in the circumstance in
which Communist China intervened in the conflict
between the SRV and Khmer Rouge.
In November 1978, a command headquarters was
established to operate the invasion campaign. The senior
general, Le Duc Anh, was assigned to be the Commander
Chief of the campaign.
Finally, on December 25, 1978, around 200,000
Vietnamese communist soldiers and 1,000 armed
members of the KUFNS began crossing the border and
attacking Cambodia. After two weeks, they occupied most
of territory of the DOK and began controlling Cambodia
for a period of ten years.
During the ten years of occupying Cambodia,
most public offices from central government to local ones
were held by Cambodians, but in fact they did not have the
real power. Each office had at least one Vietnamese
advisor and any important decision that was made by the
local officials must be previously approved by the
Vietnamese advisors. In other words, almost Cambodian
officials in the central governments as well as local ones
were only puppets of the SRV.

After ten years under heavy pressure and strong

objection of the international community, Vietnamese
communist leaders finally resigned and gave up their
occupation of Cambodia and withdrew their troops to
Vietnam from Cambodia.

[108]
 Human Cost by the War

If people do not count the all material losses but

only count the all human losses of both sides from the day
the SRV troops began attacking Cambodia to the day they
began withdrawing from Cambodia, the human losses
were estimated by reliable sources of news as follows:

Vietnam Cambodia

Soldiers killed: 20,000 - 30,000 15,000-20,000

Soldiers wounded: 30, 000 50,000
Civilians killed: 0 [3] 100,000

Conclusion

The events, documents and information

mentioned above were indisputable proof that the culprits
of the war between Vietnam and Cambodia from 1979 to
1989 were the Vietnamese communist leaders.
They could explain that, they had to attack and
occupy Cambodia to retaliate against the provocations of
the Khmer Rouge troops along the border, because these
provocations were not appropriate to the invasion and
occupation of the whole country of Cambodia for ten
years.
They could not explain that, their attacking and
occupying Cambodia was to save Cambodians from the
“hell on earth” because even though the Khmer Rouge

3
This number is not counted the Vietnamese civilians to be killed by the
Khmer Rouge Troops during the time they attacked and harassed some
Vietnamese townships and villages along the border.
[109]
committed genocide, the SRV troops had no legitimate
reason in the name of the God or international law to
attack and occupy Cambodia.
They also could not plead that the SRV troops
were a volunteer armed forces coming to Cambodia for a
humanitarian mission to deliver Cambodians from the
“killing-field” of the Khmer Rouge, because if SRV troops
really were a real volunteer army, they would have
withdrawn right after their mission was completed and
would not have stayed and controlled Cambodia for ten
years.
In short, there was no legitimate reason to justify
their attack and occupation of Cambodia for ten years.
Because of that, the attack, occupation, and stay in
Cambodia for ten years by the SRV troops was a true
invasion of Cambodia with the intention to carry out their
evil-mined ambition which was to dominate, controls and
monopolize the country of Cambodia. Of course, the
Vietnamese Communist leaders, who were the culprits of
this war, were ultimately responsible for every loss caused
by the war.

[110]
 Land Reform Revolution
In North Vietnam

In 1950, right after the chain of military-posts of

the French Troops along the border between Vietnam and
China was cleared away, Ho traveled in person to Russia
to report to Stalin, the highest leader of the Communist
International, about what he did and will do in Vietnam.
On this occasion, Stalin ordered him after returning to
Vietnam he had to carry out as soon as possible two
things: The first was to publicize the Indochinese
Communist Party (ICP) and the second was to carry out
the Land Reform Revolution (LRR) or Land Reform
Program (LRP) based on the model of the LRR or LRP of
Communist China.
In February 1951, Ho and his men publicized the
ICP by changing the name of the Marxism Research
Association in Indochina (MRAI) [4] into the Vietnamese
Worker Party (VWP) instead of the ICP. He thought that
with the new name of the VWP could make a lot of
innocent Vietnamese believe the VWP was not the ICP,
In 1952, Ho went back to Moscow with the Land
Reform Program that was drafted by Ho with the help of
the two leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to
ask for the previous approval and any necessary
instruction of Stalin. Because of an unknown reason,
Stalin did not want to directly meet Ho; therefore he had
to write a letter to him. This is Ho’s letter:

4
MRAI was the camouflaged name of the ICP after it was dissolved by
Ho on November 11, 1945
[111]
 Dear Comrade Stalin,

I am sending you the Vietnamese Labor Party’s

Land Reform Program. It was established by me, with the
help of two comrades, Liu Shaoshi and Van Szia-Sian.
Please read it and give me your instructions to carry it
out.

Sending you a communist salutation,

Ho Chi Minh
(12-31-1952)

Implementation

In 1953, Ho and his VWP began carrying out the

LRP in the North of Vietnam. This program was actually a
[112]
duplicate of the one that President Mao Zedong and the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had performed in China
from 1946 to 1953.
The purpose of LRP in North Vietnam at the
time was not only to extirpate and uproot all intellectuals,
rich landlords and bullies in the rural areas, but also to
establish the rural proletarian government in the hands of
landless and poor farmers. On the other hand, Ho and his
VWP also wanted to use the LRP as an opportunity to
eradicate land ownership throughout the country and to
completely eliminate those who were considered as anti-
communist elements in the rural area.
In order to carry out the LRR, Ho and the VWP
had used about 50,000 cadres. They were divided into
companies (đoàn) and teams (đội). A company consisted
of 300 to 400 cadres and was divided into teams. A team
could have from 15 to 30 cadres, depending on the
population of the village it was in charge of. The team
leader must be a senior communist member. Ho and his
VWP granted land-reform teams a lot of power for doing
whatever they thought was best for the LRP. Therefore, in
the duration of the Land Reform Campaign there was a
proverb that read: “First Team, second Heaven.”
The following are some basic principles that land
reform companies and teams had to respect during the
time they carried out the LRP:
- At least 5% population of a village was to be
selected as landlords
- Wrongly killing ten enemies is rather than
wrongly releasing one
- Extirpate and uproot all of intellectuals, rich,
landlords and bullies in the rural areas
[113]
 On the other hand, during the Land Reform
Campaign, Ho and his men encouraged their cadres and
poor farmers to kill landlords as more as possible.

Tố Hữu, a member of the Politburo and a

famous poet, had written a poem named “Killing Over
and Over Again.” Here is his poem:

”Kill! Kill! Don’t let your hands stop killing suddenly

To make your rice-fields and your tax better
Your party be stronger and unite closely
This is the way to worship Mao and Stalin forever”

Xuân Diệu, a high-ranking communist card and

a prominent poet, was the author of the poem named
“Killing All” in which he called up land reform cadres and
poor farmers to maltreat landlords until death:

Brothers and sisters! We have to reunite into a mass

To struggle and annihilate our brutal enemy
Landlords, bullies and so on will be destroyed to ashes
Neutralists and reactionaries will be decimated totally
All of the village roads are lighted by torches
To brighten the common house tonight
Drag all of them to the common house’s court
Force them to kneel and maltreat them until they die

Ho Chi Minh (president of the RDV)

recommended his men who were going to the rural areas
to carry out the LLR in the meeting on October 31, 1955
that: “The more landlords you kill, the more successes you
get.”

[114]
 Ho and his men in the meeting on October 31, 1955

Before doing on a large scale, Ho and his VWP

had used 6 villages of Dai Tu District, Thai Nguyen
Province as a model to carry out a Land Reform Campaign
(LRC) that lasted from 25 December 1953 to 31 March
1954 for learning experiences. All the activities of land
reform cadres in the model were directly led and carefully
followed up by Ho and the Politburo of the Party Central
Committee. All successes and failures of the model were
highly valuable lessons for the future.
After the LRC of the model ended, Ho and his
VWP launched a large LRC that was divided into two
campaigns, I & II. Campaign I was called: “Allowing the
Mass a Free Struggle against Landlords for Land Rent
Reduction” (Phóng Tay Phát Động Quần Chúng Đấu
Tranh Đòi Địa Chủ Giảm Tô), also known in short as
“Land Rent Reduction Campaign.” Campaign II was
called the “Real Land Reform” (Cuộc Cải Cách Ruộng
Đất Đích Thực).

[115]
 Land Rent Reduction Campaign

The following are the steps to be performed in

this campaign:
In the first step, a land reform team was silently
sent to a village. Right after entering a village, the team
immediately discharged all of its current officials of the
village government as well as of the village party cell. The
reason that made a team do so was that these officials
were presumed as landlord’s henchmen or landlord
sympathizers. If they continued to be in their offices, the
LRR would not be carried out perfectly. At first, they were
temporarily replaced by team’s members then later by the
new ones who were chosen from poor farmer families. Ho
and his VWP believed that because of their economic and
political interests they would be loyal to the VWP.
In the second step, the team arranged its
members into families of landless or poor farmers to
awaken their awareness of the class struggle by the art of
“thăm nghèo hỏi khổ” or “visiting of poverties and calling
of hardships” and “tam cùng” or “three together”[5].
During the time of visiting of poverties and calling of
hardships, a land reform team also had a duty to find out
some landless or poor families whom the land reform team
would send a cadre to for doing three-together. This task
was called “bắt rễ” or “catching root”. The first poor
farmer in the village to be chosen by a land reform cadre
for doing three-together was considered his first root.
After educating the first root to be a loyal member of the
LRR, the land reform card asked his first root to introduce
one of his relatives or friends whom the cadre could visit
and turn him to his second root. From the second root, the
cadres asked for the third root. One after another, a land
reform cadre had several roots which were linked (xâu

5
Work together, eat together, live together
[116]
chuỗi) into a chain. All chains of a land reform team’s
members were threaded together into a network to
positively carry out the LRR and strictly control all
landlords in the village.
During the time of doing the three-together, land
reform cadres tried their best to convince poor farmers to
believe that the main reason that caused them to be as poor
as church mice was the landlords. They asked poor
farmers: “Why are landlords rich?” And “Why are
farmers poor?” They then simply answered them that,
“Landlords are rich because they exploit poor farmers.”
and “Farmers are poor because they were exploited by
landlords.” Finally, LRR cadres persuaded poor farmers:
“The only way to get out of their unfortunate destinies was
to obey and do exactly whatever Ho and the VWP told
them to do.”
However, some land reform cadres were not
successful in their tasks of doing three-together because
some poorest farmers had clear awareness although they
were uneducated. Because they knew the arguments of
land reform cadres were false and sophistical words and
denied to cooperate with land reform cadres to falsely
calumniate landlords of crimes they did not commit. This
case was called to catch a wrong root or a “rotten root” (rễ
thối).
In the third step, after collecting enough
information from poor families through the “three
together” as well as from other farmer families in the
village through the “visiting of poverties and calling of
hardships”, the team began setting up several meetings to
discuss and classify all of families in the village into six
classes based on the rice-field they owned:
1. The landlord (địa chủ) class that consists of
farmers who own a lot of rice-fields and themselves do not
directly participate in their farm work. All their rice-fields
are to be hired by tenant farmers or sharecroppers, and
[117]
 they directly or indirectly collect their land rents from
tenants or sharecroppers.
2. The rich farmer (phú nông) class that consists
of farmers who have three or above Vietnamese acres [6]
of rice-fields and most of their farm work is done by their
family members. They only hire farmer labors in their
transplant or harvest seasons.
3. The upper middle farmer (trung nông lớp trên)
class that includes farmers who have three or below
Vietnamese acres and their farm work to be done by their
family members without help from others.
4. The lower middle farmer (trung nông lớp
dưới) class that includes of farmers who have around one
Vietnamese acre of rice-fields that cannot offer enough
rice to feed their families; therefore they have to hire rice-
fields of landlords and pay them land-rent.
5. The poorest farmers (bần nông) class that
consists of farmers who own less than one Vietnamese
acre of rice-fields and the rice-fields they own cannot offer
enough rice to feed their families so they become tenant
farmers or farm workers of landlords.
6. The landless farmers (cố nông) class that
includes farmers who have no rice-field and agricultural
equipment so they have to earn their daily living as hired
labors or farmer workers for rich farmers and landlords.
In theory, land reform cadres had to hold several
meetings in which they direct poor famers to discuss with
each other to select and classify all families in the village
into different classes. However, in reality, the land-reform
cadres did it by themselves first then brought it to
meetings of poor farmers for their approval. Most poor
farmers were uneducated so they entirely approved the
class list that was created by the land reform team.

6
. One Vietnamese acre is equal to 4,300 square yards or 3,600 square
meters
[118]
 The class list was a very important document for
every family in the village, because each class was treated
differently in the LRR. The landless class and the poorest
class were the key forces of the LRR. The upper and lower
middle peasant class were allies of the key forces. The rich
farmer class was neither friends nor enemies of the key
forces. The landlord class was the main enemy of the
landless as well as poorest classes and was targeted to be
extirpated and uprooted by the key forces.
Most families classified into the rich farmer class
or the landlord class did not clearly know about their fate
because they were not allowed to attend the classified
meetings. If not controlled strictly by militia, their families
would be classified into the rich farmer class. If
surrounded and isolated strictly by militia, their families
would be classified into the landlord class.
On the other hand, according to the “rice-field
criteria” that were set up by the Decree 239/B.TLP dated
03-02-1953, a lot of farmers believed that the highest class
they might be classified into was the upper middle farmer
class. However, during the time carrying out the LRP, the
land reform cadres did not respect this criterion but the
one that was set up by Chinese Advisors in which at least
5% of the population of a village must be classified as
landlords. This criterion surprised several families,
because it directly kicked up several families from the
upper or lower middle class in to the landlord class.
In the fourth step, the land reform cadres
focused their task on encouraging landless and poor
farmers to tell about their three generations’ poverty and
misery in meetings full of farmers. They also encouraged
poor farmers to track down the landlords’ hidden assets
and to force them to pay back the excess land-rents that
were collected in the past years. In this step, most
landlords were interrogated and tortured by land reform
cadres and poor farmers to force them to enumerate and
[119]
 dig up their hidden assets such as gold, diamonds and
gemstones to pay the excess land-rent. A popular poem
that described the grief and suffering of a landlord who
was investigated and tortured during this step:

They interrogated me
Days and nights continuously
They asked me again and again that:
“Where did you hide your hidden assets?
In your yard or in your garden
In your pond or in your pigpen”
They unearthed everywhere in my garden and house
But no hidden assets to be found
My God! It is an injustice for me
I feel extremely unhappy.

In the fifth step, the LR team had to do three

things:
- First, the team had to select at least one of the
landlords of its village who was considered as the evilest
one to be “announced” or “đấu tố” by landless and poor
farmers in a public meeting. All though a dead landlord
could be selected to be denounced in a public meeting.
Mr. Le Nhan, a senior communist member,
related an announcement (đấu tố) in his letter dated May
12, 2005 to Prime Minister Phan Van Khai in which he
wrote that one of his closest friends was Phan Thieu Co
who was the grandson of the veteran revolutionary Phan
Boi Chau (1867-1940) [7]told him:
“My grandfather was classified as a feudal
landowner even though he died 15 years before the LRR
program was carried out in my village. When the LRR was
carried out in my native village, LRR cadres ordered poor

7
Phan Boi Chau was betrayed by Ho Chi Minh to the French Secret
Services in 1925 for 100,000 Indochinese piaster
[120]
famers to make a lifelike effigy that was brought to the
village market’s center to be insulted, vituperated,
denounced and plastered at the effigy’s face with shit.”
- Second, the team had to mobilize and select
landless farmers and the poorest farmers who volunteered
to denounce the crimes of landlords in a public meeting.
When mobilizing and selecting enough farmers, the team
began fully training them before they actually entered a
public meeting for denouncing. The reason they needed to
train them carefully was that most landless and poor
farmers were naturally timid as rabbits in speaking up in a
crowded meeting. On the other hand, the landlord’s crimes
that were denounced were untrue or only a storm in a
teacup that inflated into a tsunami from the ocean.
Therefore, denouncers found themselves very hard to
speak eloquently and to express clearly in a crowd of
people. If denouncers were not trained well enough, they
could be considered as clowns in a public meeting. These
things might have reduced the supremacy of Ho and the
VWP.

- Third, the land reform team had to organize a

large public meeting in which at least one evil landlord of
the village was denounced by landless and poor farmers.
Most other landlords in this step were put into a prison or
placed under house arrest.

[121]
 Real Land Reform:
In the real land reform, land reform cadres
continued to extirpate and uproot all intellectuals, rich
landlords and bullies. The important weapon to be used in
the Real Land Reform was the Special People’s Court
(SPC) that was stipulated by the Decree 150/SL dated
04/12/1953 and was modified by the Decree 233/SL dated
06/04/1955.
The following are some articles of the Decree
150/SL:
Article 2: The Special People’s Courts have the
following tasks:
1. Punishing revolutionaries, evil village bullies
and those who resist or undermine the LRR.
2. Hearing of disputes over….
Article 3: A district or an inter-district SPC is
put under the leadership of the Provincial Administrative
and Resistant Committee …
The establishment of a district or an inter-district
SPC belonged to the competence of the Provincial
Administrative and Resistant Committee with the approval
of the Interregional Administrative and Resistant
Committee.
Article 4: The district or Inter-district SPC
consists of a Chief Judge with between 6 to 10 judges.
Most of them shall be landless farmers, poor farmers and
middle farmers. The total of landless and poor farmers
shall be larger than the one of middle farmers.
The chief judge and half of the judges are
selected by the Provincial Administrative and Resistant
Committee with the approval of the Interregional
Administrative and Resistant Committee. And the 2nd half
of the judges are appointed by the District or Inter-
District Peasant Association. When coming to a village for
a hearing, the Court is allowed to select some more
peasant representatives of this village but the total of these
[122]
representatives should not exceed one third of the total of
judges.
Following are some articles of the Decree
233/SL:
Article 1: From now on, article 3 and 4 of the
previous Decree are modified as follows:
Article 3: The Provincial Special People’s
Courts are only established in the provinces where the
Mass Struggle against Landlords for Land Rent Deduction
Campaign or the Real Land Reform Campaign is carrying
out…
The establishment of a Provincial SPS is
suggested by the Provincial Administrative Committee and
the approval of the Interregional Administrative
Committee
Depending the requirements of the LRC, the
Provincial Administrative Committee is allowed to
additionally establish the Sub-Special People’s Courts as
well as appoint some more judges to these Courts.
Article 4: When coming and trying at a village,
the Sub-Special People’s Courts are allowed to appoint
five more peasant representatives of the village. These
representatives are selected by the congress of the Peasant
Association and should be landless, poor or middle
farmers; among them, landless and poor farmers shall be
more than middle farmers. Among them, the amount of
landless and poor farmers shall be more than middle
farmers. These representatives have duty and power as
judges of the Special People’s Court.
The judge who is appointed by the Provincial
Special People’s Court should preside over the court.
Near the end of the campaign, among the
landlords of a village, the land reform team had to select
two of them who would be suggested to be sentenced to
death by a SPC. This criterion was too high with under-
populated and poor villages. For that reason, the cadre
[123]
teams in these villages had to face a lot of difficulties to
achieve the criterion. If based on the rice-field criterion
that a farmer owned, there was no one in the village who
could be classified as an upper middle farmer. However, it
was the irresistible criterion they had to respect.

In order to catch up with the criterion to please

their superiors and Chinese Advisors, some land reform
team leaders had to reluctantly complete this criterion
even though they knew it was completely contrary to their
consciences. Therefore, they had to console themselves
that they just respected the instructions of Uncle Ho, “The
more you kill the more success you get.”
A former land reform cadre recounted a heart-
breaking story in which a honest middle farmer was
suggested by his team as an evil landlord who would be
sentenced to death by the SPC. The cadre reported his
story as follows:
“The village that my team was in charge of was
under-populated and poor that my team had to work very
hard to catch up with the 5% of the population to be
landlords. For that reason, we had to review the villager
[124]
list again and again. Finally, we met the criterion, but
they were poor farmers who did not have enough rice-
fields to classify into the lower middle farmers but they
were selected to be landowners. However, my team still
had another difficult thing to do. It was to select at least
one of them as an evilest landowner who would be
sentenced to death by the Local Special People’s Court in
the near future. At the last minute, we gave a large
meeting in the village. Thanks to this meeting, we achieved
our goal in selecting one of them to be the evilest landlord.
This guy just was a duck tender but he was hated
by a number of his villagers. The reason he was selected
to be the evilest landlord of the village was that the
landless and poorest farmers who attended the meeting
argued that, landlords exploited farmers by collecting
rice; therefore, landlords were sentenced to death. His
ducks sometimes sneaked into the rice-fields of villagers to
stealthily eat rice. For that reason, his ducks were
considered as landlords who exploited poor farmers. For
that reason his ducks must be considered as landlords and
be sentenced to death. However, his ducks had no legal
personality to be sentenced. Therefore, the duck owner
must be sentenced to death instead of his ducks.”
Most landlords in the Real Land Reform
campaign must be tried by Special People’s Court. They
were sentenced under house arrest, life imprisonment or to
death. All their movable and immovable properties were
confiscated and contributed to poor farmers.
At the same time, Ho and the VWP also took the
advantage of the campaign to eliminate every member of
the non-communist parties. For this reason, a lot of
farmers in the first campaign were classified as upper or
lower middle farmer families, but in the second campaign
they were suddenly promoted directly to reactionary
landlords.

[125]
 The LRP was to be carried out in North
Communist from 1953 to 1956 was actually the terrible
crime of Ho and the VWP over the Vietnamese people. It
created several laments that resounded on the earth and
overshadowed in the sky.

In the LRR, hundreds of thousands of innocent

farmers were accused as evil landowners and were killed
unjustly and irresponsibly by the so-called Special
People’s Court.
In order to clearly realize the ruthlessness of Ho
and his communist men in the LRR, I would like to
mention here some reliable writers, journalists and poets
who recounted the terrible things they saw with their own
[126]
eyes or heard with their own ears during the LRR was
carried out in North Vietnam.
Bui Tin (1927-2018), a journalist and a senior
military officer of the Vietnamese communist troops,
recounted about the death of venerable Nguyen Khac
Niem, a senior mandarin of the Nguyen Dynasty and the
father of Nguyen Khac Vien who graduated as a medical
doctor from a French University and was a famous
Vietnamese intellectual in France. Vien was seduced by
Ho to voluntarily return to Vietnam in 1945 to help his
government. The following is Bui’s commentary:
“Niem was accused by land reform cadres as a
feudal landlord. During the time they carried out the LRR
at his village, he was detained in a water-buffalo stable. At
the hour of his meal, land reform cadres spread out a
banana leaf on the ground of the stable and poured his
meal on it then ordered him to kneel on the ground and
forced him to bark “bow-wow” like a dog before eating.
The venerable Niem refused to do as they ordered and
decided to abstain from eating food until death.”
Nguyen Minh Can (1928-2016), a former senior
member of the VWP and a political refugee in Russia
since 1960, recounted a story in which a senior communist
member named Thi Dang was a notorious killer in the 4th
region. The story could be summarized as follows:
“Thi Dang was the deputy secretary of the 4th
region party committee and was also the assistant chief of
a LRR company of the 4th region. A cadre team of his
company was arranged to carry out LRP in a village
belonging to Nghe An province that was also the home
town of Ho. It was one of the poorest villages of Nghe An
Province; therefore, the team had tried so hard but
couldn’t find any villager who had enough criteria to
select as a landowner. The problem was reported to Thi
Dang by the team leader. After receiving the report, Dang
instructed the team leader that:
[127]
 “Chinese Advisors had set up the criterion of five
percent of the population of each village to be landlords.
Comrade must try harder to catch up with this criterion.”
On his way back to the team’s office, the team
leader thought that if he did not obtain this criterion, his
team could be criticized as a bad one. He and his team’s
members therefore reviewed the villager list again and
again. Finally his team caught up with the criteria. He felt
relieved because he believed that his team had already
completed its full duties. He hastily submitted the report to
Thi Dang.
After receiving the list of landowners, Thi Dang
realized it had enough of the population
of the village to be landowners, but he
did not see the special list in which
there were at least two of them being
recommended to be sentenced to death.
Thi therefore became angry and gave
the team leader a very good telling-off
for not fulfilling his duty:
“Your village now has enough
the criterion of landlords but why it does not have two of
them to be suggested being sentenced to death?”
Thi then threw the report directly into the team
leader’s face.
When returning to the team office, the team
leader and his team’s members reviewed the landowner
list over and over again. At the last minute, they selected
enough two farmers of the village who were recommended
to be sentenced to death. The team leader hastily returned
to the company office to submit the latest report. On the
way from the team’s office to the company office, the
team leader met Thi right at the middle of way. He
received the report and put it on his bicycle’s handlebar
then quickly signed it without paying any attention to the

[128]
report’s contents, then immediately pedaled his bicycle
away.
Tran Đinh was a famous writer and the author
of the famous book named “Đèn Cù” or “Rotating
Lantern”. In his book, he mentioned a story related to the
LRR in North Vietnam. This is his story in which
guerrillas killed and shrouded the landlord lady Nguyen
Thi Nam:

At the time guerrillas came to the house where

she was confined and took her to the execution ground,
she felt something bad was going to happen to her;
therefore, she besought that: “If I am going to be killed,
please let me know in advance because I need a little bit of
time for Buddhist chanting.”
“No, we just move you to the other place.” A
guerrilla answered.
But when she just turned her face to the other
side they fired and killed her immediately.
After killing her, a communist cadre was
assigned to go to Chua Hang to buy a coffin. Before
going, he was advised that he must buy a very cheap one
and that he did not have permission to disclose that the
coffin was bought to bury the landlord lady, because if he

[129]
did that, he could be accused as a person who has
heightened the supremacy of the landlord class.
When he came to the coffin shop and told the
shop owner about the condition of the coffin he wanted to
buy, the shop owner was very surprised and said: “I have
been the shop owner for years, and I have never met a
person who wanted to buy a coffin for his relative but
insisted to buy a very cheap one.”

Finally, the cheapest coffin was bought but when

guerrillas put the dead body of Nguyen Thi Nam into it
they realized that the coffin was smaller than her dead
body. However, they still put her body on the mouth of the
coffin then they jumped and trampled on her body while
their mouths shouted: “You are already dead but still
stubborn. We don’t think you can be stubborn with these
poor farmers.”
When hearing the cracking noises that originated
from the breaking of the bones of the dead body, the cadre
who was assigned to buy the coffin was fearful but he did
not dare to run away because he thought that if he did so,

[130]
he would be criticized as a communist member who lost
his revolutionary standpoint.
Trịnh Hưng is a musician and a close friend of
the poet Huu Loan who is the author of the famous poem
named “The Purple of Sim Flower.” Many years ago,
Hung returned to Vietnam from France and visited Huu
Loan. On this occasion, Huu Loan told him about his story
and Hung related as follows:
“At that time Huu Loan was the chief of
propaganda and the training section of the division 304,
and its commander was general Nguyen Son. Vietminh
Troops at the time were very miserable. They did not have
enough rice to eat; therefore, most of their daily food was
sweet potato and manioc. There was a rich local landlord
who carried a lot of decorticated rice (gạo) to the
Vietminh troops’ camp for monthly donation. Almost every
month, the landlord was commended by General Nguyen
Son.
In 1953 the LR campaign was carried out in the
Thanh Hoa province, and the landlord and his wife were
killed. The couple only had a daughter. Because of the
LRP’s isolated policy, the local authorities prohibited
everyone in the area to bring her up, to marry her, to give
her food, to hire her doing something and so on.
The poet was very angry with the LR campaign.
He therefore left his unit for his home village. On the way
returning to his village, he dropped in on the landlord’s
family, where he found out that both of them were killed.
Their daughter was not brought up by their relatives or
anyone in the village. For that reason she had to glean
sweet potato and manioc on the field and ate them raw for
survival. Her clothes were ragged. She had to sleep on the
sidewalk or in the common house or in the market house.
He did not have the heart to let her die. He therefore led
her to his home to bring her up and later to marry her.”

[131]
 Nguyen Van Tran, a senior communist member,
recounted a heart-breaking story related to a former
communist member named Nguyen Van Soan who was
secretary of the Viet Tien [8] village party cell. This
village belonging to Lam Thao district and Phu Tho
province and Soan was accused of committing three
serious crimes:
- Sneaking into the VWP to destroy it.
- Planting into the VWP by enemy.
- Letting his rice-fields be rented by poor farmers
to force them to thank him for feeding them.
While being detained in a temporary prison,
Soan was tortured barbarously to force him to confess the
three crimes being accused above, even though being
beaten mercilessly but Soan strongly dined confessing
them. However, Soan could not avoid being sentenced to
death by the SPC.

8
The name before 1945 of this village was Tứ Xã or Ngũ Xã
[132]
 Before being executed, Soan was confined
together with an honest landowner who was also officially
accused of committing three serious crimes. The most
serious one was the propaganda and insult the VWP.
When being arrested, the honest landowner at first denied
any crime that the land reform team put on his head;
therefore, he should be tortured by guerrillas to force him
to confess his crimes, but when realizing he was going to
be tortured with a bamboo rod, he quickly accepted all
crimes that the LRR cadres accused him of.
The following is the conversation between two
prisoners who were going to be sentenced to death and be
executed in the very near future:
- Why did you confess every crime that I know
you have never committed? Soan asked.
- My life has the Party that mobilized its
members to kill me. There’s no way for me to avoid it, so I
have to resign myself to accept these crimes even though I
did not commit them. Now you and I have a common thing
that is going to the execution ground very soon, but you
and I also have a different thing that is your body is full
with wounds but mine is intact.” The honest landlord
answered.

Ms. Dương Thu Hương, a famous writer and

author of several famous books recounted in an interview
with the journalist Dinh Quang Anh Thai at Little Saigon
Radio:
“For me, the communist ideal is terrible and
unfamiliar. When the LRR was carried out in my village I
was an eight-year-old child and I had to accompany
students of my school to the public meeting where
landowners were tortured and denounced by landless and
poorest farmers. One day, I went to water my family’s
vegetables and I saw a landowner who committed suicide
by hanging himself up against the tree in front of my
[133]
house. And in the back of my house was a landowner who
cut his throat by laying himself on the railway track.
Those things made me frightened.”

The Outcomes of the LRR:

Generally speaking, the LRR had been

implemented more than three years in 3,314 villages of 22
provinces in North Vietnam including 2,435,518 families
with 10,699,504 people. The total land reform cadres
being used in the land reform campaign was about 50,000.
In the Land Rent Reduction Campaign, Ho and
his land reform cadres forced rich farmers and landowners
to return to poor farmers 31,110 tons of rice and
confiscated 15,475 Vietnamese acres of rice-field and
8,246 cattle.
In the Real Land Reform campaign, Ho and the
VWP confiscated 810,000 Vietnamese acres of rice-fields,
106,448 cattle, 1,846,000 agricultural equipments and
148,565 houses.
All of these “booties” would be distributed to
2,104,138 families of landless and poor farmers and the
result of the distribution was that each family of the
landless and poorest farmers averagely received 0.38
Vietnamese acres (1,358 square meters), one agricultural
equipment, and 1/10 of a house.
Until now, there is no official number of farmers
classified into landlord class and killed in the LRR, but
according to the statistic in the Vietnamese Economic
History (volume 2) published in 2005 by the Social
Science Publishing House, the total number of farmers to
be classified into the landlord class was 172,008. These
people were considered to be the main enemies of landless
and poor farmers and were extirpated and uprooted. It
means that if they were not sentenced to death and
executed right on the post, they would be put into prisons
[134]
where they would die gradually of starvation, hard work,
or diseases without treatment and their three future
generations would be discriminated by the Vietnamese
Communist Party and the Vietnamese Communist
Government.
In other words, the LRC committed so many
serious errors that Ho Chi Minh and the VCP had to stop it
and launch an Error Rectification Campaign to calm the
indignation of the Vietnamese people.

[135]
 A Hearing of the Special People’s
Court at Son Lung Village
(Below is my memoir about a Hearing of the Special People’s
Court that I had a chance to attend at Son Lung Village in 1954 )

In early 1954, I was a student of the Xuan Huy

Middle School located in Son Lung Village. This village
and my Ban Nguyen Village at the time belonged to the
Lam Thao District and Phu Tho Province.
Phu Tho was a province that belonged to the
Interregional North Vietnam (Liên Khu Việt Bắc) where it
was completely controlled by Ho and his communist men,
also known as the Vietminh. The Educational Program in
the area was focused on two basic factors called "RED" and
"EXPERT". It meant that besides studying Literature,
History, Geography and Mathematics and so on, students
had to study additionally political lessons to understand the
lines and policies of Ho and the Vietnamese Worker Party
(VWP), also known as the Vietnamese Communist Party
(VCP). With this policy, Ho and his men hoped that after
graduating from school, students would not only become
experts but also citizens who love communism. One of the
political lessons that students of my school had to attend
was a hearing of the Special People’s Court (SPC) at Son
Lung village.
I cannot clearly remember the date of the
hearing, but I am sure that it was held after the 27th of July
in 1954. It was the date when the ceasefire of the
Vietnamese-French War began taking effect in the North
Vietnam. The reason I knew that was because the Hearing
took place in broad daylight, without fear of the French
aircraft’s bombardment.
[136]
 Attending a political event was one of the
important parts of the educational program under the
leadership of Ho and the VCP. Therefore, all students of
my school had to attend the hearing. After attending, each
student had to write an essay about the hearing and submit
it to their teachers for evaluation.
Around 8 AM that day, all Xuan Huy’s students,
including myself, had to gather together at the school
courtyard. After taking a roll call, we were led to the
Hearing by our teachers and school head. When arriving
at the location where the SPC was held, we saw hundreds
of people who were already standing in front of the Court.
In their hands were red flags with yellow stars and banners
or slogans that read:

- Hooray the Land Revolution Program!

- Hooray the Special People’s Court!
- Long live the Vietnamese Worker Party!
- Long live President Ho Chi Minh!
- Long live President Mao Zedong!
- Long live Prime Minister Georgy Malenkov!
- Down with exploited landlords! ....

The location where the SPC to be held was a

relatively flat area as large as a football field lain at the foot
of a low hill. In the groves around the area, we saw several
teams of militia and guerillas that were arranged to protect
the meeting and the court.
In front of the attendants was a flat-form that
was about two feet higher than the ground. On the top of it
was a long table. Behind the flat-form was a large backdrop
that was made of bamboo and covered with palm leaves.
Attached to the backdrop were three large pictures of
Malenkov (Prime Minister of the Soviet Union), Ho Chi
Minh (President of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam),
and Mao Zedong (President of the People’s Republic of
[137]
China). Above the pictures were three large flags of the
Soviet Union, Republic Democratic of Vietnam and
People’s Republic of China.

A landowner is standing in front of the SPC

The meeting looked down at a valley where we

saw anyone on it. Perhaps they were ordered to take a day
off from their farm work to attend the meeting and the
SPC’s hearing by the local authorities.
When people and members of organizations
came in full, the speaker of the meeting invited Chief
Judge, Assistant Chief Judges and Jurymen of the SPC to
the presiding table. The members of the SPC were greeted
with deafening applause. When the SPC’s members were in
their seats, everyone was invited to stand up to salute the
national flag, sing the national anthem and pay a minute’s
silence in memory of the people who sacrificed their lives
for the country.
Right after that, a person who was seated at the
middle of the presiding table stood up and introduced
himself as the Chief Judge of the Court. He stated that he
was appointed by the government to assume the position of
the Chief Judge of the SPC. Raising his head, and with a
very proud posture, he loudly declared that he came from
the "working class". When the term working class came
[138]
out from the mouth of the chief judge, the applause
resounded thunderously. The applause did not mean to
welcome the individual chief judge, but his class.
According to the Marxist theory, only people who came
from the working class met the necessary conditions to lead
the Proletarian Revolution to success. The applause also
means that the LRR was a life-and-death struggle between
peasant class and landlord class and was unrelated to the
working class. Therefore, when appointing a member of the
working class to assume the role of the SPC’s chief judge,
it proved that Ho and his VWP were not biased towards the
poor peasant class or the landlord class.
While introducing himself, the chief judge tried
to stand up higher to show he was an important person in
the meeting and the SPC. However, he was naturally too
low, even in the standing position, his half body projecting
from the table’s surface only a little bit higher than his
members who were sitting next to him. His head wore a
deep pith helmet, so attendants could not see his face
clearly. Even though there wasn’t a breeze of air, he still
kept his helmet strap under his short chin. Some attendants
commented that the reason he did so was not because he
worried about a gust of wind suddenly blowing away his
helmet, but because he wanted to show up his impressive
appearance as General Vo Nguyen Giap in pictures printed
in newspapers, hung in military offices, and in the offices
of the people’s committees.
A full leather haversack was hung on his
shoulder. Nobody knew what things were in it. Some
people thought that it contained some important documents
related to the organization and the management of the SPC,
but others thought that there were no important documents
and laws in his haversack, but some of People Newspapers
and some of his underwear and clothes.
In order to make attendants believe that he truly
came from the working class, he wore a blue shirt (a daily
[139]
shirt of the workers). With this blue shirt, nobody could say
that he was a fake worker. In addition, it was not very clear
whether or not the chief judge of the SPC could read and
write Vietnamese proficiently, but the row of pens and
pencils installed at the mouth of his shirt’s pocket could
make several people believe that he was a cultivated
person.
After introducing himself and his Court’s
members who came from the poor peasant class, the Chief
Judge announced the SPC began working and ordered to
escort the evil landlord Nguyen Viet Dao (NVD) to the bar
in front of the Court.
Obeying the Chief Judge’s order, two guerillas
with rifles in their hands escorted to the front of court a tall
and thin man who was about 40 or 50 years old and his
arms were tied behind his back. When NVD appeared in
front of the court, a slogan was shouted clamorously by
attendants:
“Down with the evil landlord!"
This slogan was repeated several times to
psychologically overwhelm the landlord NVD.
After the noise temporarily subsided, a man in
dark brown clothes, who was introduced as the Public
Prosecutor of the SPC, stepped to the presentational
podium. Opening his thick criminal volume, he began
reading the indictment against serious crimes that NVD had
already committed in the past over landless and poor
farmers of Son Lung village for years. The following is not
the verbatim but the content of the indictment:
“ NVD was born into a wealthy family. Thanks
to the merciless exploitation of landless and poor farmers,
his parents became the richest family of the village and had
enough conditions to allow NVD to go to school until he
had the French-Vietnamese Elementary certificate. Thanks
to his educational basis, the exploitation of NVD was wiser
than the one of his parents. NVD had bribed not only the
[140]
district chief, but also the province chief to be appointed as
the village chief of Son Lung. With this position, NVD
used the power in his hand to oppress farmers and usurp
their properties. Several farmers were brutally beaten by
NVD or his men and some others had to leave their native
village for an unwholesome environment where they lost
their lives.
At the beginning of the August Revolution,
NVD took advantage of our cadres’ inexperience to sneak
into our local authorities to find the way to cover the crimes
that he committed in the past. NVD had contributed a small
amount of gold to the “Golden Week” in 1945 of President
Ho, and had offered some of his rice-field in the Land
Donation Campaign of the DRV government. However, all
of them were only to buy off our young cadres and the local
authorities.
During the time he assumed the position as the
Chairman of the Administrative and Resistance Committee
of Son Lung village, NVD had taken advantage of his
position to continue to exploit the poorest farmers and hire
landless farmers to do his family’s farm work with dirt-
cheap pay.
In the Land Rent Reduction Campaign, NVD and
his family members had used several trickeries to avoid
paying land rent refunds to poor farmers and oppose the
Land Rent Reduction policy. On the other hand, NVD and
his family members tried very hard to speak badly or highly
to some people with the purpose to cause a division among
the peasant masses and threatening poor farmers who were
his old victims so they dared not publicly denounce him in
front of the SPC. Thanks to the lucid leadership of the local
party committee and the LRR team, his conspiracies were
destroyed right away. In the Land Rent Reduction
Campaign, NVD was denounced by poor farmers in a
couple of days, but it was just a small part of his crimes.

[141]
 At the end of the indictment, the Prosecutor
stressed that, under the justice light of the VWP and
President Ho, all of the crimes of NVD were to be tried
publicly and justly in the front of the Special People’s
Court. The Prosecutor also strongly believed that after
hearing the trenchant denouncing words of poor farmers,
the chief judge and members of the SPC would not be able
to hold their tears. Finally, the Prosecutor suggested the
SPC to sentence NVD to death.
After the prosecutor’s indictment came to an end,
the accusers were successively called to the bar where
NVD was standing with his hands and arms tied behind his
back to denounce his crimes. Every accuser began his or
her denouncement with fingers to poke into the face of
NVD and asked:
“Do you know who I am?”
It seemed like the accusers did not need to await
the answers “yes” or “no” from the accused. They
continued to tell about the poverties of their grandparents,
their parents and their own which were caused by NVD and
his father. They related about the crimes of NVD in front
the SPC like pupils reciting his know-by-heart lessons in
front of their teachers. After being accused, NVD was
asked:
“Do you admit your crime?
If NVD hesitated in admitting to the crimes that
he was accused of, a loudspeaker would be raised so loud
with the slogan:
“Down with the stubborn landowner!”
The slogan was repeated many times and only
stopped when NVD admitted his crime.
When the shirts of attendants were damp with
sweat, there were still several accusers waiting for their
turns, but the time did not allow the Court to last any
longer. For that reason, the chief of the Court possibly

[142]
realized that the crimes that NVD was accused of were
enough to sentence him to death.
After exchanging something with his members,
the chief judge stood up and praised the landless and
poorest farmers to accuse NVD with their trenchant words
that made NVD speechless and forced him to confess all
the crimes that he committed in the past.
Based on the accusations of the victims, the
confessions of the landlord and the current laws of the
Party and State with the consent of the SPC’s members, the
chief of the SPC sentenced NVD to death and to confiscate
the total of his properties. He also stated that the verdict of
the SPC was the first judgment and also the final one, so
the accused did not have the right to appeal or seek pardon,
and it was carried out right away.

The declaration of the SPC’s chief judge was

warmly welcomed by the meeting attendants with
applauses resounded thunderously. Right after that, two
guerillas with rifles in their hands and a policeman with a
pistol on his side approached the bar and took NVD away.
Everyone seemed to be joyful with their relaxation.
However, just a few minutes later, some gunshots were
heard that made attendants look around to find the place
where the sound of gunshots came from. A few seconds
later, they saw some small puffs of smoke hovering in the
[143]
space above the muzzles of the two guerillas at the foothill
not far from the meeting. They also saw NVD rolling on
the dry grass. The policeman said something to the two
guerillas and then he slowly approached NVD, who was
convulsing, and gave him the last favor shot to his head.
The slogan: “Down with the landlord NVD” was repeated
louder again and again to see off the soul of landlord NVD
going to Heaven where there is no communism, capitalism,
hatred, or life-and-death struggle between the poor farmer
class and the landlord class.
Most students of my school seemed to be happy
with the thought that we were going to return home, but
suddenly the loud voice of a speaker resounded asking
attendants to return to their old positions. We were told that
the hearing was not over.

When silence and order were restored, the

Organized Committee divided the attendants into several
groups. Each group had about 200 people and was led by
some members of the SPC and guerillas, to go to the homes
of other landlords in the village for continuously trial them.
Group B, including my school students, was led
by a squad of juniors with flags, banners, and drums to go
[144]
on the narrow and bendy village roads. Finally, we came to
a large courtyard of a big house located at the village’s
center. It was a surprising thing for me, because the house
that Group B had just arrived was the one my friends and I
boarded a year ago. The house owner was Mr. Hưng who
was a very kind person and who let us reside in his house
for almost a year without charging us a penny. Before
1945, he was the assistant canton chief. Therefore, the
villagers called him Mr. Canton Hung. In the Land Rent
Reduction campaign, his family was classified into the
upper middle farmer class, but in the Real Land Reform
Campaign, his family was reclassified into the landlord
class. I did not know how many Vietnamese rice-field acres
he had, but I knew exactly that his family did not have
enough rice to eat during the between-crop period. The
reason I knew that was simple because during the time I
resided in his home, his wife had to come to my parents’
house to borrow about 70 pounds of rice even though my
home was 10 miles away from her.
At that time, the war between French and
Vietminh was still going all roads and means of
transportation were destroyed by the Scorched Earth Policy
of Ho and his men. Therefore, any movement from place to
place was done on foot and things were carried on people’s
own backs and shoulders. Because of that, she was very
hard to carry 70 pounds of rice with her own shoulders and
walk with her own feet along a trail of 10 miles long.
When everyone of group B had already stepped
into the yard, the SPC’s representative was ordered all of
family members of Mr. Canton Hung to gather together at
the center of his courtyard. Right after they appeared, the
slogan “Down with the bullying landlord” was resounded.
After allowing them to sit down on the ground,
the SPC’s representative declared an indictment that let
people know that: During the period of French domination,
Hung was appointed to assume the position of the Assistant
[145]
Canton chief, and during the time holding the position, he
had used his power to force poor farmers to pay taxes for
French colonialists, to usurp the properties of poor farmers
by his dishonest means, and to force his tenants to pay land
rent higher than the laws allowed. The indictment also
clearly disclosed the dates and the places where his crimes
occurred. Finally, the SPC’s representative stressed that
because of the humanitarian policy of the VWP and the
tolerant policy of uncle Ho, the SPC did not sentence him
to death or imprisonment, but all of his properties were
confiscated.
To carry out the SPC’s order, a representative of
the Village Farmer Association appeared to order his men
to penetrate into the house and carry everything in it to the
courtyard. When everything was brought to the courtyard,
the representative drew a list from his pocket in which the
names of poor farmers and the distributed things were
already listed, and he began reading the name of each poor
peasant along with the thing or things he or she was
distributed.
The sound of things colliding with each other
and the sound of people calling one another made the
atmosphere become noisy. The poor farmer families
seemed very excited when receiving and carrying the things
that were to be distributed to their own houses in front of
the bewildered eyes of the of landlord family members.
Finally, there were a few things left in the yard.
At first, I thought they were broken things that the
distributed farmers did not want to take. However, a few
minutes later, I realized I was wrong, because right after
that, the Village Farmer Associate’s representative
appeared again and said: Thanks to the imbuement of the
humanitarian policy of Uncle Ho and the VWP, the poor
farmers treated the landlord sensibly and reasonably. For
that reason, they reserved for the landlord family some food
and daily necessary materials including a small hut located
[146]
at the end of the village, 720 square meters of rice-field
located behind the village, one basket of paddy rice, a hoe,
a knife, two mats, two sickles, a two-liter-earthen pot, a
washing earthen basin, a broom, and two set of clothes for
each member of the landlord family.
Looking at the pile of things that were left for the
landlord family by poor farmers who deeply imbued the
humanitarian policy of the VWP and President Ho, people
could not hold their tears because the hoe tongue was worn
out more than half, the knife handle was broken and the
two sickles were rusted and so on. Turning to my classmate
who was standing next to me and was a resident of Son
Lung Village, I asked him with a very low voice about the
house and the rice field that the landlord family was
donated; he did not answer my questions immediately, but
curled his lip and shook his head.
Later, he met me privately and told me that the
rice-field was the worst type and the house was just a very
small and tottering thatched hut. Its old owner was a
landless farmer who was educated by land reform cadres to
become a key cadre of the village party cell. Now his
family resided in a big tile-roofed house, which was the
reward for the time and service he contributed to the LRP.
When being allowed to stand up and receive the
things that were reserved for his family, Mr. Hung still
preserved his old manners. He came to the pile of things to
pick up only the old broom, put it on his shoulder, and
raised his head to look at his house for the last time. With a
resolute attitude, he stepped out of his old house to go to
the “ideal hut”, but he might not know exactly where it
was. However, Mrs. Hung did not have strong sentiments
as her husband; therefore, she couldn’t hide the bitter
feeling that rose in her heart. She walked out from her old
house with tears on her cheeks.
After the hearing of the SPC came to an end, I
went back to my boarding house. On the way to it, the
[147]
image of Mr. NVD, who was convulsing on the dry grass
before death, and the image of Mrs. Hung, who walked and
cried before leaving her old house forever, appeared and
disappeared in my mind. It made me think about my father
and my mother, who were living in my native village of
Ban Nguyen. What had happened to the families of Mr.
NVD and Mr. Hung would happen to my family because
my family was already classified as a landlord in the Land
Rent Reduction campaign and the Real Land Reform
Campaign would come to my village in the very near
future.
More than 60 years have already passed by and I
still think that my presence at the SPC’s Hearing on that
day was a lucky opportunity for me. Had I not attended the
hearing, I would have never clearly seen all of the crimes of
Ho and the VCP that had been exposed and expressed fully
through the so-called Land Reform Revolution.
Thanks to the enlightenment, my family arranged
an escape from the North to the South right after the Land
Rent Reduction campaign ended in my village. Because the
escape was successful, I therefore have the opportunity to
write my memoir about the Hearing of the SPC at the Son
Lung Village.

[148]
 Tet Offensive Massacre in Hue

The New-Year-Wishing Poem

Of President Ho Chi Minh

This Tet must be better than any others that passed previously
The joyful victory news will be broadcasted all over the country
South and North compete with each other to fight against Americans
March up! The final victory will belong to our nation
Spring 68
Ho Chi Minh

The New Year Greeting poem above of Ho Chi

Minh (Ho), the President of the Democracy Republic of
Vietnam (DRV), had been broadcasted on the Mau Than
(1968) Vietnamese New Year’s EVE from Hanoi radio
station. It is not only an annual New Year’s Greeting but
also the secret order for the whole Communist Force in

[149]
South Vietnam to start a campaign called the General
Offensive and Uprising. In this campaign, nearly 100,000
communist soldiers, including North Vietnamese
Communist Soldiers (NVCS), South Vietnamese
communist Soldiers (SVCS), and Militias and Guerillas
Armed Forces (MGAF), conducted a surprise attack on 36
of 44 provincial capitals, 5 of 6 major cities, 72 of 245
districts, and Saigon, the capital of the Republic of
Vietnam (RVN).

The initial attacks stunned the Republic of

Vietnam Armed Forces (RVAF) because they occurred
during the time of the truce that they both had agreed upon
previously. At the time, most Republic of Vietnam
soldiers were not in ready positions to fight against
communist troops, because they believed that the
communist forces would abide by their 4-day cease-fire
promise as they did in the previous New Years. The
attacks also caused them to temporarily lose the control of
several districts, provinces and cities. However, they
[150]
quickly regrouped to beat back any attack from the
communist forces. Within a few days or a week, with the
supports of the United States Armed Forces (USAF), the
RVAF had inflicted massive casualties upon communist
forces and drove them back to their dens, except the Hue
City and its surroundings.

The communist forces attacked Hue on January

31, 1968 and captured most of the city and its
surroundings. Their occupation of the areas lasted a total
of 26 days. In the late half of January 1968, the RVAF and
USAF conducted a bloody counterattack to recapture the
areas and force communist troops to withdraw in several
different directions.

The battle of 26 days in Hue was extremely

fierce, because the communist armed forces tried so hard
to maintain their presence at Hue as long as possible and
the RVAF and USAF tried their best to recapture Hue at
any cost. For that reason, the battles did a large damage to

[151]
Hue residents as well as their properties. According to
initial information, there were more than 1,200 civilians
killed and more than 2,000 others wounded, because they
were caught in between two fires.
After Hue was completely liberated by RVAF
and USAF, there were about 7,000 people in Hue and its
surroundings reported to be missing. No one knew their
whereabouts. However, a few weeks later, witnesses,
survival victims and deserted communist soldiers
disclosed a number of mass graves. Thanks to their
information the South Vietnam local authorities found
several mass graves in which hundreds of people who
were reported to be missing were found.
The following are mass graves that were found
throughout the city of Hue and its surroundings:
On February 26, 1968, the first mass grave was
found in the campus of Gia Hoi High School with 107
bodies. Most of them were soldiers and officials of the
Republic of Vietnam.
A few weeks later, five other mass graves were
found. In the Tang Quang Pagoda compound 67 bodies
were found; In Bai Dau there was 77 bodies; the one in
Thong Market area contained approximate 100 bodies. In
Thien Ham there were 300 bodies and in Dong Gi 110
bodies.
On March 14, 1986 a mass grave was found near
Hue containing bodies of 5 priests and around 300
Catholic men and women.
In March 1968, 26 mass graves were found in the
area of the Royal Tomb of King Minh Mang containing a
total of 200 victims.
[152]
 On April 5, 1968, a mass grave was found near
Hue. When it was exhumed, the dead bodies of four
Germans, Dr. Alois Altekoster, Dr. Raimund Discher,
Professor Horst-Gunther Krainick and his wife, and many
other Vietnamese civilians were found. In this mass grave
also found the dead bodies of Priest Bửu Đồng, two other
catholic priests and so many Hue residents.

The funeral of Father Buu Dong

On April 25, 1968, a shallow grave was found in

the hamlet of Vinh Lưu about 7 miles from Hue with 342
bodies. Among them, there were 142 dead bodies to be
identified by their relatives.
In May 1968, a mass grave was found in the area
of the Tuong Van pagoda about half a mile south of Hue
and several dead bodies were found.
In September 1969, three communist defectors
confessed to 101st Airborne Division intelligence officers
that they knew several hundred people were buried in a
mass grave at Da Mai Creek bed, about ten miles south of

[153]
Hue. When it was unearthed there were about 500 dead
bodies found.

In addition, a student of the Faculty of Arts

named Van Tuan Le who took refuge in Phu Cam
Cathedral together with several hundred others reported
that on the 5th day that Communist Forces occupied Hue,
some pro-communist students of Hue led a group of Viet
Cong soldiers to the Cathedral. They called and took
away anyone whose name was on the blacklist and all
able-bodied male over the age of 15. Nobody knew where
they were taken away. Later, most of these people’s
remains were found in the mass grave at Da Mai Creek
bed.
From April to December 1968, several mass
graves were found in Vinh Thai and Phu Xuan hamlets in
the Phu Thu district, nine miles from Hue. The total
number of victims in these graves was 230.
[154]
 In November 1969, a mass grave was found at
the Phú Thứ Salt Flats near the fishing village Lương Viên
in the Phú Lộc district, and ten miles east of Hue where
many dead bodies were found.

The latest mass grave was found in the front yard

of Phu Thu Elementary School in May 1972. It was fully
covered with sand and there was no sign of a mass grave
below. One day, a 3rd-grader dug the ground rather deep
for a cricket and the mass grave was found. This mass
grave contained about 200 bodies.
According to Douglas Pike, an official of the
United States Information Agency and the author of the
book “Vietcong Strategy of Terror” published in 1970, the
total number of dead bodies found in mass graves that
scattered in Hue and its surroundings were:
- Those found after Hue was completely librated:
1,173
- Those founds during March & July, 1969: 809
- Those found at Da Mai Creek in September, 1968:
428

[155]
 - Those found at Salt Flats area in November 1969:
300
- Miscellaneous were found during1969: 100
- The total: 2,810

All of these mass graves have clearly proven that

during the time of occupation of Hue and its surroundings
for 26 days the communist soldiers killed many people
including women, men, children and infants. Most of them
were soldiers and officials of the Republic of Vietnam and
number of their families. The rests were political party
members, local religious leaders, students, teachers,
professors, American civilians, collaborators with
America, foreign men and civilians.
When these mass graves were unearthed, a lot of
bodies were found. Some had their hands tied behind their
backs with ropes, electric wires or telephone wires. Some
were shot in their heads or smashed in their heads with
hammers or hoe blades. Some had been beaten or stabbed
to death. Some had their mouths stuffed with rags. Some

[156]
had no evidence of wounds; they were apparently to be
buried alive.
The following are many people who are
journalists, writers, witnesses, victims and communist
cadres and who could recount what they heard or saw
during the time Hue was occupied by the communist
forces or after it was librated completely by RVAF and
USAF.
Don Oberdorfer, a journalist, spent five days in
late 1969 going through Hue to interview people who had
opportunities to witness what communist soldiers did
during the time Hue was occupied by communist forces.
They told him some stories as follows:
- Phan Van Tuong, a part-time janitor for the
Hue Information Office, was listed on the reactionary list
that was established by undercover communist cadres.
Anyone whose name appeared on the list was subject to be
hunted and killed by communist local forces. When Phan
was found with his 3-year-old daughter, 5-year-old son
and 2 nephews, SVCS immediately gunned them down
and left their corpses on the street for others and for the
rest of his family to see.
- On the 5th day that the communist forces
occupying Hue, a team of Vietcong came to Phu Cam
Cathedral where thousands of people took refuge. About
400 refugees were taken away. Among them, some had
names on the blacklist, some were of military age, and
some were able-bodied males over the age of 15. Later,
their dead bodies were found at Da Mai Creek bed.
James Robbins, the author of the book This
Time We Win: Revisiting the Tet Offensive, wrote in his
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book that a witness told him that two French priests,
Father Urbain and Father Guy, were seen being led away
from Hue. Later, their dead bodies were found in a mass
grave with 18 others. Father Urbain was buried alive with
his hands and feet tied. Father Guy was stripped of his
cassock and forced to kneel down on the ground with a
bullet wound found on the back of his head.
Alje Vennema (1932-2011) was a Dutch-
Canadian doctor. From 1965 to 1968, he was director of
Canadian medical assistance in Vietnam and during the
Tet Offensive he was working at Hue. He therefore
witnessed several killing cases as well as the mass graves
in Hue and its surroundings. The following are stories he
wrote in his book “The Viet Cong Massacre at Hue:
- A 48-year-old street vendor, Madam Nguyen
Thi Lao, was arrested on the main street. Her dead body
was found in a grave at a school. Her arms had been
bound and a rag stuffed into her mouth. There were no
wounds on her body. She was apparently buried alive.
- A 44-year-old bricklayer named Nguyen Ty
was arrested by communist soldiers on February 2, 1986.
On March 1st, his body was found with his hands tied; and
he had a bullet wound that had come in at his neck and
come out at his mouth.
- A whole family was killed together. It was the
family of Mr. Nam Long who was shot together with his
wife and five children at home by communist soldiers.
- A list of mass graves was mentioned by
Vennema in which a total of 2,329 dead bodies were
found. When these mass graves were unearthed, many
dead bodies were found to be shot to death while others to
[158]
be buried alive. Among them, the mass grave at Dong Gi
hamlet was the largest one because it contained a total of
110 bodies.
- Several Kangaroo Courts were held to try Hue
residents during the time communist forces occupied Hue.
The managements of these Courts were entrusted to some
people such as Hoang Phu Ngoc
Tuong, Nguyen Dac Xuan, and
Nguyen Thi Doan Trinh who left
Hue for communist bases in deep
forests earlier and then returned to
Hue on the occasion of Mau Than
New Year. Thousands of Hue
residents were taken to the courts,
but most of them did not know the
reason why. Hundreds of them
were accused of being henchmen
for the Republic of Vietnam
Government or collaborators with
the American Empire or reactionary elements and were
killed right away on the scene.
Philip W. Manhard, a senior American advisor
for Thua Thien province, was arrested by communist
soldiers during the Mau Than Tet when Communist
Forces captured Hue. He was escorted from Hue to North
Vietnam as a POW and was released in 1973. Manhard
recounted that when withdrawing from Hue, the
communist forces immediately executed anyone who was
in their custody but resisted being taken out of Hue and
anyone who was too old, too young or too weak for a long
journey to re-education camps in the deep forests.
[159]
 Nguyen Tan Chau, a Hue resident captured
by communist local forces, recounted that after being
arrested, he was forced to march south with 29 others. The
communist soldiers tied them together in three groups of
ten. Chau took the advantage of nightfall to escape and
hide in the darkness just before communist soldiers began
to kill the others. The following are something that he saw
from his hidden place: “Most prisoners were separated
into pairs, tied together back to back and shot. Some
others were shot one by one. All were dumped into two
shallow graves, including those who had been wounded
but were not yet dead.”
Nha Ca, in her memoir book “Giải Khăn
Sô Cho Huế” or “Mourning Headband for Hue”,
recounted (page 292) that some witnesses told her about
cases in which Hue residents were barbarously killed by
communist soldiers:
- An entire family was killed because of their
television set. A communist soldier team came to a house
in Gia Hoi to search thoroughly. One of them saw a
television set in the house. Because the television set was
totally unknown to him as well as his team members, he
therefore asked the house head,
“Is this device to communicate with the enemy?”
“No sir, it is the TV set used only to hear songs
and watch dances.” The family head answered.
“Please turn it on to let us examine what it is,”
A communist soldier ordered.
The family head turned on her television set, but
there was no sign of any song or dance being heard or seen
on the TV screen, because at the time the Hue Television
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Station was closed. Therefore, a volley of bullets was let
off. The house head and her children were killed. Their
dead bodies were covered by a warning verdict with a
short line of words: “This is an example for everybody”
- A Hue woman, whose husband was an
American, had gone to Vung Tau and left her two
crossbred children at home with her female domestic
helper. A few soldiers came into her home and when
seeing these crossbred children, they talked to one another.
“They are children of the American Imperialist.
If we let them live, they will harm our country in the
future.” One of them said.
“Gun them down!” The other requested.
“No comrade! It is a waste of our bullets.”
Another responded.
They therefore bashed their heads against the
wall until they died. Their blood and brains were
splattered and spilled all over the floor.
- In a document that was captured by the 1st US
Air Cavalry Division on April 25, 1968, a communist
senior political officer boasted the achievements of his
units:
“We killed one member of the Dai Viet Party,
one Senator of the Republic of Vietnam, 50 members of the
National People’s Party, 6 Dai Viet Party members, 13
Can Lao Nhan Vi Party members, 3 captains, four 1st
lieutenants, and liberated 35 hamlets with 32,000 people
… We also eliminated 1,892 administrative officials, 38
policemen, 790 tyrants, 6 captains, two 1st lieutenants, 20
second lieutenants, and many others…” The officer also
additionally boasted: “People joined our soldiers to hunt
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down tyrants, reactionaries and spies. A woman named
Xuan cooperated with us to show the houses of the tyrants
and spies she knew, even though she had only six days
before her child was supposed to be born.”
- A letter to his mother and brothers was found
by a ranger soldier of the RVAF on the dead body of a
northern communist soldier in which he wrote with his
careless handwriting that: “After I died, I would like to be
buried in a grave in which my head should be in the
direction of the North and my legs in the direction of the
South. The reason I want to do so is that I want my own
blood to mix with the bloods of Hue residents, because I
myself have caused the terrible bloodshed scenes in this
city.” (Giải Khăn Sô Cho Hue page 294).
Vo Van Bang, a congressman of Thua Thien
province and the chief of the tracking and exhuming
section of the Hue’s victims, recounted that:
“There were several graves that were separated
from each other. Each grave contained ten to twenty
bodies and in each grave there were some people
standing, sitting or lying disorderly. When the graves were
unearthed, the dead bodies were in process of
decomposition. Some were found with their hand tied
behind their backs with ropes, electric wires, or telephone
wires. Some were found tied together into groups before
being put into a mass grave. Some had heads being broken
or being holed. A broken head meant they were shot by
guns; a hole in the heads meant they were beaten by hoes
or shovels.”

[162]
 Hoang Phu Ngoc Tuong, a high school teacher
and a communist follower, admitted that the massacres in
Hue during the Tet Offensive were
true. In the 1981 interview with
VGPH he said:
“When walking on
laneways in Hue at night, I felt
something similar to mud under my
shoes. I turned my flashlight on and
saw it was not mud but blood and
more blood, especially on the last
days when we withdrew from Hue.”
However, in the 1997 interview with
RFI, Tuong denied that he was present at Hue during the
Tet Offensive, but he expressed his impressions and
feelings of it as follows:
“I, a son of Hue left it earlier then returned later,
would like to express my grief and suffering at the bottom of
my heart when I think about the doleful mourning that most
families in Hue had gone through because of the innocent
killing actions of the local communist soldiers. This is a
mistake that could be defended…”
Nguyen Thi Thai Hoa, a young resident of Hue
and also a first-year student at Hue Medical Assistant
School at the time of the Tet Offensive, recounted personal
stories in her memoir “An Alive Witness of the Tet
Offensive”. It is a heart-breaking story and could be
summarized as follows:
In the first few days of the Tet Offensive she
received bad news about her brother, Hai Thanh Nguyen,
who was killed by a communist-bloodthirsty man named
[163]
Hoang Phu Ngoc Phan at the lecture hall of the Faculty of
Art. She decided to go there right away to take Hai’s dead
body home. While she and one of Hai’s friends, Van Tuan
Le, were trying to push a broken pedicab with Hai’s dead
body in it, Hoang Phu Ngoc Phan, Nguyen Thi Doan Trinh
and their accomplices escorted the pedicab on the way from
the Faculty of Art to her grandfather’s house. When
stepping into her grandfather’s house, Phan had doubts
about her two other brothers, Loc Xuan Nguyen and Kinh
Xuan Nguyen, were hiding in the attic. Phan jostled her
down to the ground, pressed one of his legs on her back,
aimed his gun at her head and threatened her two brothers
by saying that: “I know that you are hiding in the attic. If
you do not get down immediately, I will kill your sister right
away.”

Loc therefore had to come down from the attic.

When his body was still hanging in the airspace between
the ceiling and the ground, a volley was let off from
Phan’s gun and Loc’s body dropped to the ground and
writhed for a few seconds and lay silently. After killing

[164]
Lộc, Phan heard a noise that came from the attic, he turned
his gun right away at the attic and shot uncontrollably until
Kinh’s dead body dropped down to the ground together
with some broken ceiling pieces. Because of rage, her
grandfather cursed at Phan who was in a fit of
bloodthirstiness. He therefore turned his gun to him and
gunned him down.
After the Tet Offensive Massacre, almost every
family in Hue had at least one relative killed or missed.
Most of them were found in the mass graves that scattered
everywhere in Hue and its surrounding areas. These mass
graves shocked the whole country as well as the whole
world.
The mass graves in the Tet Offensive at Hue are
big marks that have been engraved deeply on memories of
all Vietnamese generations and reminded them that these
mass graves are one of the serious crimes that Ho and the
VCP caused to the Vietnamese People.

[165]
 Memoir of a Survival Victim of the
Tet Offensive Massacre at Hue
(Below is the heart-breaking story of Miss Nguyen
Thi Thai Hoa about her grandfather and her three brothers who
were killed by Vietcong in the Tet Offensive at Hue. Her story
was written in Vietnames and I translated it into English)

As a witness who is lucky to be alive after the

Tet Offensive Massacre at Hue (TOMH), I would like to
report in detail about the deaths of my paternal
grandfather, my three brothers and one of their friends.
This is a lament for the deaths of my family members as
well as for the deaths of Hue residents who were unjustly
killed by South Vietnam Communist Soldiers (SVCS) or
Viet Cong (VC) as well as North Vietnam Communist
Soldiers (NVCS) during the Vietnamese New Year of the
Monkey at Hue.
I am relating these events on behalf of Hue
residents, who are still alive in Vietnam and have relatives
to be killed by communist forces and some bloodthirsty
communist followers in Hue massacre but do not have any
opportunity to speak out their writhes, I would like to
report here many tragic situations in which they and my
family had to bear during the time Hue City was attacked
and occupied by Vietcong. The phrase, “bloodthirsty
communist followers” I use here to refer some people
such as Nguyễn Thị Đoan Trang (Trang), Hoang Phủ

[166]
Ngọc Tường (Tuong) and his brother Hoàng Phủ Ngọc
Phan (Phan) and so on who killed many their compatriots
in the TOMH
In 1968, I was a first-year student at the Hue
Medicine Assistant School. Besides the theory lessons at
school, we were divided into several groups; each
included 8 to 10 students, to take turns using the rooms or
buildings of the Hue Central Hospital (HCH) for practice.
The working time was mostly during office hours, but
some rooms such as the Emergency Room (ER) or
Internal-Injured Room was divided into three shifts: The
morning shift from 7am to 2pm; the afternoon shift from
2pm to 9pm and the night shift from 9pm to 7am. Each
group had to practice for 2 to 3 weeks continuously. Two
weeks before Tet, my group was assigned to the ER. My
friends and I began the night shift on the first day of Tet.
My father, at the time, was a military officer of
the Republic of Vietnam (RVN) and his unit was involved
in an operations. He therefore could not return home to
enjoy the Tet with his family.
According to my family’s custom, a few days
before Tet, my brothers and I had to visit our paternal
grandfather’s home to celebrate the New Year with him
until the first day of Tet. Then we could go elsewhere or
visit our loved ones.
After the dinner on the first day of Tet around
8:30pm, my eldest brother took me to the ER on his
motorcycle and before returning home he told me:
“Tomorrow morning I will come back here to take you
home.”

[167]
 The night of the first day of Tet in the ER was so
quiet that my night shift team including some medical
students, some medical-assistance students and two
officials of the HCH, assumed that we were lucky so we
took out some cakes and jams and enjoyed with one
another. While we took turns seeing ER patients.
Around 1:00am, we began to hear a lot of shots a
long way off. A little while later, the shots were heard
nearer and nearer. This made us anxious and worried. The
atmosphere in the ER became very tense. We talked about
the fighting and asked one another where the shots might
be coming from? At first we thought that Hue City and the
HCH were shelled by Viet Cong (VC) but at around 3:00
or 4:00am, a group of strangers suddenly broke into our
ER and announced themselves as liberation troops, also
known as South Vietnam Communist Soldiers (SVCS).
Most of them were in black uniforms with guns in their
hands, and bags on their sides. They forced us to bandage
some wounded people while they thoroughly searched the
ER and took away a lot of things such as medicines and
medical instruments even our cakes and jams.
While they were searching for things in the ER,
an explosion was heard from somewhere in the HCH’s
campus. A few minutes later, other strong explosions were
also heard successively from the road passing the HCH’s
main gate which was not far from our ER. Right after that,
the power in the ER was cut off, and SVCS hurried to
withdraw. We took this opportunity to quickly get out of
the ER and run away.
I ran off without looking back at the ER, but I
really did not know where I was running to. The shooting
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was heard from everywhere. Sometimes I had to lie down
on the ground to avoid the risk of being killed by stray
bullets but then I would get up quickly and continue to
run. I ran mindlessly until I crashed into a man. After a
few seconds to regain my self-composure, I realized the
man was Priest Trung who was the chaplain of HCH. He
was running to his chapel in HCH’s campus and
accidentally crashed into me. Priest Trung was also
extremely afraid. I could see the anxieties written on his
face.
“From where do you run to here?” Priest Trung
asked.
“From the ER” I answered.
I did not know in what direction to run, so I
therefore followed him to the chapel which was also his
residence.
Upon coming into the chapel, I saw two sisters
who belonged to the White-Blouse-religious order and
some others who were currently staying there. I realized
one of the sisters was a supervisor of the Jeane d’ Arc
School where I was a student for seven years.
Priest Trung was well acquainted with my
grandfather as well as my parents. He sometimes came to
my grandfather’s house located on Ham Nghi Street so he
knew me. I did not know where to escape to, so I stayed
there with them.
For four or five days uninterrupted, we huddled
in the chapel and dared not go out to communicate with
anyone from other buildings. Shots continuously came
from all directions. We therefore had to stay in the chapel
day and night.
[169]
 After seeing SVCS in the ER, I did not see them
again. They might have hidden themselves in some
buildings of the HCH, I guessed.
By the fifth day of Tet, I really wanted to know
what had happened to my grandparents, my mother and
my brothers who were living in the house located on Ham
Nghi Street. So I told Priest Trung I wanted to return and
see them. He said that I had better not appear on the streets
now, because there might be a risk of being killed by stray
bullets which could come from any side. He also
encouraged me to continue staying in the chapel with him
and the sisters until the Republic of Vietnam’s Soldiers
(RVS) appeared.
“When will the RVS appear?” I asked.
“Sooner or later, they will counter-attack.” He
answered.
I thought, he said this to make me feel at ease,
but the anxieties still remained on his face.
One of people living in the chapel said that, a lot
of people ran to Phu Cam Cathedral and hid there. I did
not know from where he got this information, it made me
more anxious, I wanted to return home as soon as possible,
because I really wanted to see my mother and brothers and
moreover I felt very hungry. During the days I stayed in
the chapel, I had nothing to eat, except a few dry, hard
loaves left by Caritas (a charitable organization). We
shared them with one another to keep our bodies and souls
together.
Finally, I decided to return home without regard
for my safety. I got out of the HCH by its rear gate
wearing a medical uniform which had a lot of dry-blood
[170]
spots. There was no one on the streets but some shots
nearby. I tripped and fell many times, but I quickly got up
and continued going on. I shivered with chills and my
teeth clattered because I saw dead bodies everywhere in
pools of blood. They might have been wounded elsewhere
and tried to crawl to HCH’s ER, but failed to do so.
I was so afraid that I decided to return to the
chapel. While trying to return there, I saw a man who was
going in the direction of HCH. A few seconds after, I
realized the man was Mr. Van - a close friend of my
brother Hai. Van and Hai were students of the Faculty of
Arts (FOA). His home was located nearby the Thien An
monastery. His face was so pale; his eyes showed in great
fear. Upon seeing me, he spoke indistinctly: “Ti! Your
brother Hai was shot to death at the FOA.”
After receiving this news, my whole body
trembled all over and I collapsed onto the ground. Van
helped me up. At the same time, a strong blast was heard
not far from us. He quickly dragged me to the wall next to
the HCH’s rear gate. Then we sat down side by side on the
ground against the wall. A moment later, Van told me that
in the past few days, he, Hai and a lot of others had hidden
in Phu Cam Cathedral, And that last night some Hue
students led a group of SVCS to it. They gathered a large
number of people whose names had been written on a very
long list and took them away to and unknown place.
Relatives of these people who were taken out of the
cathedral cried very tragically.
For that reason, Van and Hai with the others got
out of Phu Cam Cathedral and divided themselves into
several groups. Each following a separate way they
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thought was better than the others. Van and Hai ran
around and finally they came to the Medical School. Van
did not know where my brother Loc and Kinh were. Van
and Hai decided to hide themselves in the laboratory.
Upon entering it they saw some people who were shot to
death not long ago because the blood was still fresh. The
sight of these deaths made them nervous; so they left the
lab. Right after leaving the laboratory, they met Phan and
Trang and some other students whom Van did not know
previously, but he believed they were accomplices of
Phan. Van knew Phan, because one of his brothers was
studying with Phan at Hue Medical School.
Upon seeing Van and Hai, Phan thundered to
them, “Where did you hide for the past a few days? Let’s
go to the FOA right now and stay there to help evacuate
casualties.” Van and Hai realized that it was difficult for
them to hide from the control of Phan and his accomplices
so they decided to go to the FOA with the hope that,
“being forced to evacuate casualties was better than being
shot to death”. Because using motorcycles to go to the
FOA. Phan and Trang arrived there earlier than Van and
Hai. As soon as they got there, they gunned some people
down. Hai and Van did not know anything about this, so
they continued going to the FOA. Upon arrival at the
FOA’s gate, Hai entered and hoped that he might have met
some friends during the time evacuating of casualties.
When stepping into the Lecture Hall, Hai was
shot down right away by Phan. Because of personal need,
Van came to the lecture hall a little bit later than Hai.
Right after hearing the sound of shot and the scream of
Hai, Van knew right away what happened to Hai. He
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therefore immediately turned on his heels and quickly ran
away.
While attempting to pursue Van, Phan heard a
strong blast from somewhere in the FOA’s campus which
made him stop pursuing Van and quickly run away. Van
had a narrow escape from death and ran away like a crazy
man. Finally, he accidentally went to HCH’s rear gate and
met me.
Right after I found out my brother Hai was shot
at the FOA’s lecture hall, I decided not to return to the
chapel anymore but to go to the FOA to seek Hai with the
hope that he was still alive. If he were only seriously
wounded, I would take him to the ER at all cost. I cried
and told Van that:
“I will go to the FOA to look for Hai.”
“Don’t do that please. It is very dangerous,
because Phan and his accomplices might have come back
there.” Van implored.
I ignored him. I was crying and going away from
the HCH. After a few minutes, I heard the sound of Van’s
footsteps behind me. His mouth was saying: “Ti! Please
return and hide in the HCH. It is very dangerous for you
to go to the FOA now. Hai’s death was true” while he
continued to step up behind me.
I was like a lunatic; I cried, walked and ran at
the same time. It was so terrible to see a large number of
corpses and clothes scattered everywhere on a short stretch
of road from the HCH to the FOA. When coming near the
Jean d’ Arc High School, we saw Phan and NVCS who
appeared and disappeared alternately at its gate. The
murderous tempers were written on their faces. When
[173]
facing Phan again, Van trembled with fear and stammered
out an explanation to him that:
“Recently, I did not run away, but came to the
HCH to look for Ti. Please allow Ti and me to come to the
FOA and take Hai’s corpse to his home. After doing that I
will come back to the FOA to evacuate casualties as your
order.”
Phan did not directly respond to Van but looked
at me wickedly and said:
“You need to return home and tell your brothers,
Kinh and Loc to go to the FOA to collect Hai’s corpse.”
“I really don’t know where they are now, Sir.” I
answered nervously.
I did not know Phan as well as his name in
the past because before 1968 I was still a high school
student. My brothers might have known him, because they
were pro-nationalist students and had some struggles
against pro-communist ones who participated in anti-
government demonstrations in the past.
Phan whispered something with his
accomplices then allowed us to go to the FOA to take the
Hai’s corpse back home. At the time, I did not know how I
could get Hai’s body home. Van saw a pedicab with a
broken rear wheel that was parked next to the Jean d’ Arc
High School. Van and I pushed it to the FOA.
There were about ten dead bodies in the FOA’s
court. I dared not look at them. We struggled to carry
Hai’s body into the pedicab. He had already become
stone-cold. His eyes and his mouth were still fully opened
and his intestines were exposed. It was a very terrible
thing to look at.
[174]
 Before we got out of the FOA, Phan beat Van
with his gun-stock and gave Van a telling-off:
“If you run away from me and meet me again, I
will kill you.”
“No, I dare not do that again.” Van interruptedly
answered.
After that Van and I pushed the pedicab with
the corpse of my unfortunate brother in it to Kho Ren
Bridge. My house was located on Ham Nghi Street not far
from the bridge. On the way from the FOA to my house, I
saw NVCS everywhere. We did not have any difficulty
with them, because Phan was a few yards ahead of us and
gave them the signs to let us go. There were many dead
bodies scattered on the stretch of road passing in front of
Thien Huu School. Among them there were several
corpses that were swarmed by flies.
Van and I were hungry for several days and also
very tired, but we had to try our best to push the pedicab
forward, while Phan and his two female accomplices rode
on motorcycles and moved back and forth urging us
pushing the pedicab onward.
At the time, I heard them ask one another:
“Who is in Ly Thuong Kiet and Nguyen Hue
Street now?” One asked
“There are only some Honda motorcycles
transporting rice and Tet cakes to Thien Huu School.” The
other answered.
Suddenly two helicopters appeared in the
airspace and opened fire.
Van was very excited to see them and said:
“Hey Ti! They are our side’s helicopters.”
[175]
 Our happiness did not last long, because right
after that, we saw a lot of NVCS who hid themselves in
Thien Huu School’s buildings to shot at the helicopters.
We therefore knew a lot of SVCS and NVCS were hiding
in the Thien Huu School. To avoid stray bullets we ran
along the brick fence of Thien Huu School and sat down
on the ground against it. Phan and his accomplices
disappeared. They appeared then disappeared like devils.
After the helicopters left, we were very disappointed and
Phan and his accomplices appeared again and urged us to
push the pedicab onward.
As we passed Kho Ren Bridge I saw a crowd of
people including men, women, and children who were
sitting together at the end of the bridge with their heads
between their knees. From the crowd, I heard children
crying and mothers comforting their babies. As we passed
the crowd I dared not look at. Suddenly, I heard my name
being called by someone in the crowd I turned around and
recognized two women. One was my mother’s former
helper and the other was the wife of a soldier who was in
the 13th Artillery Battalion with my father. I thought they
were people living in the areas of Phu Can and Kho Ren
that were being rounded up on their way to escape to Phu
Luong. When I tried to stop and ask them for information
about my family, Phan appeared and forced me to
continue pushing the pedicab.
On the stretch of road from the FOA to my
grandfather’s house, I saw a lot of people who were tied
up together and escorted by SVCS in black uniforms with
rubber sandals under their feet and rifles in their hands.

[176]
The sound of gunfire was heard from everywhere. I did
not see any RVS but only SVCS and NVCS.
When passing through Ham Nghi Street, I
realized that if Trang gave a nod sign to any house, her
accomplices would break in and round up at least one of
resident. Some of them were gunned down right in front of
their houses, and some others were tied up and taken away
while their relatives followed them, threw themselves on
the road, and cried tragically. The SVCS scolded or cursed
them incessantly: “Fuck you! Shut up your mouth!” or “I
will gun you down now!”
Van and I grinded our teeth, cast down our eyes
and silently pushed the pedicab. When we got near my
house, 24 Ham Nghi Street, Phan and Trang came to me
and ordered:
“Do not push the pedicab to your house, but into
your grandfather’s.
I did not know Trang personally, I only knew her
recently through Van. I really felt sorry for Van, because
he thought that when allowing him to help me push the
pedicab with Hai’s corpse in it to my grandfather’s house,
Phan had already abandoned his intention to kill him.
Neither Van nor I thought that the stretch of road from the
FOA to my grandfather’s house would be his last hour to
go together with me in the world.
When arriving at my grandfather’s house, we
pushed the pedicab through the gate and left it in the front
yard then I entered the house. It was so quiet. I went from
the front door to the rear one and called my grandfather
several times. A few minutes later I heard a very weak
voice coming out from his room:
[177]
 “Who’s there?” My grandfather asked.
“I am your granddaughter!” I answered.
Recognizing my voice, he quickly got out of his
room, tottered to me and hugged me. His tears ran down
his cheeks:
“My God, my granddaughter is still alive.” He
exclaimed.
I did not cry, but just trembled in his arms. He
thought that I was just upset and tried to console me.
“You are still alive, and have returned home
safely. This makes our whole family happy. Please stay
here with me. Nothing can happen to you. I heard that
your mother and brothers have evacuated to Phu Luong. I
really don’t know where they are now. I don’t know if
their escape succeeded or failed? God bless them.” He
said.
I was too tired to talk to him I held his hand and
led him to the front yard where he saw Van sitting on the
ground and asked:
“Who is that? Who looks like Van?”
Van burst into tears and so did I. I took my
grandfather to the pedicab. When he saw Hai’s dead body,
he dropped on the ground and said,
“What happened to my grandson?”
We carried Hai’s body to the house and put it on
a divan. My grandfather took a blanket and covered it. My
two brothers, Kinh and Loc, who were hiding in the attic
asked my grandfather to allow them to come down and see
Hai for the last time, but he did not allow them to do so.
A few minutes later, my brother Loc opened the
cover of the attic, stuck his head out and said,
[178]
 “Ti brings me a stool.”
Obeying Loc’s request, I went to the kitchen and
got a stool then put it right below the attic opening. When
my grandfather saw Loc coming down, his arms were
swimming in the air, his voice was out of tune and said:
“Do not come down. I beseech you. Please
continue to hide in the attic.”
My brother, Kinh, who was also hiding in the
attic with Loc, was crying. When Loc was about to get
down, we heard a voice and the sound of someone’s
footsteps from the front yard. Loc quickly closed the attic
opening. Just a few seconds later Phan and his
accomplices came into the house.
Upon seeing Phan again, Van became pale and
spoke indistinctly to my grandfather: “Mr. Phan allowed
us to take Hai’s corpse home.” My grandfather stood
silently and said nothing. Phan looked at my grandfather
with his hawk eyes and asked:
“Where are Kinh and Loc?
“I don’t know.” My grandfather answered.
“You really don’t know where they are? Every
Tet, they come here to celebrate the New Year with you.
For that reason, you cannot say you don’t know where
they are. ” Phan viciously said.
“On the first days of Tet, after breakfast they
often go out to see their relatives or get together with
friends. There is no reason for me to force them to stay at
home with me all day long. I really don’t know where they
are.” My grandfather answered.
Phan looked around the house and saw the stool
right below the attic opening then he laughed scornfully.
[179]
At that moment, I was standing behind my grandfather
Phan aggressively stepped up to my grandfather and
pushed him aside then grabbed me by my hair and pulled
me to his side. Phan looked at the attic window and said
loudly:
“Kinh and Loc hear me, if you do not come down
right now, I will shoot Ti.”
While ordering my brothers, Phan shook me
back and forth by my long hair. This made me pained and
terrified. My body trembled like an aspen leaf. Tears ran
down on my cheeks, but I dared not cry out. My
grandfather kowtowed saying: “I beg you to forgive my
granddaughter. She is only a girl and knows nothing.”
Phan did not pay attention to my grandfather’s
solicitation, but shouted loudly, “Kinh and Loc, I know
exactly you are hiding in the attic. If you do not come
down right now, I will kill Ti.”
He then jostled me down on the ground. He put a
foot on my back. He aimed his gun at my head and
counted aloud, “One… two ….. “
My brother Loc immediately opened the attic,
stuck his head out of it, and said,
“Do not shoot my sister. I will get down right
now.”
My grandfather hastily ran to the stool to keep it
steady. While doing this, his legs trembled and he fell
down with his face against the ground. While Loc’s was
hanging from the attic with his feet just touching to the
stool, Phan gunned him down. His blood spurted out. He
dropped to the ground. His body writhed a few seconds
and went still.
[180]
 Let my grandfather cried in despair while Phan
pointed his gun at the attic and shot uncontrollably at it. At
that moment, a noise was heard from the attic. It might
have been caused by Kinh in trying to avoid bullets. Phan
therefore fired continuously at the noises. When his gun
ran out of bullets, he got other from his accomplices and
continued to fire until my brother Kinh dropped down to
the ground as the ceiling collapsed.
Van sat down on the ground, his eyes closed, his
hands covered his ears and his body trembled
uncontrollably. I sat next to Kinh’s body. I was so fearful
that I froze and made a mess in my pants. My grandfather
threw himself upon Kinh and hugged him with his arms.
Kinh’s eyes were wide-open. He was whispering his last
words. My grandfather cried so loud and cursed Phan. In a
fit of bloodthirstiness, he gunned my grandfather down as
well. My grandfather fell down next to Kinh.
After killing my grandfather, they left the house
and walked away. They forced Van to follow them. There
was only me in the house. I crept to my grandfather and
hugged his dead body. I cried in a hoarse voice. I was out
of breath. My hands were soaked with my grandfather’s
blood. I crept to Loc and Kinh’s dead bodies. I cried, I
shook them; I called them, but no one responded to me.
My grandfather lay still with blood oozing from his chest.
I collapsed onto my grandfather. I lost consciousness.
I did not know how long I was unconscious.
When I became conscious, I could not stand up by myself.
I continued to lie down and hugged my grandfather. My
hair was covered with blood. My body was bathed in
blood, feces and urine. I did not have enough strength to
[181]
sit up. I don’t know how long I lay side by side with the
dead bodies of my immediate relatives.
When I regained consciousness, I saw Mr. &
Mrs. Hau and some others who were my grandfather’s
neighbors. They were putting things in order. They carried
a plank bed from the kitchen room into the living room
and put all four dead bodies on it. Mrs. Hau and a female
neighbor took me to the bathroom and gave me a bath as if
I were a baby. Mrs. Hau got her clothes and put them on
me. My heart and mind were entirely paralyzed. I could
not cry or speak. Day and night, I sat mournfully next to
my grandfather and brothers’ corpses. I did not fear death
anymore. I wondered why they did not kill me as well.
Mrs. Hau realized I was too thin and needed
food. She stirred a cup of brown rice flour and forced me
to drink it. There was no food left in my grandfather’s
house. All of the rice, cakes and jams were taken away by
SVCS and NVCS. Mr. & Mrs. Hau had hidden some rice
to cook in soup for surviving.
A day later, Phan and his accomplices came
back, Mrs. Hau took this occasion to ask him for
permission to bury my grandfather and my three brothers
in the rear garden, but he would not allow it and said:
“Leave them there.” Seven days had already passed. The
dead bodies were distended and began smelling. Because
of Phan and his accomplices did not come back, so we did
not dare to bury the corpses.
One day, a group of NVCS came to the house
looking for food. Mrs. Hau asked them for permission to
bury the corpses. They said: “OK, these corpses are rotten

[182]
and smelled awful.” However, they allowed digging only
one grave. Mr. & Mrs. Hau cried and solicited that,
“They are already dead and know nothing.
Please allow us to dig four graves separately.”
“No. One only!” They responded.
They also helped Mr. & Mrs. Hau to dig a grave.
After finishing their digging, they told them to gather all
the corpses and put them in the grave and cover them up.
Mr. & Mrs. Hau and their neighbors did not want to do
that. They did nothing but looked at one another and cried.
That evening, Phan and his accomplices came
back with Van. He told his accomplices and Van to carry
the dead bodies, and put them together into the single
grave. Mr. & Mrs. Hau followed them to the grave. I laid
down motionless with exhaustion but I still clearly heard
the conversations of the people in the rear garden. I did not
have enough courage to go to the garden and see with my
own eyes the sight in which my immediate relatives to be
put into a mass grave. I was lying down quietly in my
grandfather’s room. I felt like my internal organs were
being cut into pieces. Where is God? I called my
grandfather; I called my brother Loc; I called my brother
Kinh, I called my brother Hai, Nobody heard me.
At the time, the four dead bodies had already
been put into the grave but they had not been covered yet I
heard the sound of gunfire and the shriek of Mr. & Mrs.
Hau, but nothing from Van. Mrs. Hau called aloud Van’s
name. Her voice was desperate. I immediately knew what
happened to Van. My whole body trembled. I had
difficulty breathing. I made a mess in my pants again.

[183]
 I heard the shouts and screams of SVCS to
hurry up in filling the grave. Mr. & Mrs. Hau and some
neighbors of my grandfather reluctantly obeyed their
orders. When SVCS got out of the house, Mrs. Hau came
into my room, messed up her hair, wrenched her ears and
told me that Van had been shot and laid the same grave
with my grandfather and brothers. Mrs. Hau beat her chest
and said, “I really don’t know whether Van was already
dead or still alive at the time they forced me to fill in the
grave. Van! Please forgive me. How can they be so
cruel?” I laid silently listening Mrs. Hau to cry.
After the day, they allowed us to bury dead
bodies I never saw SVCS and NVCS return to my
grandfather’s home. Perhaps they knew that, there were no
more men in the house to kill and no food left to rob. For
more than twenty days later, I had been lying up in my
grandfather’s home but I still continued to hear the sound
of gunfire from outside.
Mr. & Mrs. Hau did not have the heart to
leave me alone even though they knew most Phu Cam
residents had found a way to escape to Phu Luong. Mrs.
Hau encouraged me to eat more food so I would have
enough strength to escape to a safer area. She also told me,
“You cannot continue to stay here to wait for death and
you have to escape from here to see your mother again.”
A few days later, I followed Mrs. Hau’s family to escape
to Phu Luong, because we heard somebody say that the
RVS and American soldiers had already appeared there.
We took the road to Kho Ren Bridge, but the
bridge had been destroyed; so we had to take another way.
I followed them like a person who had lost her soul. I did
[184]
not remember anything of the trip. However, one thing
that confused me was that on the way to evacuate into a
safer region a lot of explosions were heard here and there,
but nobody stopped to look for a place to hide. People
along the way told us that when explosions came near, the
SVCS and NVCS often huddled in people’s houses to
hide, so they could not stop and seize evacuees. That was
the reason why evacuees did not seek shelter during
escaping. The people of Hue said to each other, “Being
killed by weapons is better than being captured by
Vietnamese Communists.”
Finally, I had escaped to Phu Luong to meet my
mother and my three younger brothers. After hearing that
my grandfather and my three elder brothers had been
killed so barbarously by Phan, my mother became
mentally disturbed.
After being involved with several operations
with his unit, my father took a number of days leave to see
his family. He realized my mother was in a bad state of
health and she should not return to our home in Hue at the
moment. He therefore rented a house at Phu Luong for my
family to temporarily reside.
After Hue was liberated by the RVS and
American soldiers, with the help of relatives and
neighbors, my father reinterred his father and his three
sons. Their funeral mass was performed at the Phu Cam
Cathedral, and the host of the funeral was Priest Phung
Tue Nguyen. Mr. Van’s family agreed to allow him to rest
in peace together with my three brothers in my
grandfather’s rear garden.

[185]
 After the Mau Than event, my father was
discharged from the RVN troops. My mother’s mental
illness did not improve so my family decided to leave Hue
and moved to Long Khanh to live and work in peace
because we thought that going back to the place where my
family’s tragedy took place would not good for my
mother’s state of mind.

[186]
 Concentrated Reeducation Camps
(Also Known as X-1 Campaign)
At 11:25 on April 30, 1975, General Duong Van
Minh, President of the Republic of Vietnam (RVN) for
two days stated that:
“I, the president, order my men and women in the
Armed Forces of the Republic of Vietnam to lay down all
weapons and surrender unconditionally to the South
Liberation Front’s Troops….”[9]
In the early days of May, the local South
Liberation Front’s Troops, also known as the local
Military Administrative Committees (MAC), took over the
power of all territorial military units of the RVN
government. Not long after that, these local MAC ordered
all the Vietnamese who collaborated with or was related to
the former RVN government or associated with the
American Empire to have registered with the new
authorities. While registering, they had to write down their
names, addresses, ranks, duties, and so on. After doing so,
they were allowed to go home and wait for the new
authorities’ orders. At the time, nobody knew what the
new orders were.
According to Truong Nhu Tang, the Former
Minister of Justice of the Provisional Revolutionary
Government of South Vietnam (PRG/SV), in his book “A
Viet Cong Memoir”, the new orders were to force all the

9
This front is only the puppet one of the Republic Democratic of
Vietnam.
[187]
military men and civilian officials of the former RVN
government to attend re-education classes. In his book,
Tang revealed that, at the beginning of May 1975, the so-
called Trung Ương Cục Miền Nam or Central Office of
South Vietnam (COSV) held a meeting to settle the
details of a matter of great urgency. Among these details
were the directives to call for everyone who had
collaborated with or was related to the RVN government
at every level, and who were the leaders of various
political parties to undergo a period of re-education.

According to these directives, those who had

registered were divided into three categories. The first one
included common soldiers, employees and low-level
officials who would attend a three-day re-education
course in the local areas. The second one included junior
military officers and middle-level officials who would
undergo a ten-day re-education course. The third
included high-level of military officers, police officers and
leaders of all national political parties who would have to
undergo a month long reeducation course.
It seems like the directives of the COSV were not
transmitted in a timely manner to the local Military
[188]
Administrative Committees; therefore they had to develop
their own initiatives to round up all of those who
collaborated with or worked for the former government
into their custodies. For this reason, there were several
different ways to round up soldiers, cadres and officials of
the RVN into their reeducation camps.
At Chau Phu Township, the capital of Chau Doc
Province where I was a military officer of the RVN; just a
few days after registering with the new communist
authorities, we, the military and police officers from the
rank of second lieutenant and upward, mid and high civil
officials of the RVN and so on, were invited to attend a
meeting to listen to the new order of the new local
authorities. After fully coming, we were told:
“Your lives have been threatened by the local
folks, because you had maltreated them in the past. As a
result, they would take this occasion to rise up and kill you
all. Their wishes are reasonable but clearly contrary to
the policies of the revolutionary government. Because of
that, we have to take actions to protect you.”
After saying that, all attendants were directly
escorted by armed guerrillas to the local prison of the
former government. A few months later, the new local
authorities told us that: “You would be sent to other places
for re-education courses and you are allowed to write to
your family members and tell them to bring you paper,
pens, personal belongings and food or money for a month.
Those things you will bring to the new place for attending
a re-education course.”
At Saigon, the largest city of South Vietnam and
also the capital of the RVN with some five million of
[189]
people, its Military Administrative Committee had carried
out soundly the directives of the COSV. It divided those
who had registered with the MAC into three different
categories:
1. Those who were plain soldiers,
noncommissioned officers and warrant officers and so on
were ordered to report to various places for re-education
courses that lasted only three days on the post. They
would attend these courses during the day and to go home
at night.
2. Those who were military officers from the
rank of second lieutenant to captain, mid-ranking civil
officials, low-ranking police officers, intelligence cadres
and so on were ordered to bring along with them enough
paper, pens, clothes, mosquito nets, personal effects and
food or money for ten days when reporting to attend a
reeducation course.
3. Those who were military high-ranking officers
and police high-ranking officers, from majors to generals,
mid and high-ranking intelligence officers, members of the
RVN executive, judicial and legislative branches including
all elected members of the House of Representative as
well as Senate, leaders of reactionary political parties and
so forth were also ordered to bring along with them
enough paper, pens, clothes, mosquito-nets, personal
effects, and food or money for a month when reporting to
attend a reeducation course.
After a few days of reporting, the second and
third categories were transported to various places which
were called “re-education” camps. When the period of
food or money for ten days or a month went to an end, the
[190]
re-education courses were still not opened and they were
still detained in re-education camps. After ten days to a
month when the food was gone but the reeducation
courses had still not started, they therefore brought the
issue to the camp headquarters and were told:
“The food or money of ten days or a month that
you were ordered to bring along with when reporting for
re-education courses or classes did not mean the
reeducation courses last just ten days or a month, but
meant, all attendants of these courses or classes had to
feed themselves for the early phase of re-education and
the food for the following phase would be taken care of by
the camps.”
After listening to the explanation of the new
authorities they clearly knew that the directives telling
them to report themselves with ten days or a month’s
worth of food and clothing was only a deception of the
new authorities to trick them stepping into the prisons with
the belief that after attending a ten-day or thirty-day
reeducation course they would be allowed to go home and
live with their families as ordinary citizens under the new
regime.
This deception was not only aimed at those who
had associated with the RVN government but also at the
members of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of
South Vietnam (PRG/SV). The specific example was
Truong Nhu Tang, the current Minister of Justice of the
PRG/SV, who bitterly reported his case in his book, A
Vietcong Memoir, as follows:
After April 30, 1975, Tang had two brothers,
Quynh and Bich, who were arranged into the third
[191]
category for the reeducation course. On June 16, 1975,
Tang drove them to the place where they had to report. His
elder brother Quynh was director of the Saigon General
Hospital and was also an adviser on health policies to the
Nationalist Party. His younger brother Bich was head of
the foreign exchange division of the National Bank. Of
course, they brought with them enough of their belongings
and food or money enough for a month stay in a course of
10 days or 30 days as the directive of the Saigon
authorities stipulated. Quynh and Bich completely
believed that the public announcements of the new Saigon
authorities were sincere and after a month they would be
allowed to return to their families and live peacefully as
citizens of the new society. On the other hand, they also
believed with their brother’s position as the current
Minister of Justice of the PRG/SV, he would protect them
from any unexpected event that might have happened to
them.
The deadline of thirty days had already passed by
but his two brothers were still in a re-education camp.
Therefore, his mother at home was so upset and asked
him:
“Why haven’t your brothers come back yet? You
told me for certain that this government of yours was as
good as its words. But I have a feeling that you’ve been
tricked. These Tonkinese (a pejorative Sothern term for
Northerners) made dupes out of you and all the rest.”
It seems Tang did not know any reasonable
answer for his mother. For that reason, he decided to
confront Phat, the President of the PRG/SV. The following
is the dialogue between Tang and Phat:
[192]
 “Brother Tam Chi [Phat’s nom de guerre],
perhaps you can explain to me what is happening. We
have promised that these people would spend a month in
re-education that time is long past. What’s going on?”
Tang asked.
“Listen, Brother Ba, we never said the term
would be limited to thirty days. All we said was that they
should report with thirty days worth of food and clothing.”
Phat answered.
“What is this, a word game? We don’t need it.
We’ve got the power, don’t we? You think we have to
deceive them and punish them? That’s the way weaklings
would do it. Are we insecure? Don’t you think we’ve got
enough control? I feel as if I have been personally
betrayed in this—by you! And because of you, I’ve
betrayed others!” Tang stared at Phat and said.
“Brother Ba, we’re applying clemency—real
clemency—to a great number or people. Most of the
soldiers and officials and junior officers are already
backed at work. You’ve got to distinguish between the
criminals and the ones who were just cannon fodder.
Those who were in on decisions, they need a lot more. And
what is it about the torturers? Would you let them go? You
can’t treat all these people alike. Each one is a separate
case, and we’ve got to deal with each one differently.”
Phat tried to calm down Tang.
“Listen, Brother Tam Chi, you say that they have
to be treated individually. But the truth is that they’re all
in the same boat, aren’t they? They’re all in indefinitely—
isn’t that so? I’ll tell you what I think. I think we had
better keep our word and let them go back home. If we’ve
[193]
got some who need a longer time, we have to let them
know without any ambiguity so that their families can
make arrangements to take care of themselves. There’s a
lot more at stake here than punishment.” Tang responded
to Phat.
Because of his anxiety about his brothers and the
pressure from his mother, Tang was determined to find out
what was happening to his brothers. After several days in
canvassing, Tang was able to arrange through Phat a visit
to the camp at Long Thanh where Quynh and Bich were
being detained. At the same time, his old friend Trinh
Dinh Thao, president of the Alliance of National,
Democratic and Peace Force, was also allowed to
accompany him to see his son-in-law, an army doctor of
the former regime, who was also detained in the same
camp with Tang’s brothers.
When coming to the camp, Tang and Thao were
welcomed by the camp commander with a chilly
politeness. The commander arranged a car to drive them
around the camp’s compound with his directive that Tang
and Thao would not be permitted to stop or talk with their
relatives or anyone else in the camp. While driving slowly,
Tang met his brothers, Quynh and Bich, walking together
on the roadside. Tang, Quynh and Bich looked at each
other, but dared not exchange any word.
Meaning of reeducation camp:
According to the Vietnamese communist leaders,
re-education is an act of mercy of Uncle Ho and the
Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP), since those who are
in re-education camps were guilty of acts of national
treason and deserved the death penalty or life
[194]
imprisonment. Instead of punishing them like that, Uncle
Ho and the VCP established re-education camps to re-
educate and help them realize their mistakes then correct
themselves to become honest citizens and integrate into
the new society and regime.
The communist authorities also explained the
differences between a prison and a reeducation camp as
well as between a prisoner and a reeducation man.
A prison is a place to punish people who
committed a crime against the current society. A
reeducation camp is a school to reeducate people who
collaborated with the reactionary organizations or enemies
against the country.
A prisoner is an individual being put into a
prison for serving his limited criminal verdict and he
would be released when the limited time of the verdict
comes to an end. A reeducation man, also known as a
political prisoner, is a person to be put into a re-education
camp for an unlimited reeducation. His release would
depend on the progresses that he made during the time in a
reeducation camp.
In fact, according to those who had been detained
in re-education camps for years, a reeducation camp really
is a prison neither more nor less. The term reeducation
camp is only a flowery name for prison. The reason which
made the communist leaders use the word of
“reeducation” to replace “prison” is that they wanted to
use a civilized term to camouflage their barbarous actions.
Reeducation camp was really a ruthless revenge of
Vietnamese Communists to everyone who associated with
the former RVN government to fight against them. This
revenge was clearly confirmed by Nguyen Ho, a member

[195]
of the Central Committee of the VCP. In his lecture in the
victor celebration held on May 15, 1975 at Saigon,
Nguyen Ho stated that: “Those who were members of the
puppet government would be treated as follows: Their
properties would be confiscated. Their children would be
forced to be our slaves. Their wives would be obliged to be
our sexual slaves. They themselves will be put in
reeducation camps located in the unwholesome
environments until their bones decay to pay their blood
debts to people.”

Illustration of a communist re-education camp

Historical background:
In Vietnamese History, the term “re-education”
camp was used in North Vietnam in 1961. On June 20,
1961, the Republic Democratic of Vietnam government
enacted the Resolution 49-NQTV/QH. The way to carry
out the Resolution 49 was brought out in General Circular
No. 121-CP of the RDV Council of Ministers dated 09-08-
1961. The main purpose of the Resolution as well as the
General Circular was to concentrate for reeducation all of
those who were considered as reactionary elements and

[196]
their movement and action were a menace to public
security.
The Resolution 49 set a term of reeducation
lasting three years, but it could be shortened to those who
made progress in reeducation. It could also be extended
additionally one or more than one terms for those who
refuse to reeducation.

Re-education:

Re-education was divided into two phases:

political re-education and labor re-education.
The first phase usually lasts a few months in
which detainees in a re-education camp were forced to
study political lessons. There were a total of nine basic
political lessons:
- The American Empire is the number one enemy
of the Vietnamese people and the people in the world
- The RVN government was only puppet one and
lackeys of the American Empire
- The American Empire invaded South Vietnam
- The crimes of the RVN government to Southern
Vietnamese
- The leadership of the VCP in Vietnam War is
the decisive factor for the victory of Vietnam over the U.S.
- The mistakes or errors of Vietnamese who had
collaborated with the former RVN government
- The generosity of the new government toward
people who fought on the other side during the war
- The duties of people who had cooperated with
the former government
[197]
 - Labor is glorious
Each re-education lesson often had four steps:
In the first step, a senior political cadre lectures a
lesson that lasts from hours to days. Most communist
political cadres at the time had very low academic
standard. However, when giving a lecture, they spoke very
eloquently. At first, listeners might have thought that they
were knowledgeable persons, but later, they would realize
that the contents of their lectures were completely hollow
and they only repeated again and again the dogmas or
teachings from their superiors. As a result, they
sometimes lectured something stupid and something that
made no sense. For example, they ignorantly praised the
talent of Northern communist pilots like:
“Our airmen piloted their Soviet jets into the
thick clouds then turned off their jet engines to keep
silently for an airspace ambush. When American jets
passing by, they quickly turned on their jets and dashed
out to shoot them down. With this tactic, American jets
had no way to escape. Hundred of them were shot down,
and many American pilots were killed or captured as
prisoners of war.”
In the second step, inmates were forced to review
lessons by themselves and think deeply about the lesson’s
content before it was discussed together in a group and
mutually criticized.
In the third step, the inmates were required to
compare the lesson’s contents with their misdeeds and the
crimes they committed during the time they collaborated
with the former government.

[198]
 In the fourth step, inmates were required to write
a confession in which they had to recognize that they had
committed many mistakes and crimes against the
Vietnamese people and revolutionary government and
then they had to beseech the generosity from them.
Inmates also were encouraged to criticize the confessions
of others to help each other to progress. The more
misdeeds or crimes they confessed, the more they were
praised by their camp authorities.
During the political re-education phase, inmates
were also forced to write curriculum vitae not only of their
own but also of their children, parents, and grandparents.
After a few weeks to a few months, they were asked to re-
write it again. If the camp authorities found out any
statement in the curriculum vitae contradicted each other,
re-educated detainees were called to the camp
headquarters for an interrogation.

[199]
 Following the political re-education phase was
the hard labor one. According to the communist
authorities, the hard labor re-education is necessary for all
inmates in re-education camps, because under the former
regime they had high living standards that were not based
on their own labor but on their exploitations from working
people. For that reason, hard labor re-education was
extremely necessary to help them understand the real
value of labor and also help them to earn their living by
their own labor after they were released from camps.
In the labor phase, all inmates were transported
to desolate places located in the unwholesome
environments where they were divided into teams (each
team has from 30 to 40 detainees). They were forced to
work very hard to build new labor camps or establish
state-run farms. During working time, each team was
strictly controlled and followed by a superintendent cadre
(quản giáo) and two surveyed cadres (quản chế).
In these labor camps, reeducated men or inmates
were fed with a starving regiment. Consequently, their
faces were haggard and their bodies were as flat as a
pancake. In addition, they were often reviled with dirty
words by camp authorities such as reactionary elements,
unpatriotic guys, hunting dogs for foreigners.

Food and medical supplies in reeducation

camps:
The inmates were told to bring enough food or
money for ten days or thirty days. Therefore, the food
supplies in re-education camps were relatively adequate
only for the first few weeks or the first month. In the
[200]
 following days, food supplies were gradually depleted.
The daily ration of each inmate was only one or two small
bowls [10] of cooked rice with no meat and only a few
vegetables boiled in salt water. This food was ironically
called by re-educated inmates under a flowery name:
“Ocean Soup” or “Canh Đại Dương.”
Even though the cooked-rice ration of each
inmate was at the minimum level but it was very often
shifted to corn and root crops such as manioc, and sweet
potato. Most of the food supply was spoiled. They were
no protein in their diet. On rare occasions such as Uncle
Ho’s birthday, Independence Day and Lunar New Year,
the diet was supplemented by a few tiny morsels of meat.

Living and working under such conditions,

inmates always felt hungry and they were constantly
preoccupied with food. Most inmates had to catch and eat
creatures such as lizards, millipedes, grasshoppers,
crickets, toads, frogs, mice, and snakes that they found,
and hoped these creatures could help reduce the feeling of
hunger and provide a little protein for their thin bodies. A
popular motto in re-education camps at that time was that:
“Anything that is able to move by itself is able to be
eaten.” These creatures were caught and eaten secretly. If
the camp cadres learned about it, the inmates would be
punished. When eating something, inmates always chewed
very slowly to prolong their false feeling to be eaten a lot.
Several inmates died unexpectedly because of food
poisoning. They felt hungry even more right after eating.

10
The capacity of a small bowl is equal to 1 ½ cup or 12 oz
[201]
Food haunted them everywhere and every time even in
their dreams.
In a poem named “Four precious things on the
earth”, Nguyen Chi Then who was called the greatest poet
in prison had written:
“Now, there’re only four things on the earth precious:
Rice, manioc root, sweet potato and corn,
Those bind us, harass us and torture us,
They have never left us alone.”
The lack of food supplies had caused severe
malnutrition for most inmates and weakened their
resistance to diseases. The common diseases were
dysentery, beriberi, malaria and so forth. The medical
supplies in the system of prisons or re-education camps
were very poor. The so-called clinic of a re-education
camp had only a few bottles of aspirin and a few
bactericide bottles called mercurochrome. The medical
cares in these camps were very inadequate. Most
physicians in prison clinics were prisoners and were
medical doctors of the former regime. Even though they
were highly qualified physicians, they only had aspirin
and mercurochrome on hands; therefore, they could not
adequately treat disease and save their patients. The
consequences were that many re-educated detainees died
from diseases in re-education camps.
Rules and Punishment:
In order to maintain strict control the thoughts of
inmates in camps, the camp authorities had forbidden
them to keep and read any book or magazine of the former
regime, to reminiscing and talking about anything related
to the American empire and the puppet government or
[202]
singing and praising any lovely song that was composed
and circulated by the RVN government before 1975.
Discussing or debating any political subjects besides the
political lessons of the camps, and harboring and
entertaining any reactionary thought or superstitious belief
were also forbidden. The camp rules also forbade
prisoners to be rude to the cadres of the camps.

Illustration of prisoners being punished savagely

in a re-education camp

If any of these forbidden rules were broken,

prisoners would be seriously punished. Violators could be
forced to work extra hours, their daily food rations could
be reduced, their visit-and-feed permissions could be
cancelled and they could be tied up in contorted positions
and put in a narrow cage called the “tiger cage” that were
made of barbwire. They could also be shackled in conned
boxes (also known as large cargo containers used by the
U.S. Army for shipping supplies). Most of the containers
were made of metal. Therefore, they became very hot
under the sun and most prisoners who were shackled in
these containers would pass out or die under such
[203]
circumstances. Many prisoners had been beaten to death
by cruel officials or guards of the camps or had been
executed by the communist military court.
Most re-education camps established by the
communist authorities after 1975 had some solitary
confinement cells in which prisoners were forced to eat
and sleep and even defecate and urinate on the spot with
their legs raised and feet locked in wooden stocks. Some
prisoners’ hands and legs were tied so tightly that they
became afflicted with gangrene. After being released from
solitary confinement cells most prisoners were unable to
walk, became handicapped, or died.

Illustration of a prisoner being confined

and maltreated in a solitary confinement cell

Correspondences and family visits:

Correspondences and visits were very important
not only because of the spiritual need between inmates and
their loved ones, but also because of the physical need of
prisoners. According to some former prisoners, the
inmates in most re-education camps could not survive
without food and medicine supplies from their families.
[204]
However, the communist government used visitation and
corresponding privileges as a “weapon” to control
prisoners as well as their families. For that reason, the
camp authorities only allowed prisoners who abided by the
camp regulations and made progress in re-education to
write letters to their relatives, get in touch with them at
camps, and receive food and medicine supplies from their
relatives. And the local authorities of the prisoners’
families only gave permissions to visits prisoners to those
who had fulfilled their local duties.
Prisoners could not write letters to their families
without permission from the camp authorities. They were
not allowed to mention in their letters any negative thing
related to themselves or their camps. In their letters
prisoners also had to encourage their relatives to fulfill
their local obligations, and had to emphasize that, it was
the necessary and sufficient condition to help them to be
released earlier from their camps. After finishing a letter, a
prisoner had to put it into an open-stamped-addressed
envelope and submit it to the camp authorities for
censoring. If the camp regulations were fully respected the
letter would be sent to its address. If not it would be put
into garbage cans, and its author would be punished as
well.
In addition, all letters to prisoners from their
families were also censored by camp authorities before
they were handed over to prisoners. If the camp authorities
saw the letters’ content was filled with negative
information, and had no positive words to encourage
detainees or prisoners to do well in re-education, they
would be thrown into wastebaskets.
[205]
 Prisoners in reeducation camps were allowed to
meet their family members and receive their supplies once
per month or one per every three months. The duration of
each visit was also dependent on the camp authorities. It
lasted from 15 to 60 minutes or longer than that. Some
camps allowed prisoners and their relatives to be free
when meeting and talking with each other.
All presents or gifts that detainees received from
their relatives were strictly controlled by camp authorities.
Detainees had to open any gift that was covered by paper
or banana leaves in front of camp officials who used
instruments to dig up or cut their gifts into pieces to look
for things that might been hidden in it. Some gifts that
could not be easily opened such as toothpaste tubes,
prisoners had to be pressed out into nylon bags for easy
control by camp guards.
Generally speaking, “re-education camp” is only
the flowery word that was used by the Vietnamese
communist leaders to replace the word of “prison”. The
reason they did so was that they wanted to make people in
the country as well as in the world believe that, the re-
education camps were not prisons but academies where
the former enemies of the regime were concentrated for
re-education to become honest citizens and integrate into
the new society. In fact, re-education camps were places
that were used by Ho and his VCP to incarcerate and take
revenge on the Vietnamese who had different political
opinions and who loved Vietnam but hated the
communism.

[206]
 Currency Exchanges in
Vietnam after 1975
After completely conquering the South Vietnam
or the Republic of Vietnam (RVN) on April 30, 1975, the
Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) made a total of three
currency exchanges:

The first currency exchange:

The first currency exchange was given on

September 22, 1975 and only lasted 15 hours from 8:00
AM to 11:00 PM. The VCP or the Northern Vietnamese
Communists were under the cover of their Puppet
Provisional Revolution Government of South Vietnam
(PRG/SV) or the Republic of South Vietnam (RSV) to
force Vietnamese people under the 17th parallel to change
their RVN currency into PRG/SV currency.

The view of a currency exchange table at

Saigon on 07-22-1975

[207]
 In the first currency exchange, there were two
currency areas that did not have the same rate of
exchange.

The front side of 500 dong bill of the RVN

The front side of 1 dong bill of the PRG/SV

The exchange rate of the area from Danang to

Camau was 500 RVN dongs = 1 PRG/SV dong. Each
family in the area was allowed to exchange a maximum
amount of 100,000 RVN dongs into 200 PRG/SV dongs.
The exchange rate of the area from Hue to the
17th parallel North was 1,000 RVN dongs = 3 PRG/SV
dongs. Each family in the area was allowed to exchange a
maximum amount of 100,000 RVN into 300 PRG/SV
dongs.
The remaining amount of each family had in
both areas, if any, was to be deposited in an account
belonging to the National Bank of Vietnam. This amount
could be partially withdrawn later if the owners had
legitimate reasons that were approved and accepted by the
local authorities. Beginning December 1976, the
[208]
withdrawals from these accounts were not allowed
anymore. This means the remaining amounts that owners
had in their accounts at the National Bank of Vietnam
were completely lost. In other words, the VCP had plainly
robbed this amount of Vietnamese people under the 17th
parallel.

The second currency exchange:

After unifying the country in 1976, the VCP in

the name of the government of the Socialist of Vietnam
(SRV) forced the whole country into the second currency
exchange on May 03, 1978. There were two currency
exchange related to the two areas, the Former Republic of
South Vietnam (RSV) and the Former Republic
Democratic of Vietnam (RDV). According to the decree
88/CP dated 04/25/1978, the former currency of the RSV
as well as the currency of the RDV was banned in
circulation and they were replaced by the unified currency
or the SRV currency. The rate in the RDV area was 1
SRV dong = 1 RDV dong, and the rate in the RSV area
was 1 SRV dong = 0.80 RSV dong.

Each family in the urban area was allowed to

exchange a maximum amount of:
- 100 SRV dongs per family of 1 member
- 200 SRV dongs per family of 2 members
- For a family with more than 2 members, any
additional member was allowed to change 50 SRV dongs
- The maximum amount each urban family was
allowed to exchange was 500 SRV dongs regardless of the
amount of member in the family.
Each family in the rural area was exchanged to a
maximum amount of:
- 100 SRV dongs per family of 2 members.

[209]
 - For a family with more than 2 members, any
additional member was allowed to exchange 30 SRV
dongs.
- The maximum amount of a rural family could
exchange was 300 new dongs regardless of the number of
people in the family.

The remaining amount each family had, if any,

was required to be deposited in an account belonging to
the National Bank of Vietnam. The owners of account
could partially withdraw the remaining amount but it
depended on three of the following conditions:
1. There were legitimate reasons
2. Those reasons were approved and accepted
by local authorities

[210]
 3. The account owner had to prove the
remaining amount was earned or saved by his/her own
labor rather than by the exploitation of labor from others.

The third currency exchange:

The third currency exchange was given on

September 14, 1985. According to the decree numbered
01-HĐBT-TĐ dated 09/13/1985, the rate between the
SRV currency and the new one was 1 new dong = 10
SRV dongs. The maximum amount that each family was
allowed to exchange immediately at the exchange tables
was 2,000 SRV dongs into 200 new dongs. The amount
that was larger than the limit level of 2,000 SRV dongs, if
any, were required to be handed over to a treasurer at the
exchanged tables for a receipt. This amount would be
reconsidered and resolved later by the local authorities.
Throughout the three currency exchanges, the
Vietnamese people figured out some important things as
follows:
1. The currency exchanges were prepared and
arranged secretly. They were announced to the public just
a few hours before they began.
2. A few days before the exchange day, a rumor
spread that a currency exchange would come very soon.
The VCP and the Vietnam Communist Government
(VCG) through newspapers, radios, and televisions
affirmed decisively with their people that: “It is the fake
news from reactionary elements.” However, the following
day, the communist government unashamedly issued a real
curfew and officially announced the order of currency
exchange.
3. The people in the country were not allowed to
exchange all the money they owned. They were only
allowed to exchange with a low limit that was arbitrarily
decided by the VCP and the communist government.
[211]
 4. Any amount that was higher than the allowed
limit was required deposited into a bank account
belonging to the Vietnamese National Bank. The
conditions to withdraw the rest of the money from their
accounts were stipulated very strictly. The account owners
who wanted to withdraw their remaining money, even a
small one from their account had to cite a legitimate
reason that was approved and accepted by local
authorities. As a result, the exceeded amount that was
deposited by account owners at the National Bank was
very difficult to withdraw and could be considered to be
completely robbed in broad daylight by the VCP and the
Communist Government.
5. The consequences of these currency exchanges
were so severe that there were hundreds of thousands of
families in the country to be bankrupt. Thousands of
people were so disappointed that they killed themselves
under many different ways.
6. All of the people in the country had realized
the true face of Vietnamese Communists who said one
thing but did another. This made the Vietnamese people
living under the parallel 17th before 1975 remember their
President Nguyen Van Thieu who had told them that: “Do
not listen to what Communists say but see what they do.”
Before 1975, most southerners thought that, his words
were just propagandized ones to smear the VCP, but after
1975, they finally realized that the words of President
Thieu were an undeniable truth. Through their currency
exchanges, the Vietnamese Communist Party had clearly
exposed itself as a gang of daylight robbery.
In order to understand clearly about the dishonest
face of the Vietnamese Communists in these currency
exchanges, the Vietnamese people cannot forget a story
that was reported by Tran Dinh, a Vietnamese well-known
writer, in his book named “Đèn Cù”.

[212]
 Before 1945, Mrs. Loi Quyen was a famous
businesswoman and owner of several houses in Hanoi.
After Ho Chi Minh and his communist men presented
themselves before the public in Hanoi on September 2,
1945, she donated some houses and 109 ounces of gold to
them. On October 11, 1945, she had been awarded by
President Ho Chi Minh a Golden Star Medal in
recognition of her considerable contribution to his
Government.
After the unification in 1975, she still owned
some houses in Hanoi. In the early 1980s, the Politburo of
the VCP wanted to buy one of her houses for its
Propaganda and Training Section. After knowing the price
she asked for the house, the Politburo officially refused to
buy it for the reason that it was too expensive.
Just a few days before September 14, 1985, To
Huu (Deputy Prime Minister) who previously knew the
currency exchange would be happening very soon, ordered
his men to her residence to let her know the Politburo
agreed to buy the house with the price she had asked for.
The selling document was made and a car of the Politburo
was loaded with hundreds of thousands of SRV dongs to
her residence for paying off the house.
On September 14, 1985, the currency exchange
was announced. Each family was only allowed to only
exchange 2,000 SRV dongs into 200 new dongs. The
amount that was higher than the allowed limit of 2,000
SRVN dongs, had to be deposited into the government
treasury. The amount of hundreds of thousands SRV
dongs that Mrs. Loi Quyen had in hands by selling her
house to the Politburo of the VCP just a few days ago,
suddenly became a mass of wastepaper. If she were not a
courageous Vietnamese woman, she would have
committed suicide.
After three currency exchanges, an anonymous
poem appeared in South Vietnam that read:
[213]
 Máu rợn mùi tanh cuộc đổi đời
Ba lần cướp trắng lúc lên ngôi
Miền Nam "ruột thịt" âm thầm hiểu:
Cách mạng là đây: bọn giết người!
This poem could be translated into English as follows:

When life is changed, the blood smells stinky

Three times being plainly robbed by the Communist Party
Southern compatriots started to silently understand
The Vietnamese Communist Party only is a killing band.

If one compared the first currency exchange on

September 22, 1975 in South Vietnam after the
Vietnamese Communists occupied the RVN with the
currency exchange in Germany after the fall of Berlin
Wall on November 9, 1989, the people of Vietnam as well
as the people in the world would realize that the
Vietnamese communist had treated their southern
compatriots as their archenemies.
Right after some sections of the wall were
destroyed, several people in East Germany overflowed
into West Germany. When putting their feet on the soil of
the West region, each Eastern German was allocated a
Purchasing Pass of 100 Western Germany Marks by the
West Germany government to buy whatever they wanted.
If someone wanted to exchange their East Germany Mark
(EGM) into West Germany Mark (WGM), they could
exchange with a favored rate: 1WGM = 1EGM instead of
the official rate at the time: 1 WGM = 7 EGM.
The official period of the currency exchange
began July 1, 1990 and was announced beforehand. The
East German exchange rate was 1 to 1. The amounts of
currency exchange were unlimited. After the period of
official currency exchange ended, the exchanged rate in

[214]
the free market was up to 11 EGM for 1 WGM. In other
words, the people of Eastern Germany were exchanged
with the favored rate 1 EGM for 1 WGM, while the people
of the former RVN after the RDV occupied the South had
to change their 500 RVN dongs for 1 RSV dong.
In general speaking, the Western Germany
Authorities used the best ways to serve their compatriots
from the former East Germany in their currency exchange
after the country to be unified. In contrary, the Vietnamese
communist authorities used the worst methods to rob
categorical properties and money of their flesh-and-blood
in the South Vietnam or the RVN after the country united
in 1975 through their three currency exchanges.

In Vietnam, there is a proverb that clearly

describes the Vietnamese Communist Party is a daylight
robbed band:
Cướp đêm là giặc
Cướp ngày là quan
Or
Night robbers are enemies
Daylight robbers are communist dignitaries.

[215]
 Industry and Commerce Reform

After occupying the entire territory of the

Republic of Vietnam in 1975, the Vietnamese Communist
Party (VCP) and the Vietnamese Communist Government
(VCG) determined to put the whole country in a fast-
strong-steady progress to the Socialist. For that reason,
they began opening a campaign called the Industry and
Commerce Reform, also known as the Attacking
Compradors and Commercial Bourgeois. The main
target of the campaign was to reform the economic
structures in the South for catching up with the economic
structures in the North. According to the senior communist
leaders at the time, the level economic distance between
the North and the South in 1975 was 20 years, because the
North had begun setting up the socialist economic
structures since 1955.
The Industry and Commerce Reform or
Attacking Bourgeois was divided into two campaigns.
Each campaign had a secret name: X-2 and X-3. The X-1
was the secret name of the campaign in which the VCP
summoned up all of military officers and civilian officials
of the RVN government into re-education camps right
after April 30, 1975.
X-2 campaign:
X-2 campaign began on September 10, 1975
through seventeen cities and provinces of the South, and
specially Ho Chi Minh City. It aimed only at great

[216]
compradors who were accused as speculators and hoarders
to monopolize food and goods market.
At 7:30 on September 10, the Military
Administration Committee (MAC) of the Ho Chi Minh
City held a press conference where an announcement of
the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South
Vietnam (PRG/SV) was published. In the announcement,
the PRG/SV ordered to arrest sixty compradors, such as
Ma Hy, a monopolist of rice; Luu Tu Dan, a corner-man
of fabric; Bui Van Lu, a speculator of the bike part market;
Tran Thien Tu, a monopolist of coffee market; Hoang Kim
Quy, an applier of barbwire for American troops, et cetera.
In fact, a number of compradors being listed in the
announcement were already arrested 7 hours before the
press conference started.

An illustrated photo of people in a parade

against compradors in Saigon

In the morning of September 10, hundreds of

thousands of students, workers, and young men and so on
of Saigon City demonstrated against bourgeois and made a
noisy parade around Saigon City with slogans, banners
and loudspeakers while several action groups or teams
[217]
penetrated into the bourgeois houses to inventory and
confiscate all of their seen and unseen possessions.
In the evening of September 10, the information
of victory was repeatedly sent to the General Headquarter
of the Central Committee of the PRG/SV in the
Independence Palace. According to the victorious
information, the number of bourgeois accused as
speculators and hoarders to monopolize the goods and
food market being arrested were remarkably increased.
The victorious news also noted that, a thousand tons of
food and goods, hundreds of millions of cash, thousands
of gold ounces, and a larger number of diamonds were
confiscated.
At the hand over to the next shift at 7pm on
September 10 at the Independence Palace with the
presence of Pham Hung, the Secretary of the South
Central Committee, Mai Chi Tho, the Chairman of the
Saigon Military Administrative Committee, reported that:
“Our action units just arrested a number of subjects and
confiscated a number of their real estate but not all of
them and all of their hidden possessions.” He also added
that: “Each Chinese bourgeois family might have from 500
to 1,000 oz of gold.” We just cursorily interrogate them,
but not strictly search their houses. If we compared the
confiscated amount with the amount they owned, the first
one is only a small part of the second one. Therefore, our
current action units need to carefully search their houses
to find out their gold and foreign currencies. It is
necessary to appeal the help from their old servants or
employees to figure out their hidden wealth.”

[218]
 In summary, the X-2 is a short campaign
attacking without any explanation to the top level of
comprador and commercial bourgeois circle.
X-3 campaign:
X-3 campaign began March 23, 1978 and lasted
for years. The subjects of the campaign were not only all
of compradors but also all of commercial bourgeois and
nationalist bourgeois of South Vietnam.
Not long before the campaign started, several
secret action teams were urgently formed to check and list
every business stores as well as rich families who would
be the subjects of the campaign. The leading principle of
the campaign was absolutely secret. Therefore, all subjects
of the campaign almost knew nothing about these teams.
They only knew them when one of the teams suddenly
appeared right at their front doors and read the “asset
inventory order” of the SRV or the People’s Committees.
The campaign’s departure ceremony was held at
the Nguyen Ai Quoc Academy located at Thu Duc and
was presided by Do Muoi, a member of the Politburo of
the Party Central Committee. According to the journalist
Minh Dien’s memory, a few days before March 23, there
were about five hundred cadres from the Central
Committee as well as from cities and provinces in the
South to be summoned to the Nguyen Ai Quoc Academy
for attending the departure ceremony and receiving
necessary instructions of the South Central Committee.
During the waiting time, these cadres had to eat and sleep
right in the academy and were not allowed to go
anywhere. Minh Dien was one of them. The following are
some information that Minh Dien recorded:
[219]
 “Almost these cadres did not clearly know the
reason why they were summoned to this academy as well
as the mission they would be assigned to do in the coming
days. However, through leaked news, it was that their
missions in the next few days could be to attend the
Industry and Commerce Reform Campaign and Do Muoi,
Deputy Prime Minister, was the chief commander of the
campaign.
“In the afternoon of September 21, the
atmosphere of the academy’s meeting hall became so
suffocated by the burning expectation of more than five
hundred cadres because they
wanted to know officially about the
mission they would be assigned and
the necessary instructions they
needed to know before carrying out
their mission.”
A few minutes later, Do
Muoi appeared on the stage of the
meeting hall and began developing
and explaining the plan of Industry
and Commerce Reform in Ho Chi Minh City and the
Southern Provinces. Following are his trenchant words:
“After April 30, 1975, we had carried out X-1 in
which we had summoned up most military officers and
civilian officials of the puppet government into re-
education camps. We also already carried out the
campaign X-2 in which we attacked compradors and
eliminated most the top guys of the comprador and
commercial bourgeois circle. Now we begin X-3 to

[220]
continuously dig to the roots of the capitalism and the
henchmen of the American Empire.
Our ancestors had taught us that, when killing a
poisonous snake, we had to beat its head broken. The head
of the capitalist snake had already broken by our people,
but its tail is still alive and still dangerous to us. If we did
not completely destroy its tail, the capitalist snake would
continue to prevent our country to progress quickly,
strongly and steadily to the socialist regime.
“Do you know who had recently wept off all of
the goods and foods for speculations to seek profits and
accused falsely that: The goods and foods of the South
were transported to the North by the Party (VCP) and
State (VCG) to feed and supply for northern people? They
are compradors and commercial bourgeois.
“Do you know who had hoarded food to make
our people die of hunger? They are compradors and
commercial bourgeois.
“Do you know who had supplied food for the
reactionary organizations in Lam Dong to fight against
our people? They are compradors and commercial
bourgeois.
“In short, all of compradors and commercial
bourgeois are sinecurists and enriched themselves on
bones and bloods of our people. They also are people to
prevent our country on the way to progress quickly,
strongly and steadily into the socialist regime.
“For that reason, we have to skin them, cut off
their flesh, force them on productive labor and live only
on their own labor. They must to know how to cultivate
rice, corn, yam and manioc. Our wild land is very large;
[221]
therefore, we have to force them to toil and moil for
living.”
Finally, Do Muoi ended his lecture with excited
and threatened words:
“If any one of you were dispirited, please
automatically retreat. Anyone who makes any concession
with compradors or bourgeois would be considered a
betrayer to the working class and a traitor to the Party
and State will be seriously punished.”
After Do Muoi ended his lecture, all of these
cadres were allowed to return to their agencies and
become the key cadres of the local X-3 campaigns.
At 7:00 AM of March 23, all kinds of business
stores and industry manufacturers from alleyways to
streets in Ho Chi Minh City received an order of the
People’s Committee to close their stores and do nothing.
At the same time, hundreds of action teams were allowed
to break in to stores, manufactories, firms, plants,
enterprises, industries et cetera for searching,
inventorying, sealing everything they saw. These groups
or teams were also allowed to enter the private houses of
the owners where they forced all family members of the
owners to stay on the post and searched thoroughly the
house from the top to the bottom and confiscate
everything they found in the houses.
The consequences of X-3:
X-3 destroyed most industrial structures of the
South Vietnam that were so diversified and prosperous
under the economic market of the Republic of Vietnam
Government. All kinds of light industries such as textile
industry, plastic industry, food processing industry,
[222]
pharmaceutical industry and so on were completely
paralyzed. HCM city alone had 29,787 plants,
manufacturers, enterprises, productive firms, business
stores, commercial families, et cetera being destroyed and
about 300,000 workers lost their jobs.
Besides the 29,787 plants, manufactories,
enterprises, productive firms, business stores and so on
were confiscated; the X-3 campaign had also confiscated
more than 4,000 kg of gold, $1,200,000 USD, and a great
number of foods and goods. Almost everything such as
cars, televisions, refrigerators, and so on of the
compradors and commercial bourgeois were inventoried
and confiscated and they themselves were forced to move
to the new economic zones or put into prisons or re-
education camps.
In addition to that, the X-3 campaign had
transformed Saigon City from the “Precious Pearl of Far
East” before 1975 into a “Dead City” after 1975. At the
same time, it also put hundreds of thousands of people in
the South into a destitute circumstance that forced them to
look for anyway to leave their homeland for other
countries in the Free World even though they knew very
clearly that, in their escapes they just had 50% to survive
and 50% to be killed by Thailand pirates or strong winds
and big waves in the Pacific Ocean.
In the duration of the campaign, there were about
600,000 residents of HCM city whose properties were
entirely confiscated and they themselves were forced to
move to the economic zones with nothing in their hands.
The economic forces of Saigon city and southern

[223]
provinces before 1975 were entirely destroyed by the X-3
campaign.
In 2005, the former Prime Minister, Vo Van
Kiet, confirmed with the press that: “In the Land Reform
and the Industry and Commerce Reform, there were so
many people who were considered as our enemies even
though in the past they dedicated their services to the
revolution. That caused so much political and economic
damages for the country.”
In the interview with journalists in 2006, Mai Chi
Tho, the former chairman of People’s Committee of Ho
Chi Minh City had complained that:
“The X-3 had caused a lot of economic damages
for HCM city. The reason is that the criteria assigned to
the city were too high….. In the middle of the campaign
when reviewing 2,000 objects of the campaign we found
out that there were only 3 of them to be chosen
reasonably. The extremist policy had deformed the outside
of city and changed its inner forces. It also washed out the
advantages and economic basic structures of Ho Chi Minh
City.”
In general speaking, X-3 campaign was the worst
economic disaster of Vietnam, and the responsibility was
placed on the unwise leadership of Do Muoi because he
was the highest commander of the X-3 campaign.
When mentioning to the bitter failure of the X-3
campaign, in his book “Những Trăn Trở Trước Cuộc Đổi
Mới” or “My Concerns Before the Renovation”, Nguyen
Van Linh, the former Secretary of the VCP, wrote that:
“When being the Head of the Central Industry and
Commerce Committee, I had studied carefully about the
[224]
situation of industry and commerce of HCM City and
found out around 6,000 stores, enterprises, factories and
firms and so forth could be the subjects of the ICR. But
when replacing my position, Do Muoi had inflexibly and
mechanically applied all standards of the ICR in the
North before 1975 to the ICR in the South; therefore, the
subjects of the ICR in HCM city had rocketed up from
6,000 to 28,787, nearly five times higher .”
According to the journalist Minh Dien, the
heavy losses of the X-3 were not only by the mechanically
application of standards of the ICR in the North before
1975 to the ICR in the South but also by the untutored and
arbitrary leadership of Do Muoi. When talking about the
ignorance of Do Mươi, Minh Diem wrote: “Before
becoming a member of the VCP, Do Muoi was a pig
castrator. When he was a child, he had never gone to
school. For that reason, all of his thoughts and actions
were issued from a scoundrel who assumed suddenly a
high position in the Party and Government and held the
power of life and death of people in his hand.”
The journalist Minh Dien once asked Tran Bach
Dang, a senior communist leader of the South Central
Committee that: “Is there any economic work left for our
country by Do Muoi? Dang winked his eyes, stretched his
lips and answered: “The only one that the guy left for our
country was the Industry and Commerce Reform which
transformed HCM city and South Vietnam from a
prosperous area into a dead zone.”
In memoir book “Làm Người Là Khó” or “Being
a man is not easy”, Doan Duy Thanh, former Deputy
Prime Minister, reported that he once asked Truong Chinh,
[225]
Chairman of the country, about Do Mươi, Truong Chinh
said: “Brother Muoi is a soldierly man. In conferences he
often blocked my words.” In his book, Thanh also stated
that he once asked brother To, nickname of Prime Minister
Pham Van Dong, about Do Muoi, after a few seconds of
thinking, Pham gave him a brief answer: “Muoi is only a
disturbed guy.”
After the ICR campaign in South Vietnam had a
proverb that read:
Ignorance plus the full of authority
Do Muoi destroyed to dust the southern economy
The ICR campaign had destroyed all motive
power developments and exterminated all productive
forces. In fact, all private businesses were almost non-
existent, because they had to adapt themselves into a form
called co-operation between private individuals and
government. All capitals of the co-operation belonged to
the old owners and the capital belonged to the government
was zero but it sized the power to run the co-operative and
the old owners were only workers of the co-operative.
In “Hồi Ký của Một Thằng Hèn” or “Memoir
of A Coward”, To Hai, a musician and also a former
communist cadre of the X-3 campaign, had disclosed that
there were many cases in which several communist
officials and cadres of the ICR campaign had taken
advantage of the occasion to illegally enrich themselves by
looting assets of the campaign’s objects to become
nouveau riches known as the red capitalist. Following are
some cases he wrote in his book:

[226]
 “This occasion (X-3) allowed thousands of
cadres who took these opportunities to appropriate many
assets of the revolution’s enemies and turn them into
private properties and the owners of these properties were
their immediate relatives. Who in the country has enough
capacities to count how many dollars, gold, diamond et
cetera that the ICR teams confiscated from more than one
million of business stores, and nearly 7,000 manufactories
of the Saigon City, a biggest and richest one of the
country? It was not odd when we found out a film director
of the Revolutionary Government who suddenly became
the owner of a big photography in Cho Lon City. A private
firm was nationalized and became a public one, but later
the director of the public firm used a devilish trick to turn
it into his private one. Of course, the legal owner of the
firm was not him but his wife. The Instant Noodles firm
named “Miliket” is an example. A district party committee
secretary suddenly became the owner of five multistoried
houses. The legal owners of these houses of course were
not under his name but his immediate relatives’ names.
Several ICR cadres, after cursorily inventorying the
number of US dollars, gold and diamond of their victims’
cash boxes had intentionally forgotten to hand them to the
ICR committee but turned them to their private ones.”
Being a former ICR cadre, To Hai recognized
many senior communist members who were gentle and
nice before joining the ICR campaign but during the
campaign, they turned into violent robbers. After breaking
into a bourgeois home, and ICR cadres just prepared to
say some threatening words, his victim was hastily pushed

[227]
in to his hand a full box of diamond with a request to
report that: “We found nothing in this bourgeois family,”
There were so many stories in which one side
laughed and the other side cried in the ICR campaign that
he could not tell them all in his book. Because of that,
there were many veteran revolutionaries who were real
proletarians in the past but now they were owners of
several multistoried houses and a great amount of gold and
money that they could spend for their several generations.
In “Memoir of a Coward”, To Hai also revealed
the fates of these communist members. Some of them had
fallen into the situation of “ill gotten–ill spent” but others
had pretended to be unhealthy and requested for an early
retirement to enjoy with their wives and children and with
a dozen of beautiful and young girlfriends.
In short, the Industry and Commerce Reform that
was carried out by the VCP and the VCG after 1975 in
South Vietnam was really a bitter failure. According to
economic experts of the United Nations, the ICR
campaign that the Socialist Republic of Vietnam
government carried out in the South after 1975 made the
economy of Vietnam lag behind up to 50 years and
Vietnam became the third poorest country in the world.

[228]
 New Economic Zones in
South Vietnam after 1975

The real target of the New Economic Zones

(NEZ) program that the Vietnamese Communist Party
(VCP) had carried out in South Vietnam after April 1975
was aimed at the population of Saigon City, also known as
Ho Chi Minh (HCM) City. The NEZ was performed
parallel with the Concentrated Re-education Camps and
the Industry and Commerce Reform to support each other.
It was started by the following events.
In 1976, after the unification at the 4th National
Party Congress, the Central Committee of the VCP stated
the main objective of the five-year plan (1976-1980) as
follows:
“…. Using all social labor forces, reorganizing
them well, redistributing them logically between regions
and sectors to increase significantly labor productive.”
At the first session of the United Congress on
June 25, 1967, Le Duan, the Secretary of the VCP, stated
that:
“….Before 1975, the aggressive war of the
American Empire made so many people in the South have
the living standards higher than the ones that could offer
by the domestic economy and by their own labor. For that
reason, these people need to know their high living
standards are the false ones that originated from the
miseries and the death of millions of their compatriots,
from the destruction of so many villages and townships,
[229]
from the trample of human dignities of thousands of young
women in the temporarily occupied areas, from the shame
of the losing country. Therefore, they need to understand
that, the way of life to run after the false needs of a
consumed society is completely contrary to the civilized
and true life. Therefore, these people need to return to the
real life of the nation and live only by the results of their
labor. It is the way to reach a meaningful, joyful,
beautiful, happy and steady life for themselves and their
children.”
On May 19, 1976, an order of the Vietnamese
Communist Authorities announced five categories of
urban residents who had to move to the new economic
zones:
1. Unemployed people
2. Illegally residing people
3. People who were residing in the areas
reserved for military officers and civilian officials of the
RVN government
4. Comprador capitalists and national bourgeois
5. Chinese and Catholics
The true target of the program:
Analyzing the five categories of urban residents
who had to move to NEZ, one recognized that the NEZ
has two goals: the economic one and the political one.
In the economic goal, the communist authorities
sought a solution to solve the congested population,
because Saigon or HCM city was burdened with
unemployed and dislocated people. The communist
authorities therefore considered the NEZ was the best
solution to solve the problem.
[230]
 In the political goal, the communist authorities
sought to reduce the number of people who previously
associated or cooperated with the former RVN
government as well as comprador capitalists and national
bourgeois and their families, because these people could
become anti-communist forces in the present as well as in
the future.
In fact, the goal of the new economic zone
program in the South after April 1975 aimed at the
political control more than the economic development.
Most of the new economic zones were set up in virgin
lands which were often malaria-infested jungles.
In theory, a new economic zone was a waste area
of land that had already changed into a cultivated area
where land was divided into lots. Each lot would be
allocated to a family moving to the area.
According to the promise of the Communist
Authorities, when moving to the assigned NEZ, each
household was provided 700 to 900 VND[11] for building
a thatched cottage, 100VND for digging a well and
100VND for buying a small boat if the NEZ belonged to a
river area. In addition, if a member of a household was
sick and was unable to work, he or she would be
subsidized 1VND per day for medication. If any member
of the family died, he or she would be subsidized 150VND
for a proper burial.
In theory, the Communist Authorities only
encouraged their urban citizens to voluntarily move to the
NEZ. However, the number of people who volunteered to

11
The official rate between VND and USD in 1976 is 1USD=1.85VND,
but in the black market rate is 1USD=3VND
[231]
go to the NEZ was not as high as the Communist
Authorities expected. Therefore, they had to use several
methods to force them to move to the NEZ. The following
are some methods that were used by the Communist
Authorities of Saigon to herd their urban citizens into new
economic zones.
- Revoking Family Record Booklet (FRB), also
known as Household Registration Booklet (HRB): This
booklet is issued by the local authorities to each family. In
FRB, all the members of a family were recorded with
individual details. When your family had a FRB, it meant
that your family members were considered as legal
residents of the city. When it was revoked by the local
authorities it meant all of your family members had
become illegal residents and the local authorities had the
right to expel or evict your family from their city at
anytime.
- Withdrawing the Family Food Booklet (FFB):
The FFB was also issued by the local authorities to each
family to buy food from government stores or shops. If
you did not have your FFB in hand, you would not buy
any food from these stores with official prices. At the
time, only public or government stores had an exclusive
right to sell food to people. In theory, if public stores did
not sell food to your family, you would have to buy food
at the black markets but the price was at least two or three
times higher than the official one. For that reason, your
family could not afford the black market price in the long
run. The only way your family could have a new FFB was
to move to the NEZ that the local authorities had assigned
to your family. In other words, when your FFB was taken,
[232]
the local communist authorities wanted to put your family
into a circumstance in which your family cannot continue
to live in their city anymore.
- The principals of the local schools would not
allow your children to attend their schools any more, if
you said no to the local authorities’ order to move to the
NEZ. When taking your FRB, the local authorities also
informed the local schools where your children were
students to let them know your children had become
illegal residents. Of course, these principals would not
allow your children to step into their schools anymore. If
you wanted your children to continue to go to school, you
would have to move to the NEZ and the schools there
would welcome your children. This method was another
one to make you realize that if you continued to
intentionally live in the city, your children would face a
dark future.
The methods above made several pusillanimous
families move reluctantly to the NEZ, but so many
stubborn others continued to live in Saigon even though
their FRB and FFB had been revoked, and their families
had to live in the margin of society.
In 1975-1976, there were some 600,000 residents
of Saigon City being forced to move to the NEZ. Most of
them were relatives of military officers or civilian officials
of the former government or family members of people
classified as comprador capitalists and national bourgeois.
Most family members of the military officers and
civilian officials of the former government as well as the
ones of the capitalist compradors and nationalist
bourgeoisie were forced to move to the NEZ by a
[233]
compulsory manner in which the local authorities ordered
their police men and militias to come directly to their
homes and herded them into a truck that moved them
directly to the assigned NEZ.
On the other hand, there were so many families
that had members who have been detained in prisons or in
reeducation camps to be convinced that if they volunteered
to move the NEZ, the local authorities would immediately
intervene or request the central authorities to release their
family members from prisons or reeducation camps
earlier. This was only a devilish trick of the local
authorities to convince these families moving to NEZ for
appropriating their houses. In fact, there was no
relationship between the early releasing of a prisoner from
his reeducation camp and the moving of his family to a
new economic zone.
In theory, the NEZ were the places where a
larger number of the unemployed and dislocated people in
the Saigon City were sent to solve the problem of urban
congestion. In fact, the NEZ were places where all of the
victims of the Industry and Commerce Reform and
relatives of the people related to the former regime and so
on were sent to for familiarizing themselves with hard
labor. Because of that, the new economic zones were
widely known as places of internal exile. At the time,
southern people considered the new economic zones as
large reeducation camps without barbed-wire fence.
During the time in which the NEZ were carried
out, the Communist Government promulgated the
Decision 111/CP dated 04/14/1977. The 2nd clause of

[234]
section IV said that houses and land of the following
people would be directly controlled by the government:
- Puppet military officers from the rank of major
upward
- Puppet police officers from the rank of
lieutenant upward
- Puppet civilian officials from the rank of
section chiefs, deputy department chiefs, deputy district
chiefs
- Fiend factors, secret agents, open arm cadres,
reactionary elements and so forth
The decision above made a number of families
who lost their houses and became the subject of the NEZ
in Saigon City increase significantly.
The living conditions of the people in the
NEZ:
Most people who moved to the NEZ were put
into an extremely difficult living situation. Right after
being transported to a new economic zone, each family
was allocated a narrow cottage which had only a thatched
roof with a few skinny pillars without walls and doors.

In the above photo is a family including a single

mother and her four children under the age of 10 to be put
[235]
in to a narrow thatched cottage without walls, a kitchen, a
bed, a toilet, a water container of a NEZ where everything
was totally unknown to them; how could they survive in
such circumstances?

Nguyen Hien Le, a very well-known scholar, had

described the living condition of a family in a NEZ in his
book named “Memoir of Nguyen Hien Le” as follows:
“… It is a jungle area where only straw grass
grows without canals or rivers. If one wanted to plant
something, he would have to cut off the straw grass first. If
one wanted to live there, he had to first dig a well for
drinking water. In order to get water, a well must be
deeply dug at least 7 yards but its water was still very
muddy…. A family of 6 members had to live in a thatched
cottage of 6 square yards without a kitchen and toilet.
There was only a bed and a hammock in the cottage. The
mother and her four children slept on the bed; under it
were an adult pig and a piglet; around it was a herd of
chicken. The father slept on a hammock…. The drinking
water container of the family was a hole which was dug to
get earth for the cottage foundation. After living there for
nearly three years, the members of this family clearly felt
that they could not continue to live in a very hard situation
like that anymore.”

Tran Dong Thanh, a Vietnamese boatman

currently living in San Jose, California, had pictured the
life of his family in a new economic zone called Le Minh
Xuan as follows:

[236]
 “My family was enumerated in the list of people
moving to the new economic zone called Le Minh Xuan. It
was a waterless land being surrounded by three rows of
houses. Each row had some 50 cottages. Each of them had
only a thatched roof and four skinny bamboo pillars
without a kitchen, a toilet, and beds not even walls and
doors. It was difficult for us to recognize where the
locations of the front door and rear one were. Each side of
a cottage was only four meters long.
“At the first night in the area, my children, my
wife and I embraced and warmed each other to sleep
overnight. Because of exhaustion, we slept so deeply that
we did not know mosquitoes bit us freely and the thatched
roof dropped and covered us until the next morning when
waking up. We realized these things. Then, we looked at
each other and smiled. Our new neighbors who had the
same fate with my family came in and helped us rebuild
our cottage because they greatly sympathized with us.”

Tran Dong Thanh also described a scene in

which he had to go to the jungle to seek some bamboo
trees to build beds for his family members for avoiding the
moisture of the earth that might have made them sick:
“There was no path to go through the jungle
where many kinds of trees and creepers densely grow. On
the day I entered it just a short distance but I had to kill
some snakes, one of them was about 3 yard long.
“At night, nobody came back and forth to their
cottages to see each other, because the nightfall was so
dark that we could not see our own hand when extending
it in front of us. Some cottages had kerosene lamps but
[237]
they were lit for only a while until they were switched off
by the wind…
“Not long after moving to this economic zone,
my wife and children became sick because they had not
enough food to eat and they could not stand the cool wind
of the jungle.
“I myself often had insomnia because I worried
so much about my children who were still young and could
not bear the poisonous atmosphere... When lying alone at
night, I found out that the communist authorities had put
us into the world of death and that we had to find a way to
escape from the current bad situation.”
Living conditions in a NEZ were so miserable;
therefore most families who were forced into a NEZ
finally had to leave it for their old hometown with nothing
in their hand. When returning to their old city, their old
houses were already occupied by new owners who were
military or political cadres of the new government, and
their Family Record Booklets were already cancelled by
the local authorities. They therefore became illegal
residents in their old city and had to live under bridges or
in corners of markets or wander on streets to beg for food.
The NEZ caused about 1,000,000 residents of
HCM City to become homeless and brought around
1,000,000 communist cadres and their family members
from the North to the South for occupying houses and
utilities of the people who were forced to move to the
NEZ. Among them there were so many families who had
to find sooner or later a way to leave their NEZ.

[238]
 An illustration of a man and his four children are
on the way to escape from their NEZ

In summary, the main goal of the New Economic

Zone of the Vietnamese Communist Party and the
Vietnamese Communist Government in South Vietnam
after 1975 was not a solution to solve the problem of the
congested population but the one to get rid of the people
who were previously associated and cooperated with the
Republic of Vietnam because they believed these people
could become an anti-communist force in the near future.

[239]
 Economic Subsidy Period
According to the Marxist theory, a communist
country must apply the law of the planned economy, also
known as communist economy. Vietnam is a communist
one; therefore, the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP)
and the Vietnamese Communist Government (VCG) had
to transform the current market economy that was existed
in the North before 1954 and in the South before 1975 into
the planned economy. In the market economy, also known
as the capitalist one, the competition is free and prices are
determined by the interaction between the supply and the
demand. In the planned economy, also known as the
communist one, the production, investment, distribution,
price, incomes and so on are arbitrarily determined and
strictly controlled by the communist party and the
communist government.
In order to transform from the market economy
into the planned economy, a communist country has to go
through a transitional stage called the socialist economy.
This stage was called by the VCP and VCG: “Kinh Tế
Bao Cấp” or “The Subsidy Economy”, and also known
as “The Subsidy Period”. It was carried out in the North
beginning in 1955. After reunifying in 1975, it began
carrying out in the South and continued to go on in the
North. The reason the socialist economy was called the
Subsidy Period was that during the subsidy period the
VCP and VCG had responsibilities to provide all basic
needs for citizens with the arbitrary prices that was not
related to the law supply and demand.
During the subsidy period, all private economic
operations were forbidden and most people who were
[240]
working were officials of the government, or employees of
industrial and commercial structures of the State or state-
run plantations and co-operative farms. The rest were
considered as unemployed.
During the subsidy period, most economic plans
that were coordinated and operated by the Party and State
did not achieve the desired results, because they faced a
lot of the implicit and negative oppositions of the people.
Therefore, most of industrial and agricultural products
were declined dramatically, and the VCP and VCG, also
known as the Party and the State, did not have enough
food and goods to dispense to people.
The economic crisis led the whole country into
an extreme deficit of everything especially rice, and other
agricultural products. All food was put under the strict
control of the Party and State. People only bought food
from public stores. Meanwhile these stores did not have
enough food to sell out. For that reason, all people in the
country, except communist cadres and their families, had
to live in a miserable situation.
Before 1975, even though the South Vietnam or
the Republic of Vietnam was in a war but it still was one
of the top countries in the world for export rice. However,
during the subsidy period 1975-1986, the Socialist
Republic of Vietnam (SRV) became a country that did not
have enough rice to feed its people and fell into the
situation in which agricultural and industrial products
were seriously deficient. Vietnamese people had to live in
a hard circumstance between life and death, and the SRV
became an international beggar who begged for old wheat
flour from the Soviet Union, sorghum from India, and the
leftovers of cereal products from communist countries in
Eastern Europe. All the Vietnamese people, except high-
ranking cadres of the Party and senior officials of the State
and their family members, had to live in the deprivation
and misery.
[241]
 In order to achieve the desired targets in the
subsidy period, the Party and State set up several kinds of
measure to force people in the country to carry out strictly
everything they wanted. These kinds of measure could be
summarized as follows:
Economic measures:
All private shops, stores, firms, factories and so
on were confiscated or nationalized, the Party and State
became the unique owner of all economic structures.
All private ownerships of land were abrogated,
and all kinds of land belonged to the State. In other words,
the Party and State was the sole owner of all kinds of land
in the country. The Party and State had full power to allow
people permissions to use a limit of land with a limit of
time and of course the Party and State had the ultimate
right to revoke their permissions anytime.
All peasants or farmers were forced to put their
rice-field and their agricultural equipments into collective
farms. In theory, they themselves became members and
owners of the collective farm. In fact they were only
hired-workers of the collective farms and were paid by
working point (công điểm). After a working day, a
member was paid one working point.
The way to pay for each working point could be
described as follows: At the end of a certain seasonal
harvest, the total product of the season, after deduction
from 60% to 70% of products land rents to the Party and
State under the form of agricultural taxes, the rest divided
by the total working points of all members of the
collective farm of the season, the quotient is the value of
each working point. The average value of a working point
or a working day at the time was from 4 to 6 pounds of un-
decorticated rice (thóc) that was equivalent to 1 or 2 USD.
It was too low for an eight-hour-working day. Because of
that, a female member of a collective farm had to
complain bitterly that:
[242]
 Working full-time for a farm cooperative
But I did not have enough money
To buy some yards of cloth
To cover my genital area fully

Besides the economic methods above, the

Vietnamese Communist Authorities also issued several
administrative measures to control people and food during
the Subsidy Period such as the Family Record Booklet,
Rice Booklet and Food Stamp.
Family Record Booklet (FRB) was a measure to
control people in the country, in which the communist
authorities forced everybody who lives under the same
roof that located in a territory unit
such as province or cities to have to
register their names in a FRB that was
controlled by the local government.
Anyone who had no name in any FRB
was considered as an illegal citizen.
No one had right to register his/her
name in a FRB of two different
territorial and administrative units.
When a citizen who has any affair or
business related to the local or central authorities has to
present his FRB as a proof to show himself to be a legal
citizen.
The Family Food Booklet (sổ mua thực phẩm)
was another administrative measure to control every kind
of food. The main food in Vietnamese is decorticated rice
(gạo); therefore, the Family Food Booklet (FFB) was also
called the Rice Booklet (RB). During the subsidy period,
the Party and State monopolized to control and to
distribute all kinds of food. Therefore, people only bought
food from the public stores and when buying food people
had to submit to the shop’s officials their Rice Booklet in
[243]
which the amount of food that was allowed to buy by the
local authorities was noted.

If you did not have a rice booklet, you would not

buy any food from any public stores. Therefore, the FFB
was very important to every family during the subsidy
period. In the country at the time, there was a famous
saying: “buồn như mất sổ gạo” or “sad like losing rice
booklet!”

Image of the sad face of a man who lost his family rice booklet

Food & Goods Tickets, also known as “Basic

Commodities Ticket” or “Phiếu nhu yếu phẩm”, was a
type of ticket used to control and limit the amount of food
that a citizen was allowed to buy. On each ticket, the kind
[244]
and the amount of food allowed to buy was noted very
clearly. Here are some kinds of food tickets:

Even though, you had the rice booklet or food

tickets in your hand, there’s nothing to be sure you could
buy them. On the appointed day and at the time you
arrived at the front door of your assigned store, even
though its working hour was not over, but its rice was sold
out. In this case you had to wait until the next time or the
store may allow you to buy corn, sorghum, sweet potato or
manioc instead of rice. In some necessary cases, you had
to buy food in the black markets, but the price was at least
two times higher.
During the subsidy period, the economic
checking points were disposed everywhere by the local
communist authorities such as cities or provinces to
control of transportations and trades of food and goods.
Each checking point was run by different agencies such as
economic police, tax office, and market controlled agency
and so on. Even a policeman standing guard over a bridge
or militia guards of a village office also had the right to
arrest and confiscate food of a transporter without legal
permission.
A person who wanted to bring just some pounds
of rice or pork meat or some live chickens from his home
province to his relatives in others province faced several
difficulties. If he did not have permission from his local
government, his amount of food would be confiscated.

[245]
 The life of people during subsidy period:
The subsidy period was considered the darkest
stage of the Vietnamese history. All of the Vietnamese
people, except the members of the Vietnamese Communist
Party and their families, had to live in a situation between
life and death, because the economy managing method of
the Party and State during the subsidy period discouraged
most people in the country, killed most initiatives of
individuals, and made the entice national economy fall
into a serious crisis. As a result, all people in the country
had to live in an utterly miserable situation.
The monthly salary of a worker in any field of
action was paid so low that the total monthly salary of all
members of a family could only buy protein-rich food
such as fish and meat to eat together with cooked-rice for
a few days only. The remaining days of month, all
members of this family just ate cooked-rice with boiled
vegetables and salt-water.
All basic commodities for people to live fell into
a serious shortage. Food and goods were only bought from
government stores and when buying something from these
stores people needed an approval ahead of the local
authorizes. A poem of an unknown poet described the
destitute of Vietnamese in this period as follows:

Cái đinh phải đăng ký

Trái bí phải xắp hàng
Khoai lang cần tem phiếu
Thuốc điếu phải mua bông
Lấy chồng phải cai đẻ
Bán lẻ chạy công an
Lang thang đi cải tạo
Hết gạo ăn bo-bo

Or
You have to register ahead when buying a nail
[246]
 Buying a pumpkin, you have to wait in a long tail
Buying sweet potatoes, you must have food tickets
You need a coupon to buy cigarettes
When getting married, you must give up having babies
When seeing police, a paddler has to flee quickly
Wandering on streets you could be put into prison.
When rice runs out you have to eat sorghum

Consequences:

All basic commodities were seriously deficient in

comparison with the need of people. This consequence put
all people in the country, except senior communist
members and senior government officials and their family
members, into a very hard circumstance in which a lot of
families had not enough food to eat and clothes to wear.
Because of that, most Vietnamese people at the time had
to wear ragged clothes. Here is a Vietnamese woman who
had to use the metaphorical speaking way to bitterly
describe her shortage of cloth to cover her lower body:
Mỗi năm hai thước vải sô
Làm sao che miệng cụ Hồ được đây
or
Each year I am allowed to buy two meters of cloth only
How can I cover my own Ho’s mouth fully?
Buying Food War:
People only bought food at the public stores but
which had never enough food to supply to their customers.
As a result, whenever a public shop announced to sell
food, people would be getting together at its front door. A
customer who comes to the shop earlier than others could
obtain fully his or her allotted food before supplies were
exhausted. A customer who came later would buy nothing
and had to return home with empty hands. For that reason,
there would be a “war” that happened among customers

[247]
who struggled against to each other for occupying a
standing position at the front door of a public store.

A rock used to occupy a standing place in waiting line

Around four hours before the time a public shop

opened, customers began coming and forming a line in
front of its door. At the time it officially opened, the line
might have exceeded around a half-mile or longer than
that. However, standing in a line for hours before
obtaining or buying something cost them a lot of time and
made them tired. Falling into a hard circumstance was an
opportunity for human initiative developed. Therefore, our
poor Vietnamese had “invented” some “war equipments”
to replace themselves for occupying a position in a waiting
line. These equipments usually were cheap things such as
a red clay brick, a rock or stone, a chipped porcelain bowl,
a charcoal-heated clothes iron and so on with or without
their names and house numbers on their equipments.
Following are some photographs that illustrate
the heart-broken scenes of Vietnamese people who had to
stand in a line for a long time at a public shop’s door just
to buy some basic commodities during the subsidy period.

[248]
 Customers was jostling one another in front door of a
State’s shop to buy essential goods

People are standing in a line at the front door of a

State’s shop to buy a bunch of vegetable

Buying Bus Ticket Competition:

During the economic subsidy period, the
Vietnamese people were not only deprived of food but
also of transporting means. The main transportations from
place to place during the subsidy period were trains and
buses. However, there was only one railroad that departed
from Hanoi and ran through several provinces to Saigon.
Therefore, any train trip was overcrowded with
passengers. At the same time, all private passenger
vehicles were not allowed to operate while buses or
passenger cars of the State were insufficient in comparison
with the need of the people. On the other hand, the fuel to
[249]
provide for any kind of vehicle was in a serious shortage;
therefore, only buses or passenger cars that ran by public
companies were supplied enough fuel with the official
prices. These situations made passengers face many
difficulties.
It was not easy for passengers to get a bus ticket.
If you wanted to buy a passenger car ticket to go
somewhere, you would have to go to a public bus ticket
office at least two or three hours before the time it
officially opened to form a line that sometimes prolonged
about half a mile. For that reason, passengers had to come
to the ticket office as early as possible to occupy a good
position in the waiting line.
Passengers could easily buy a bus ticket with
black-market prices from scalpers who connived with
officials of the ticket office but it was two or three times
higher than the official one.
In any trip of a public bus, besides legal
passengers, there were also a lot of illegal ones who had
no bus ticket. They got into or hung on to the bus with an
agreement of the bus drivers or bus driver’s assistants. Of
course, these illegal passengers had to pay them an amount
of money that was equal or higher than the official price.

A scene of illegal passengers clinging on a bus

[250]
 During the subsidy period, the monthly unofficial
incomes of drivers and driver assistants were arranged into
the highest level in the country. They became the suitors of
a lot of young women in Vietnam at the time. A mother
complained with her neighbors when knowing the
background of the man who married her daughter that:
“At first I feel very happy to think my daughter
got married with a driver assistant. But later I feel so sad
when I know her husband is only a medical doctor.”
When facing with so many difficulties in their
lives, the creativeness of the Vietnamese people was
maximally developed. Because of the fuel shortage, they
transformed a vehicle operated with fuel into one operated
with charcoal. Below is a charcoal-run vehicle with a big
charcoal tank that was attached to the rear end of a
passenger bus.

A passenger car with a charcoal tank attached to its rear end

During the subsidy period, Vietnamese people

had ameliorated a French family car with four seats into a
passenger vehicle with twenty seats. This kind of
ameliorative vehicles were used for the short route about
20 mile between Saigon and Biên Hòa at that time.

[251]
 A French vehicle from the early day of the 19 th century
Consequences:
In Vietnam there is a proverb that says: “Bụng
đói đầu gối phải bò” or “A hungry man forces his knees to
crawl.” It means, when living in a difficult situation,
people would not accept their fate resignedly to stretch out
on the deathbed, they therefore automatically find a way to
escape it and survive. Because of that, several jobs that the
country never had before were “invented” at the time.
Following are some remarkable occupations:
- Pumping ball-point pen (bơm mực bút bi),
when a ball-point pens runs out of ink, people always
throw it into a garbage can. However, in Vietnam during
the subsidy economy, ball-point pens were scarce and
expensive; therefore, they did not have enough courage to
do so but find a way to pump new ink into the old plastic
tubes of a ball-pens. After pumping new ink into your old
ball-point pen, it could be reused for a few months, but
sometime the new ink suddenly escaped from plastic tube
and made a mess of your shirt’s pocket.

Above are two photographs illustrated the ink-pumping job.

[252]
 - Pumping gas-lighter (bơm gas bật lửa), people
in the world usually threw away their gas-lighters when
they run out of gas. However, during the subsidy period,
our poor Vietnamese people had no heart to do so, they
therefore invented a new occupation to pump new gas into
a run-out-of- gas lighter to reuse.

A pumped-gas-lighter peddler

- Making bearded sandals (dép râu), during the

socialist economic period, it was not easy for a
Vietnamese to buy a new pair of shoes or sandals. As a
result, the rubber-bearded sandal industry appeared. The
raw materials to make this kind of sandal were discarded
tires and discarded inner tubes of automobiles. Discarded
tires were cut into sandal soles, and discarded inner tubes
were cut into sandal straps. After reassembling together,
the ends of the straps jutted out over the bottom of soles.
For that reason, they were called the bearded sandals. The
bearded sandals looked coarsely but were strong and
cheap.

[253]
 A bearded sandal

- Repaired bicycle (sửa xe đạp), after 1955 in

the North and after 1975 in the South, bicycle became a
popular mean of transport, and all of a bike’s spare parts
were very rare and expensive. Therefore, the repaired
bicycle shops grew like mushrooms everywhere in the
country. In Hanoi and Saigon cities, people were easily
able to find a bicycle-repair shop.

Two mended inner and tire tube bicycle shops in Hanoi before 1975

[254]
 - Hiring writer (viết thuê), the hired writers
usually were people of great knowledge and some of them
were quite in foreign languages such as English, French
and Chinese. Most of their customers were unlearned
women and farmers who wanted to complain something
with the local authorities or to inform something to their
relatives who were currently living far away in the country
or in a foreign country. The hired writer was paid about
one dollar or more to write a letter.

A hired writing shop

- Raising pig in apartment (nuôi heo trong nhà),
the monthly salary of all workers in any area of the SRV
was paid too low. On the other hand, pork meat in the
country at the time was rare and expensive. For these
reasons, several people living in towns and cities thought
that raising pig right in their houses was a way to earn
some supplement income for their families. Therefore, a
movement of raising pig was expanded all over towns and
cities in the country. They raised pig not in pigpens but in
bathrooms, toilets, kitchens, bedrooms even in front room
of their apartments. In other words, pigs and people living

[255]
together cramped in a narrow apartment. After slaughter,
pork meat was sneakily sold on the black-market and
earned an important amount of money.
A ridiculous thing that cannot help saying here is
that people cared for their pigs more than they cared for
their children. The reason was that, if a pig fell sick and
was not treated timely, it would be dead in just a few days
and all of the capitals, labors and times they spent to buy it
and feed it would be completely lost. In contrary, if their
children were ill, they did not die as easily as pigs.
In the morning when people meet one another,
they usually exchanged greeting like: “How are your
pigs?” instead of “How are you?”

A scene of raising pig in a family kitchen

- Pig castrated profession (nghề hoạn lợn), when

the raising pig occupation was largely developed in the
country, a new profession that depended on the pig
husbandry was expended largely as well. It was the pig
castrated one.

[256]
 A pig castrator is practicing his profession
- During the subsidy period, the pilferages were
largely developed everywhere. In the country has a
proverb saying: “bần cùng sinh đạo tặc”. It means: “living
in a very poor situation people easily become stealers or
robbers”. During the socialist economic period, all of
Vietnamese people, except senior communist members
and senior government officials and their families, had to
live in extremely destitute circumstance. As a result, all
valuable things were objects of an intentionally mistaken
take.
Everything that was not watched closely by its
owner would be stolen by others. Aluminum spools and
plates of a cafeteria often were objects to be pilfered by its
customers; therefore, its spools were bored two or three
holes and its plates were fixedly screwed to tables to
discourage its customers to pilfer them.
The personal value of a man in the current
society was also changed:
When living in a serious shortage of food, people
usually focused their thoughts on the realizable thing but
not on the unrealizable one. As a result, the criteria to
evaluate a person in the current society were also changed.
For example, the criteria to look for a suitor of a young
[257]
Vietnamese woman before the subsidy period were:
handsome, doing well in school, coming from a wealthy
family and so forth. However, in the subsidy period, these
criteria were almost outdated. The new ones of a suitor
must have during this period were mentioned in a poem
named “Mười Yêu” or “Ten Loves” as follows:

yêu anh có Sen-cô

Hai yêu anh có P -giô cá vàng
Ba yêu nhà cửa gọn gàng
yêu hộ kh u đàng hoàng Thủ đô
Năm yêu không có bà bô
yêu Văn Điển ông bô sắp về
yêu anh v ng tay nghề
m yêu sớm tối đi về có nhau
yêu có gạo trắng phau
yêu có thịt lại nhiều h n rau
Or
One, you have a wristwatch of Seiko
Two, you have a Peogeot bicycle
Three, your house is comfortable
Four, you have a family booklet in the capital
Five, your mother died a long time ago
Six, A cemetery is a place your father is going to go
Seven, you are a highly qualified worker
Eight, you can leave your daily job earlier so we can live
together longer
Nine, you have many white decorticated rice
Ten, your meat criterion is higher than vegetable to buy

Conclusion

After ten years in carrying out the subsidy

economic policies, the Vietnamese Communist Party and
the Vietnamese Government made Vietnam become one
of the poorest countries in the world. All Vietnamese
[258]
people, except members of the Vietnamese Communist
Party and their families, had to live in an extremely needy
situation. All personal freedoms were completely limited.
The freedom to die of hunger was the only one to be fully
respected by the Party and the State. Vietnam became the
largest prison in the world that confined more than
80,000,000 prisoners, with more than 3,000,000 evil
jailers who were members of the VCP. The following are
some popular poems that accused, anathematized and
complained about communist leaders:
The first accused three main persons of the Party
and State who made their lives to fall into a miserable
circumstance. They were Premier Dong, General Secretary
Duan and President Chinh.
Ông Đồng, ông Du n ông Chinh
Vì ba ông ấy dân mình lầm than
or
Mr. Dong, Mr. Duan and Mr. Chinh were ruffians
Because of them Vietnamese people were poverty-stricken
The second directly anathematized at the face of
Vietnamese Communist Party:
Dịch heo nối tiếp dịch gà
Bao giờ dịch Đảng cho bà con vui
or
The epidemic of pig succeeds the one of chicken
People will be happy when the Party epidemic happened.

[259]
 From The Diplomatic Note 1958 to
The Secret Chengdu Agreement 1990
In this chapter, the two documents being
mentioned are the Diplomatic Note 1958 of Pham Van
Dong, Prime Minister of the Republic Democratic of
Vietnam (RDV), that was sent to Zhou Enlai, Prime
Minister of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the
Secret Agreements 1990 at the Chengdu Conference
between the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) and the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Both have been
considered by most Vietnamese as contracts by which the
Vietnamese Communist Party has been sold Seas, Islands
and Lands of Vietnam to Communist China.
The Diplomatic Note 1958 of Primer Pham
Van Dong:
On September 4, 1958, the Government of the
People’s Republic of China (PRC) announced the
Declaration of China on China’s Sea. The first paragraph
of the declaration said:
“The breadth of the territorial sea of the
People’s Republic of China shall be twelve nautical miles.
This provision applies to all territories of the People’s
Republic of China including the Chinese mainland and its
coastal islands as well as Taiwan and its surrounding
islands, the Penghu Islands, the Dongsha Islands, the
Xisha Islands (Hoàng Sa) the Zhongsha Islands, the
Nansha Islands (Trường Sa) and all other islands by the
high seas." [12]

12
A full copy of the Declaration is enclosed at the end of this chapter
[260]
 Ten days after the Declaration of the PRC was
announced, Pham Van Dong in the name of the Prime
Minister of the RDV hastily signed and sent a Diplomatic
Note to Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai of the PRC.
Below is a full copy of the Diplomatic Note of Primer
Pham:

In the Diplomatic Note Primer Pham said:

"The Government of the Republic Democratic of
Vietnam recognizes and approves the Declaration of
territorial waters announced on September 4, 1958 by the
Government of the People's Republic of China.

[261]
 The Government of the Republic Democratic of
Vietnam respects this decision and will instruct all
responsible agencies of the State to strictly respect the
territorial sea of twelve nautical miles in all relationships
at sea with the People’s Republic of China."
Soon after sending the Diplomatic Note to China,
several agencies of the RDV began doing some things to
carry out the instructions of Primer Pham.

- In the meeting on May 16, 1956, with the

temporary ambassador, Li Zhimin, at the Chinese
Embassy in Hanoi, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of
the RDV, Ung Van Khiem, stated that: "Based on
Vietnamese documentations and historical records, the
Xisha Islands (Hoàng Sa) and the Nansha Islands (Trường
Sa) belong to the Chinese territory."
- In the same meeting on May 16, the Director
General of the Asian Affairs Department of the
Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Le Loc, also said:
"Historically, the Xisha Islands (Hoàng Sa) and Nansha
Islands (Truong Sa) have belonged to China from the
Song Dynasty (960-1279)."
- On May 9, 1965, when issuing the statement to
protest against the USA government establishing a “war
zone” for US troops in Vietnam, the RDV government
also stated that: "The action of President Johnson of the
USA that determined the whole Vietnam and the
Vietnamese seaboard about 100 nautical miles and the
part of the territorial waters of the Xisha Islands (Hoàng
Sa) of the People's Republic of China as a combat zone
of the US Armed Forces is a threat against the security of
the DRV as well as its neighbors".

[262]
 Vietnam and its Paracel Islands and Spratly Islands

- In the "World Map" published by the

Measuring and Mapping Department of the Vietnamese
Communist Government in May 1972, Paracel Islands
(Hoang Sa) and Spratly Islands (Truong Sa) was written
by Chinese “Xiha” and “Nansha”. This is a semiofficial
confirmation of the RDV government that Hoang Sa and
Truong Sa do not belong to Vietnam but China.

The world map of the RDV before 1975

[263]
 - When referring to the Namsha Islands of the
PRC in the "Geography" of 9th grade published by the
Vietnam Education Publishing House, the author wrote
that: “The arc from the Nansha Islands (Truong Sa)
Hainan Island, Taiwan Island, Penghu Islands, Chosun
Islands ..., these islands create a ‘Great Wall’ to protect
the mainland of China.” When using Nansha Islands to
replace Spratly Islands or Truong Sa, Vietnamese
Communist Authorities clearly insinuated that Truong Sa
did not belong to RDV but to the PRC.

A paragraph in the geography textbook of the 9 th grade

The citations above are undeniable evidences

that Ho and Vietnamese Communist Leaders had
dedicated the Paracel Islands (Hoang Sa) and Spratly
Islands (Truong Sa) of Vietnam to Communist China.
At the time signing and sending of the
Diplomatic Note to Primer Zhou Enlai of the PRC, Pham
Van Dong was Prime Minister, Truong Chinh was General

[264]
Secretary Party, and Ho Chi Minh was Chairman of the
VCP and also the President of the RDV. In a communist
country, all important decisions do not depend on the
Communist Government but the Politburo of the Central
Communist Party. Because of that, before signing the
Diplomatic Note, Primer Pham must have the approval
from the Politburo or at least from Truong Chinh and Ho
Chi Minh. In other words, the decision to confirm the
territorial sea of the PRC was not an individual decision of
Primer Pham Van Dong but the common decision of the
Politburo of the VCP.
The Diplomatic Note was signed and sent out in
1958 but it was restrictedly distributed in the country.
Almost people in the country at the time therefore did not
know it. Until 2014 when the Socialist Republic of
Vietnam (SRV) violently opposed the PRC for moving its
Haiyang Shiyou 981 drilling rig into the territorial waters
of Vietnam. On this occasion, the media of the PRC
announced this Diplomatic Note to demonstrate that the
former RDV or the current SRV had confirmed that the
sea area where the Haiyang Shiyou 981 drilling rig is
positioned belonged China and gagged the Vietnamese
Communist Government.
At that time, people in the country were
exceedingly surprised to know there had been such a
Diplomatic Note. After that, the Diplomatic Note was
considered as a contract of the Vietnamese Communist
Party {VCP) and Vietnamese Communist Government
(VCG) to sell the Paracel Islands and Spratly Islands to
Communist China.

[265]
 Right after that there was a stir over the
Diplomatic Note that made several Vietnamese communist
journalists try so hard to defend this Diplomat Note.
Below are their arguments:
- A diplomatic note is only effective after it is
ratified by Congress. This Diplomatic Note was not yet
ratified by the Vietnamese congress; therefore, it was not
legally effective. This explanation is unreasonable because
ratifying or not ratifying a diplomatic note is completely
dependent on the Constitution of the RDV. The
constitutional law of Vietnamese at the time did not
require a Government Diplomatic Note to become legal
effective after it was ratified by the Congress. In other
words, the Diplomatic Note of Primer Pham Van Dong
signed on September 14, 1958 did not need to be ratified
by the Vietnamese Communist Congress.
- The Diplomatic Note itself was illegal because
the 1954 Geneva Accord had divided Vietnam into two
countries, Communist North or Republic Democratic of
Vietnam (RDV) and Nationalist South or the Republic of
Vietnam (RVN) and the 17th parallel is the frontier of land
and sea territory between RDV and RVN. According to
the Public International Law, the Paracel Islands and
Spratly Islands are located under the 17th parallel so they
do not belong to the RDV but to the RVN. Therefore,
Pham Van Dong, Prime Minister of RDV has no legal
right to recognize or sell these islands to Communist
China. Nobody can give or sell out something that does
not belong to him. This argument is reasonable but it also
indirectly confirms that Chairman Ho and Premier Dong
who assumed the highest positions of the country were
[266]
ignoramuses and did not have enough the knowledge
about the public international law, and also were
scoundrels who stole things of other to sell.
- In the Diplomatic Note, Primer Pham had not
mentioned the names of Paracel Islands (Hoang Sa) and
Spratly Islands (Truong Sa) at all. Because of that, there’s
no reason to say that Pham recognized that the Paracel
Islands and Spratly Islands belonged to the PRC. Perhaps
Primer Pham did not realize that the Xisha and Nansha
Islands that Zou Enlai had written about in his declaration
were the Paracel and Spratly Islands of Vietnam.
This argument could be considered as an
unintentional accusation of Primer Pham who did his job
ignorantly and carelessly. Before signing the Diplomatic
Note to recognizing the declaration of land and sea
territory of the PRC, a next-door neighbor of his country,
he had to study carefully about the content of the
declaration. If Primer Pham did not realize the Xisha and
Nansha Islands in the declaration of Primer Zhou Enlai
insinuated the Paracel Islands and Spratly Islands of
Vietnam but still signed the Diplomatic Note, he would be
appropriate to be accused as a traitor his fatherland.
- The main goal of the Diplomatic Note of
Primer Pham was not to officially recognize the
declaration of land and sea territory of the PRC, but just to
express the goodwill of the RDV in supporting the PRC in
the conflict of the territorial sea at Taiwan Strait at the
time. However, the PRC government had taken advantage
of the goodwill of the RDV government to claim that
Prime Pham had ready recognized the PRC was the owner
of the Paracel Islands or Xisha Islands and Spratly Islands
[267]
or Nansha Islands. This argument indirectly confirmed
that Prime Mister Pham and Chairman Ho Chi Minh of the
RDV were so naïve and stupid that they signed a
document to sell out their islands to China but still thought
that was their goodwill to help the PRC when it fell into a
difficult circumstance. Being Vietnamese, they cannot
forget the teaching of their ancestors: “Bút sa gà chết” or
“What is done cannot be done.”
- When signing and sending the Diplomatic Note
to the PRC, the Vietnamese communist leaders just
wanted to express their deep gratitude to the Communist
Chinese Party (CCP) and Communist Chinese
Government (CCG) for helping them harvest a great
success in the war against French colonialists. If did not
have the support of the CCP and CCG, Ho and his VCP
could not defeat the French colonialists and completely
occupy half of Vietnam from the Nam Quan Pass to the
Ben Hai River in 1954. In other words, Primer Pham and
senior communist leader used seas and islands of their
Fatherland to pay the big debt they borrowed from China
in the past.
- In the war against the American Empire, the
Vietnamese communist leaders clearly knew that their
naval forces alone were not strong enough to defend their
islands in the South China Sea; therefore they thought, the
recognition of Paracel Islands and Spratly Islands
belonging to PRC was a wise way to commission the CCP
and CCG to defend these islands and when the war was
over because of the Communist International Spirit the
PRC will return them to Vietnam. This indicated that how
naïve and blindly trustful the Vietnamese leaders were.
[268]
 According to my opinion all of the arguments
above are only sophistic words to temporarily defend the
Vietnamese communist leaders’ honor and to deceive the
naïve Vietnamese people. The true reason that made the
Vietnamese communist leaders to dedicate these islands to
Communist China at that time originated from the so-
called “Proletarian International Spirit” in which Ho Chi
Minh and Pham Van Dong absolutely and naively
believed that they were able to lead the Vietnamese people
and humanity to the “Proletarian Paradise”, also known as
the “Harmonious World.” In this world, there would be no
frontiers between countries, no discrimination between the
races and no exploitation between men. People’s work
would depend on their abilities and remuneration would
depend on their need. The phrase of “no frontiers
between countries” means in this perfect world there
would be only one nation called the “Proletarian Nation”.
Therefore, it didn’t matter who owned these islands
because at the last these islands and all countries in the
world including Vietnam and China would belong to the
Proletarian Nation or Harmonious World.
Therefore, when transferring the Paracel Islands
and Spratly Islands of Vietnam to Communist China, Ho
and Dong as well as the Vietnamese communist leaders
did not feel they were giving them to Communist China,
but that they were carrying out their noble communist
international duty to destroy the frontiers between
Vietnam and China to pave a way for both countries to
walk together into the Proletarian Paradise or the
Harmonious World.

[269]
 The Secret Agreement 1990 at the Chengdu
Conference:
In the 1990s, a rumor had it that a secret
conference was held by Vietnam and China. Attending the
conference were senior leaders of the Vietnamese
Communist Party (VCP) and the Chinese Communist
Party (CCP). According to western diplomats, the
conference was probably held in Beijing, but Chinese
sources said it was held in Chengdu, the capital of the
Sichuan Province.
The rumor also has it that, in the conference, the
Vietnamese delegation engaged to do its best to solve the
Cambodian War and normalize the relationship between
the two countries and two parties. On the other hand, the
Vietnamese delegation also expressed its willingness to
become an autonomous region of China as Manchu,
Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet. The CCP had welcomed
and approved the proposal of the VCP and agreed to allow
it a period of thirty years (1990-1020) to do necessary
steps to complete its willingness.
It was not easy to verify the rumor as true or
false at the time. However, after 1990 some information
related to the conference was disclosed:
- In 2008 (18 years later), Li Peng, the former
prime minister of the People’s Republic
of China and a key member of the
Chengdu Conference, published a book
“Li Peng’s Foreign Affairs Diary of
Cooperation and Development of
Peace” in which he officially disclosed
some news related to the conference:
1. The secret conference between the
VCP and the CCP was held in Chengdu,
the capital of Sichuan Province, in September 1990. The
[270]
Vietnamese delegation was led by Nguyen Van Linh,
General Secretary of the VCP, and Do Mươi, Prime
Minister of the SRV. The Chinese delegation was headed
by Jiang Zemin, General Secretary of the CCP, and Li
Peng, Prime Minister of the PRC. In the conference, both
sides pledged to do their best to resolve the Cambodian
War and disagreements between the two parties as well as
the two countries. In his book, Li did not mention anything
related to the willingness of the VCP to become an
autonomous region of Communist China but only
indirectly said that after the conference ended, the Sichuan
newspaper circulated the news saying: “The Vietnamese
delegation had expressed its willingness to become an
autonomous region of China like Inner Mongolia, Tibet,
Xinjiang…. The CCP had accepted the VCP’s request and
allowed it a period of 30 years to solve any necessary step
before actually becoming one of autonomous regions of
the Great Chinese Community.”

From right to left of the front line: Hoàng Bich Sơn (Chief of Foreign
Section), Phạm Van Dong (Advisor of the VCP Central Committee),
Nguyen Van Linh (General Secretary of the VCP), Jiang Zemin
(General Secretary of the CCP), Li Peng (Prime Minister of the PRC),
Do Muoi (Prime Minister of RDV), Hong Ha (Member of the Central
Committee), Dinh Nho Liem (First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affair)

[271]
 - On January 24, 2010 (20 years later), the
Morning Press Network of China published the Memoirs
of Zhang Dewei, the Chinese ambassador in Hanoi at the
time. In his memoir, Zhang only disclosed the secret
conference between the two parties, the VCP and CCP and
in the conference both sides were engaged to resolve the
Cambodian War and the disagreements between two
parties to normalize the relationship between their
countries.
- On November 28, 2010, two years after Li
Peng’s book was published, the Wiki leaks organization
announced that it had 251,287 secret cablegrams that were
sent to the US Department of State from 274 diplomatic
agencies belonging to American Departments of State
around the world from 1900 to 2010. One of these
cablegrams related to the Pengdu Conference in 1990. A
part of this cablegram said: “Because of the cause of the
successful construction of communism, the VCP and VCG
proposed the CCP and CCG to resolve the disagreements
between the two parties and two countries. The
Vietnamese side would do its best to cultivate the long
standing and inherent friendship between the two
countries that was built up by the great effort of Chairman
Mao Tse Tung and Chairman Ho Chi Minh in the past.
The Vietnamese side also expressed its willingness to
readily recommend and accepted the Chinese side
approving and allowing Vietnam to become an
autonomous region of China similar to Mongolia, Tibet,
and Guangxi… The Chinese side had agreed and allowed
the VCP a period of 30 years (1990-2030) to solve any
necessary steps before really joining the great family of
China.”
- In the conflict in May 2014 between Vietnam
and China about the Chinese Haiyang Shiyou 981 drilling-
rigs moving into the Vietnamese territorial water, two
Chinese newspapers, Xinhua and Huanqiu, circulated the
[272]
news that: “In the secret Chengdu conference, besides the
request both sides needed to try their best to end the
Cambodian war and normalize the relationship between
two countries, the VCP also expressed its willingness to
become an autonomous region of China as the CCP had
reserved for Manchu, Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet. The
CCP had accepted its request and allowed the VCP a
period of 30 years to carry it out.”
The information above surprised and upset most
Vietnamese people. Therefore, a movement of people rose
up to demand the Vietnamese Communist Authorities to
announce fully and accurately the content of the Chengdu
Conference. However, they did not comply with the
requirement of people but barbarously repressed them.
The more they denied the more Vietnamese believed that
the secret agreement between the VCP and CCP was true.
Most Vietnamese today do not believe what the
Vietnamese communists said but paid attention to what
they did. If the Vietnamese people looked closely at what
the VCP have done from 1990 to today, they would
recognize many things which indicate that the secret
agreements between the VCP and CCP in the Chengdu
Conference are deniable things.
Following are some events that indicate that the
VCP have been carried out what they had secretly engaged
with the CCP at the Chengdu Conference.
- Just a few days after the Chengdu Conference
ended, Mr. Nguyen Co Thach, Foreign Minister of the
Socialist Republic of Vietnam at the time, had to utter a
tragic cry that “A Chinese domination begins.” When
saying this, Nguyen Co Thach certainly knew something
that Nguyen Van Linh and Do Muoi had secretly pledged
with Jiang Zemin and Li Peng in Chengdu.
- On the occasion of visiting Vietnam on
December 20, 2011, the Vice President of People’s
Republic of China, Xi Jinping, was solemnly welcomed by
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the VCP and VCG at Hanoi with the Chinese flag of six
stars. The original Chinese Flag has only five stars. The
large one symbolizes the major ethnic group of China, and
the four small ones symbolize the four minor ethnic
groups of Manchu, Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet.
However, when welcoming Xi Jinping at Hanoi in
December 2011, the VCP had automatically added one
small star into the Chinese Flag. It was exactly not a
technical error, but an intentional one in which the VCP
wanted to discreetly express with Xi Jinping that: “We,
the VCP and the Vietnamese people are ready to
become an autonomous region of the great Chinese
Community.”

Vietnamese children welcome Xi Jinping with

Chinese flag of six starts

- On Vietnam television news on October 14,

2011 at 7:00 PM, reporting the news that, Nguyen Phu
Trong, general secretary of the VCP visited China, the
Chinese flag with six stars was also seen.
[274]
 Vietnam television news on October 14, 2014

- On June 18, 2014, Yang Jiechi, the State

Councilor of the PRC, travelled to Hanoi for a discussion
with Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh of the SRV about
the conflict of water territory between the two countries.
When he returned to China, the Global Time (Huanqiu)
reported that in the meeting, Yang Jiechi said that he had
given Vietnam a chance to rein itself before it is too late
and urged the prodigal son to return home. Yang Jiechi
said these scornful words to the Vietnamese communist
leaders, but they did not have any reaction to Yang Jiechi
and the Chinese government. The reason they resigned
themselves to accept this shamefulness was that they
might have committed with the CCP to become an
autonomous region of China and had already considered
themselves as a prodigal son of the CCP.
- On December 30, 1999 in Hanoi, the Vietnam-
China Land Border Treaty was signed by the SRV and the
PRC. If compared the border in this Treaty with the one in
the two conventions that were signed between France (on
behalf Nguyen Dynasty) and Qing Dynasty in 1887 and
1895, people would realize that the SRV had conceded to

[275]
the PRC about 900 square kilometer of land along the
border between Vietnam and China.
- On December 25, 2000, in Beijing, the SRV
and PRC signed the so-called Gulf of Tokin Treaty to
define the boundaries of territorial waters. If compared
this treaty with the French-Qing Conventions of 1887 and
1895, people would find out that the SRV had additionally
ceded 1/3 (42,000 square kilometers) of the territorial
waters of Tonkin Gulf to the PRC.
- The local and central governments of Vietnam
had signed several contracts that allowed Chinese to rent
watersheds with a long-term period of 50 years. The total
rent-land areas are 305,354 square kilometers.
- The central Government allowed the Chinese to
employ a large scale plan to exploit bauxite ore in plateau
despite several dissuasions from many intellectuals and
dedicated patriots. The main reasons of the dissuasions
were that the exploitation of bauxite ore would cause
incalculable damage to the environment and living
conditions of the Highlands and the Southeast regions of
Vietnam. However, the Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung
at that time had responded to these dissuasions: “The
bauxite ore exploitation in Highlands is the great policy of
the Party and State. Therefore, it cannot be stopped.”
- The VCP and VCG had viciously oppressed all
peaceful protests against the Chinese invasion of land and
water territories of Vietnam and forbade all Vietnamese
books and newspapers to refer to any information relating
to the Chinese invasion of Vietnam in 1979 that brutally
massacred Vietnamese soldiers and civilians. They also
ordered to destroy to the ground of all monuments and
tombstones of Vietnamese martyrs of this war.
All of the events above indicate that the VCP and
VCG had carried out step by step their secret agreements
with the CCP and CCG of the Chengdo Conference in

[276]
1990 to emerge Vietnam into the Great Chinese
Community.
Finally, an important question that needs to be
mentioned here is that: Why did the Vietnamese
communist leaders have to beseech the Chinese
communist leaders to accept Vietnam as an autonomous
region of China?
After the Soviet Union and Eastern European
communist countries collapsed, the Vietnamese
communist leaders were naturally unlearned and
conservative. For that reason, they did not realize that
Communism was only a utopian doctrine and completely
outdated; therefore, they tried their best to maintain it. On
the other hand, they knew very clearly that, if they did not
cooperate with the CCP, they would be unable to maintain
the communist regime in Vietnam and it would be quickly
collapsed as the communist countries in Eastern Europe
did and they themselves would be killed by the
exasperations of Vietnamese people. In order to save
themselves as well as their party, they had to beseech the
CCP to allow them doing any necessary step to transform
Vietnam into an autonomous region of the great China.

It is rather to lose our country than to lose our party

Not long after the Secret Chengdu Conference,

Nguyen Van Linh, the General Secretary of the VCP and

[277]
 one of the main authors of the Secret Chengdu Agreement
had confirmed this thing by stating that: “I clearly know
that, if we stand against the Communist China, we would
lose our country, but I believe that it is rather to lose our
country than to lose our Party.”
That is the reason why Nguyen Van Linh, Do
Muoi and Phạm Van Dong had to go to Chengdu by their
knees to implore Jiang Zemin and Li Peng for accepting
Vietnam to become an autonomous region of the great
China.
Below is a full copy of the Declaration of the PRC on
September4, 1958:

[278]
 The most serious crime of
Ho and his Communist Party
All of the serious crimes of Ho and the
Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) I mentioned in the
chapters above are the ones I was a victim of or a witness
to, even though they include almost the serious ones they
made during the modern history of Vietnam. However, I
don’t think one of them could be considered as the most
serious one. According to my opinion, the most serious
crime of Ho and the VCP is the one in which they
destroyed to ashes of the Noble Traditional Moral
Philosophy of the Vietnamese People. The following are
conclusive proofs to prove my opinion:
Five hundred years before Christ, Lao Tzu (604
BC- 531 BC) a prominent Chinese philosopher, said: “A
physician who made a mistake would kill one man only. A
political leader who made a mistake would harm a whole
nation. A cultural leader who committed a mistake would
destroy the entirety of a country.”
More than one thousand year after Christ, Wang
Yangming (1472-1528) a Chinese philosopher, politician
and educationist of the Ming Dynasty, also said: “A
physician who made an error would kill one man only; a
geomancer who committed a mistake would kill a whole
family; a political leader who made an error would kill a
whole country; a cultural leader who committed a mistake
would kill many generations of the country.”
According to the words of the two Chinese
philosophers above, and closely looking at the political
regime of Vietnam at the time, one can realize that it is the
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totalitarian regime and a single-party government.
Therefore, the senior Vietnamese communist leaders were
not only political leaders but also cultural ones. For that
reason, when they made or committed any mistake that not
only harmed the whole country of Vietnam, but also
destroyed to the original point of the old traditional moral
philosophy of the Vietnamese people.
According to historical documents, the old
traditional moral principles of the Vietnamese people were
derived from Buddhism and Confucianism.
In several Buddhist Prayer Books, Buddha taught
that: “Among the precious things, merit of birth and care
of parents is the best one. Among the good things, the
piety is the best one. Among the evil things, impiety was
the evilest one.”
On the other hand, the old traditional morality of
the Vietnamese people is also deeply and largely
influenced by the Five Constant Virtues of Confucianism.
The founder of Confucianism was Confucius (551 B.C. –
479 B.C.) and it was often considered a system of social
and ethical philosophy rather than a religion. The five
constant virtues mean the five lifestyles that everyone
needs to respect while living in the society. They insist of
Jen or Benevolence, Li or Propriety, Yi or Righteousness,
Chih or Wisdom and Te or Fidelity.
Jen (nhân) or Benevolence is considered as the
altruism, kindness, charity and magnanimity of humanity.
It requires a man to kindly treat himself and others with
respect. Living in a society where if you don’t respect
yourself, no one else will respect you. The basic meaning
of benevolence is expressed by a Chinese idiom: “What
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you want others to do for you do it for others” or “What
you do not want others to do to you do not do it to others.”
Li (lễ) or Propriety is the basic moral principle
of human relationships or rules of the proper actions. Li or
propriety is also considered as the general principles or
laws between people who live in the same society. A
society that does not have general principles or laws is the
disordered one or the animal one. Therefore, a civilized
society required the presence of the moral principles or
laws. Everyone who lives in the same society is required
to respect Li or Propriety. In other words the general
principles or laws are indispensable to a civilized society.
Yi (nghĩa) or Righteousness involves thinking
and acting from one’s own viewpoint. Yi demands rational
action, self-restraint to resist temptation and the fortitude
to do the right thing. The main meaning of Yi is to
preserve integrity. A righteous man is a person who lives
not only for himself but also for everybody in the world.
Chih (trí) or Wisdom: Wisdom is the innate
knowledge by which one can judge between right and
wrong, and differentiate between good and evil and the
ability to follow and do the right thing. A person who does
not have wisdom would not do anything meaningful for
himself as well as for his family or his country.
Te (Tín) or Fidelity is the same meaning of
honesty, prestige and consistency. It means that the deeds
of a person must match his words. In other words, the
words of a person must be parallel with his deeds. When
promising something to others, one has to keep his word.

[281]
 Because of the influences of Buddhist doctrines
in which the filial piety is to be heightened, the
Vietnamese children were taught by their ancestors that:
Công cha như núi Thái S n
Nghĩa mẹ như nước trong nguồn chảy ra
Một lòng thờ mẹ kính cha
Cho trọn ch hiếu mới là đạo con
Or
T he father’s care merit is as great as the Thai Mountain [13]
The mother’s birth credit is as much as water of an ocean
Therefore you have to wholeheartedly adore your parents
To complete your piteous duty and fit your parents’ children
A Vietnamese folk-song taught that: “Ăn quả
nhớ kẻ trồng cây” or “When eating a fruit, you need to
think of the man who planted the tree”. It means that when
living in the world, even you are unhappy but you need to
think about your parents, because they are the source of
your life. Therefore, children have to put their filial duty
on top of everything. When their parents become old and
weak, they must give them not only physical care but also
emotional and spiritual ones too.
In the Tale of Kiều - an epic poem of
Vietnamese people, written by the great poet Nguyễn Du
(1766– 1820) and widely regarded as the most significant
work of Vietnamese literature, when mentioning the hard
circumstance in which the principal character Thúy Kiều
has to make a choice between her love and her filial duty,
the author wrote about the way she thought and decided as
follows:

13
A greatest mountain in China
[282]
 “Duyên hội ngộ đức cù lao
Bên tình bên hiếu bên nào nặng h n
Để lời thệ hải minh s n
Làm con trước phải đền n sinh thành
Quyết tình rồi mới hạ tình
Rẽ ra để thiếp bán mình chuộc cha”
Or
Between the love and the filial duty
Which one heavier than the other is?
After thinking she put her love aside
A child first put the debts of birth and care in her mind.
Then she said everyone please get out of my way
I had decided to sell myself for redeeming my father today
On the contrary, in the Land Reform Revolution
(LRR) that was carried out in the North from 1953 to
1956, the filial duty of children towards their parents was
considered as a meaningless thing by Ho and his
communist comrades. Therefore, they encouraged, incited,
and seduced children of landlords to relentlessly insult,
ruthlessly beat, brutally denounce and cruelly accuse their
parents. The following are some specific examples about
the encouragements of Ho and his men to Vietnamese
children to betray their parents.
The first one is my case in which I was one of
their victims to be convinced to betray my parents by a
land reform cadre. In late 1954, when I was still a minor,
the LRR campaign was carrying out in my village of Ban
Nguyen, Lam Thao district and Phu Tho province. At the
time I had just completed the last grade of a junior high
school and my parents were classified into the landlord
class. On a day in December, because I was a child of a
[283]
landlord family I was “invited” to the office of the Local
Farmer Association at 8:00pm where a land reform cadre
gave me a cool welcome. After explaining something
about the LRR policy, he began convincing me that:
“The real person who brought you up and
supported you to finish primary school and junior high
school were not your parents, but poor famers of this
village. The reason is that your parents had never taken a
hoe or a plough and worked on the rice-field; therefore,
they could not produce any cereals to bring you up and
help you go to school. This is the important thing you need
to know to place the interests of the poor farmers of this
village on the top the interests of your parents. In other
words, you now have to struggle against your parents by
denouncing all of their crimes that they caused to poor
farmers and report to the LRR cadres where your parents
hid their gold and diamond.”
After explaining and encouraging me, he gave
me a pen with some papers and allowed me to sit down on
a chair next to a table to think, and write down all of my
parents’ crimes and places where my parents were hiding
their hidden wealth. Before leaving me alone, he tried to
persuade me again by saying that, “You need to remember
that Uncle Ho and Party (VCP) only punish those who
oppose them but welcome those who cooperate with Party
and Government.”
After midnight he came back and saw no any
word on the papers that he had given me previously. He
then angrily asked me the reason why. I impurbably
answered him that, “I thought and tried my best to find out
their crimes and their hidden wealth, but I completely
[284]
failed. I am sorry about that, Sir.” Probably, he wanted to
go to sleep and he therefore told me: “I allow you to go
home to think and write down all of crimes your parents
caused to peasants and any place where your parents hid
their assets and submit it to me tomorrow.”
The second one is the case that was reported by
the famous writer named Tran Dinh in his book named
“Đèn Cù”. During the time the LRR was carried out in the
4th zone, Chu Van Bien was a senior member of the VCP
and was also the head of a land reform company of the 4th
zone. In other words, Bien was the highest commander of
the Land Reform Campaign of the zone. His native village
also belonged to the zone. In order to prove himself as a
loyal communist member who always put the interests of
the VCP over his family and to make a brilliant example
for his inferior cadres as well as for the current and future
Vietnamese generations, Bien had cruelly denounced his
mother. He ordered his land reform cadres to arrest and to
tie up his mother and then forced her to report to him in
person. The following is something Bien directly accused
his mother of:
“You and I are not mother and son but the
enemies of each other from two different classes. I have
duty to eliminate you and yet you try so hard to fight
against me...”
After hearing the uncultured words of her
uneducated son, the affectionate mother was so upset that
she could not say any word. She then tried to bite her
tongue to kill herself on the post but failed. A few days
after, she was successful in ending her life by jumping into
a well. Because of this “honorable” achievement, Bien
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was appointed to assume several superior positions of the
VCP and the Vietnamese Government.
The third one is the case in which a daughter
denounced her father as an evil landlord who caused so
many miseries to her as well as to poor farmers. The poet
Nguyen Chi Thien summarized the content of the reluctant
confession of her father as following:
“Được nghe bà kể khổ
Con thấy đời con thật đáng chết
Con đã đi bóc lột để nuôi bà
Con bây giờ không dám nhận là cha
Con thành phần địa chủ thối tha
Trước nhân dân trước Đảng trước bà
Xin thành kh n cúi đầu chịu tội”
Or
After hearing what you reported of your miseries
I realized that I deserve to be killed immediately
I brought you up by exploiting poor farmers
I dare not admit I am your natural father
Even though you are my true daughter
I am now an evil landowner
In front of you, the people and the party
I bow my head and sincerely admit my crimes entirely”

Because of the influence of the five constant

virtues of Confucianism, the Vietnamese were taught by
their ancestors that, “Thư ng người như thể thư ng thân”
or “You love others as much as you love yourselves,” and:
“Bầu i thư ng lấy bí cùng
Tuy rằng khác giống nhưng chung một dàn”
Or
[286]
 “Gourd loves Pumpkin even we have different family names
But we are living together in the same frame”
And:
“Nhiễu điều phủ lấy giá gư ng
Người trong một nước phải thư ng nhau cùng”
Or
“A mirror stand is covered with red-crepe solemnly
Everybody in a country must love one another sincerely”
In the Tale of Luc Van Tien, an epic poem of
Vietnamese people written by the blind poet Nguyen Dinh
Chieu (1822-1888), in the book introduction, the author
had heightened the filial duty as follows:
Trai thời trung hiếu làm đầu
Gái thời tiết hạnh là câu sửa minh
Or
“The first duty of a man is loyalty and piety
Maintaining the virtues is the first duty of a lady”
In “Bình Ngô Đại Cáo” or “Great
Proclamation upon the Victor over Wu”, Nguyễn Trãi
(1380-1442), a well-known writer and politician, wrote:
“Đem đại nghĩa để thắng hung tàn
Lấy chí nhân để thay cường đạo”
Or
“Using great righteousness defeats tyranny
Taking benevolence and wisdom replaces violence”
Because of using benevolence and wisdom to
replace violence, right after defeating the Ming troops in
1427, Nguyen Trai and his men received hundreds of
thousands of letters to denounce people who associated or
worked with the Ming troops during their ten years
occupying Vietnam. However, he ordered to publicly set
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fire to all these letters. In other words there was no
Vietnamese at the time to be accused of and punished for
their crimes to cooperate and work with the Ming troops.
On the contrary, after the victory over the Republic of
Vietnam in April 1975, the VCP forced over 500,000
military officers, police officers and high-ranking officials
of the RVN into concentrated reeducation camps. Most of
their families were exiled into economic zones.
The filial piety of the Buddhism’s doctrine and
the five cardinal virtues of Confucianism had not only
influenced the daily lifestyle of the Vietnamese people,
but also the old criminal law of Vietnam. In the criminal
law of the Previous Le Dynasty (980-1009), also known as
the Hồng Đức Law, the filial impiety was considered as a
serious crime and anyone who committed it could be
sentenced to death.
The “Te” or “Fidelity” is the basic traditional
moral principles of Vietnamese people. It is also
considered as the key moral principle for political leaders
of a republic and democracy country. When running for a
public position, the candidates have to respect fidelity and
keep their promises. If not, he would never be elected
again.
However, in Vietnam, Ho and his communist
leaders did not need to respect this moral principle
because all of the chief or heads of any government
agency from locality to centrality are not to be elected by
people but to be appointed by the VCP. Because of that,
all of government officials did not need to keep their
fidelity to the Vietnamese people. In other words, the Te
or Fidelity becomes meaningless in Vietnam today. For
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that reason, the VCP and VCG could act freely as they
wanted although their actions could damage the interests
of the Vietnamese people but bring interests to the VCP.
The political power that the Vietnamese Communist
Leaders have in their hands is not the one to be entrusted
to them by a free general election of all people in the
country but the one they seize impudently from the
Vietnamese people. Therefore, Ho and his communist men
are true daylight robbers of the country.
In Vietnam today, the Vietnamese communists
are not faithful servants but fiend master of the
Vietnamese people. For that reason, during the time of
services, they always put the interests of the Communist
Party over of the interest of the Vietnamese people. In
other words, the Vietnamese Communist Government was
not the one of the people, by the people and for the people,
but the one of the VCP, by the VCP and for the VCP.

People’s police only know the Party and themselves

A typical example that expresses the

characteristic of all government officials is the slogan
being hung in the front of the Ministry of Public Security
at No. 44 Yet Kieu, Hanoi since the 80th anniversary
occasion of the founding of the VCP (February 3, 1930-
2010).

[289]
 Another slogan also encouraged people paying
taxes to build and defend the VCP

Paying taxes for building and protecting the Party

Under the communist regime, deceitfulness was

considered the national policy to govern the country. The
Vietnamese people were always deceived by Ho and his
communist men. In order to survive, people in the country
also have to find out anyway not only to deceive against the
communist authorities but also to one another.
In 2006, when being the Vice President of the
RSV’s National Assembly, lawyer Nguyen Quang Thuan
stated, “Today, people have to lie to each other for
survival. Telling lies for a long time would become a habit
and a habit being used for a long time would become a
normal morality of our people and our Proletarian
Revolution ...”
In the book “Đi Tìm Cái Tôi Đã Mất” or
“Looking for the Self that was already lost”, the writer
Nguyễn Khải, also known as a congressman, wrote,
[290]
 “Communists tell lies rapidly and impudently; they tell
lies shamelessly and fearlessly. Listeners did not need to
ask again the things they said are true or untrue.”
In a poem named “Bài Thơ Tháng Tám” or the
“August Poem” the well-known poet Bùi Minh Quốc
wrote, after the General Uprising on August 19, 1945 the
VCP caused so many bad things for the Vietnamese
people because of that:
Quay mặt vào đâu cũng phải ghìm c n mửa
Cả một thời đểu cáng đã lên ngôi
Or
Everywhere I look, I have to restrain my vomiting
The whole time of caddishness of my country is flourishing
Through the facts mentioned above, an important
question that needs to be asked here is, “Where did Ho and
his communist men lead Vietnam and the Vietnamese
people to?”
Probably, the right answer is: “Because of their
narrow-mindedness and illiterateness, Ho and his
communist leaders led Vietnam to become one of the
poorest countries in the world and the Vietnamese people
to become deceitful, devious, shameless, and selfish.
Whenever they have a chance to go abroad they are ready
to do several bad things that make Vietnamese be
disdained by the people in the world.”
After 1975, there was a folk-song which
describes that under the leadership of the VCP, Vietnam
became a beggarly country of the world:
Ngày xưa (Đảng) chống Mỹ chống Tây
Ngày nay (Đảng) chống gậy ăn mày áo c m
Or:
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 In the olden days, the Party fought against the
French and Americans
But leans against a stick to beg for clothes and foods
in the present
14
The chart [ ] below proves that Vietnam until
2015 is still one of the poorest countries in the world.
Below is the Vietnam GPD per capita US$ from 1976 to
2010

The following are some illustrations to prove

that under the leadership of Ho and the VCP, most
Vietnamese people at home have lost almost their noble
traditional morality:

14
UNdata - record view - per capita GDP at current prices - US
dollars
[292]
 On December 4, 2001 at the sharp turning point
at Tam Hiệp, Biên Hòa, hundreds of beer boxes were
dropped from a heavy truck and were looted by hundreds of
people.

On September 12, 2013 at the front of the

People’s Committee Office of Ba Dinh District, the
Holland Embassy in Hanoi was given an anniversary for
the day when the diplomatic relationship between the two
countries, Vietnam and Holland, was established. On this
occasion 3,000 raincoats were given out to heighten the
consciousness of climate change. When the Embassy’s
officials prepared to hand each attendant a raincoat,
hundreds of attendants overflowed to the platform to
scramble for raincoats. One of the attendants had proudly
boasted that: “I have already gotten five raincoats, and
now I come back to get some more.”

[293]
A Sushi Buffet Restaurant located on Doan Tran Nghiep
Street in Hanoi announced, on the day it was scheduled to
open, 24 October 2013, a free sushi meal was offered to
customers. For that reason, thousands of Vietnamese jostled
each other to have a standing place at the restaurant’s front
door several hours ahead the time it was scheduled to open.

In early December 2013, the Quan Ngua Sport

Center in Hanoi announced, it would offer a free mug of
beer for each customer; therefore, thousands of
Vietnamese including children, got together at the center
just for a free mug of beer.
The following are some other illustrations to
prove that several Vietnamese people who had
[294]
opportunities to go abroad such as overseas students,
workers and travelers did many bad things that made the
Vietnamese become the kind of people to be disdained in
the world:

Above is a notice written in Vietnamese and

hung in a buffet in Thailand: “Please get just enough food
for you to eat. If do not finish the food that you get, you
will be punished from 200 to 500 baths.”

Above is a warning sign written in Vietnamese at

a shop in Saitama City of Japan to warn Vietnamese
tourists that:
 Stealing is a criminal offense. If committed
you will be punished for 10 years in prison.
 If you were found out to commit it, we will
inform immediately to police
 Our cameras and patrolmen are working
[295]
 Above is a warning sign written in Vietnamese at
a supermarket in Taiwan that says: “Recently some
Vietnamese were found to steal goods in supermarkets.
Cameras are set up in our market. All of the images
recorded by our cameras would be sent to Police. In
Taiwan stealing offenses will be punished for at least three
months in prison.”

Above is an illustration of four of the five

Vietnamese arrested in Thailand for shoplifting.
According to a Thai news website of the Nation
in March 2015, police in Chiang Mai City of Thailand had
arrested five Vietnamese, three women and two men, for
allegedly stealing brand-name clothes worth hundreds of
thousands of baht or thousands of dollars.

[296]
 An illustration of a Vietnamese overseas student
being arrested for shoplifting in Japan on Nihon TV on
April 2013

Above is a warning in Vietnamese attached on

the wall of a restaurant in Singapore saying: “Please do
not waste food. You will be punished $5 for every 100g of
food wasted.”

[297]
 A warning sign written in Vietnamese at a school in
Japan where Several Vietnamese overseas students
attending says: “Absolutely do not steal umbrellas and
shoes of others.”

Above is an illustration showing the meeting in

Hanoi set to resolve the conflict of land between the
People’s Committee of Hanoi and the United Catholic
Church on September 20, 2008, Joseph Ngô Quang Kiệt,
who was appointed Archbishop of Hanoi in 2005, said
straightly to Vietnamese Communist Authorities that: “I
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went abroad many times and I felt very shameful when
holding a Vietnamese Passport in hand because
everywhere I came, I was examined carefully. That made
me so sad, I hope someday in the future, I can go abroad
as a Japanese man who hands a Japanese Passport and
goes through any international checking point without any
examination and interrogation.”
Ho Chi Minh who was the president of the
Republic Democratic of Vietnam from 1945 to 1969 and
was honored by the Vietnamese Communists Party as the
old father of the nation, also showed many bad examples
for the Vietnamese people. Among them the worst
example was the one in which Ho allowed his disciples to
rape and kill a woman, Nong Thi Xuan (1932-1957), who
had cohabited with him from 1955 to 1957 and had with
him an illegitimate child, Nguyen Tat Trung (1956). This
was a barbarous and inhumane act of Ho. This story was
reported in details by Vu Thu Hien in his book “Đêm Giữa
Ban Ngày” or “Night in the Broad Daylight” (page 605-
608).

Ho and his illegitimate wife Nong Thi Xuan

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 In summary, according to Lao Tzu and Yang
Yangming and the real situation of the Vietnamese
society at the time, Ho Chi Minh and his communist
leaders, were not only the political mistaken leaders but
also the cultural mistaken leaders. Therefore, they had
harmed not only the whole country of Vietnam but also
harmed so many generations of the country. If this
Communist Regime were collapsed in the near future and
were to be replaced by a Democratic Regime, the new one
would have to spend at least several decades to restore the
social orders and at least a century to restore the noble and
traditional morality of Vietnamese people.

[300]
 Epilogue

As mentioning in the Preface, I have no

intention to report all of the serious crimes of Ho Chi
Minh and the Vietnamese Communist Party against the
Vietnamese people in my book, but only the ones that I
was a victim of or a witness to. However, it could be
said they include almost the serious crimes that Ho and
his Communist Party made during the modern history of
Vietnam.
In the Preface, I also mention the main reason
that made me write this book in English is that I really
worry about the present and future young Vietnamese
generations who are living abroad and cannot
proficiently read Vietnamese would face a lot of
difficulties when they want to learn about the true
background of their ancestors who had to escape from
Vietnam to other countries in the Free World for
freedom and the real history of their original country.
According to my modest knowledge, most
newspapers and books writing in English about the
modern Vietnamese history were written by authors who
were neither victims nor witnesses of Ho and the VCP.
Therefore, their views are not honest and their
judgments are not obvious.
On the other hand, most newspapers and books
written in English and published in Vietnam are
completely unreliable, because they were written by the
victors or hack writers who were ready to “invent” or
“manufacture” new historic versions in which Ho and
his men are heightened and embroidered as an
impeccable part of the Vietnamese history and to freely

[301]
smear or dirty their opponents as the worst part of the
country. In these versions of course, there’s no place for
losers to speak up and uphold or defend their failure.
In the near future, the losers or the former
soldiers, cadres and officials of the Republic of Vietnam
who are the victims or witnesses of Ho and his men’s
crimes would be reached the end of their life and their
voices would be extinguished forever. Up to that time,
the young Vietnamese generations at home as well as
abroad would not hear the voices of the exiled
opposition groups anymore and would face a lot
difficulties to learn about the true history of their
ancestors and their native country, because all of the
newspapers and books they can find to read are the ones
written by the descendents of the Vietnamese
communists.
When reading these books, the young
Vietnamese generations could wrongly understand that
their ancestors, the former military officers and civilian
officials of the Republic of Vietnam, were traitors to
their country and clung to the American Empire for
leftovers and Ho and his communist comrades are the
national heroes and the salvations of the country.
Reviewing carefully at what Ho and the VCP
did in the past to predict what they will do in the future,
one cannot but concluded that: If the VCP and the
communist regime do not collapse in the near future,
Vietnam would become not only a poor and
underdeveloped country in the world but also become a
dependent territory of the Communist China.
If looked closely at the unification between
East and West Germany in 1990 and the enthusiastic
welcome of the President Kim Jong Un and the Northern
Korean people to the South Korean President Moon Jae-
in on September 18, 2018 at Pyongyang for the future
unification of Korean Peninsula, would the Vietnamese
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communist leaders have enough the sense of shame to
recognize that their attack and occupation the RVN in
1975 to reunify Vietnam is not only a great historical
mistake but also a serious crime against the Vietnamese
People?
In order to end my book, I would like to tell an
undeniable truth that the Vietnamese people today
cannot expect in a beautiful day the senior leaders of the
Vietnamese Communist Party would voluntarily give up
their totalitarian and a-single-party regime to accept the
democratic and multiparty regime. Boris Nikolayevich
Yeltsin (1931-2007) was a Soviet and Russian politician
and the first President of the Russian Federation, serving
from 1991 to 1999 said: “Communists are incurable,
they must be eradicated”. In other words, the
Vietnamese people today have the only way to liberate
themselves from the slave yoke of the Vietnamese
Communist Party by rising up and overthrowing it into
the scrap heap of history.
By the way I would like to use my poem
“Whom I hate the most in Vietnam” to remind all
Vietnamese in the country that the VCP is the most
dangerous enemy of our people and quickly rise up to
destroy it to ashes:
A young Vietnamese asked me
“You are older than eighty
Whom did you hate the most in your homeland?”
For me this is a very hard question
After a few minutes of thinking
I told him the true thing
The persons I hate the most in my country
Are leaders of the Vietnamese Communist Party
First and foremost is Ho Chi Minh
Next are Duan, Chinh, Dong, Phieu, and Linh…
In their hands are hammers and sickles
On their bodies are full of blood, look terrible
[303]
By whom Vietnamese’s bones heaped up like a mountain
By whom Vietnamese’s bloods accumulated like an ocean
By whom Vietnamese have lived in poorest conditions
By whom Vietnamese have lived in immoral situations
Vietnamese all over the country!
Wake up and rise up quickly!
To destroy the Vietnamese Communist Party
Regain the independence and save our country
If the Vietnamese Communist Party continuously existed
The Vietnamese people would be eternally perished

Finally I would like to tell my readers that

English is not my mother language. For that reason
when writing this book I cannot avoid committing some
mistakes in spelling, grammar and style, please forgive
me about that.
Tham Huy Vu
Fall 2018

[304]
 Book Order
The Serious CRIMES of HO CHI MINH and
The VIETNAMESE COMMUNIST PARTY
Against The VIETNAMESE PEOPLE
By Tham Huy Vu
Tham Huy Vu is also the author of
HƯ N NI M ĐA v N I NH
Published in 2010
A DANGEROUS JOURNEY FROM VIETNAM
TO AMERICA FOR FREEDOM
Published in 2013
QUÊ TÔI N I BUỒN CÒN ĐÓ
Published in 2018
To order or get more information about the books
Please contact us in English or Vietnamese at
E-mail: newhomeland@hotmail.com
Or huyvu1525@hotmail.com
Phone: 517-394-6426
Thuc Huy Vu
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