Statement by the embassy of the
Socialist Republic of Vietnam
Those who leave
(The 'Problem of
Vietnamese refugees')
Thousands of people are leaving Viet Nam seeking to settle somewhere
else.
Who are they?
Why are they leaving?
How to settle the problem?
It is clear that a problem of this kind, owing to its
human and political implications, cannot be treated in a simplistic way by
means of a few humanitarian tirades sprinkled with political slogans on human
rights. It can only be grasped within the present context of Viet Nam, which is facing multiple
problems left by several decades of war and more than a century of
colonisation; it can only be solved by taking into account certain exigencies
and restraints, some related to universally accepted principles, others
connected with concrete historical and social circumstances.
1. THE HISTORICAL
CONTEXT
How did Viet Nam
appear after the historic date of April 30 1975 when Saigon and the whole of South Viet Nam
were completely ' liberated — a liberation which put an end to 30 years of
continuous warfare?
For the first lime since 1945 — in fact since 1939 the
country had peace — a peace which was only relative, as everyone knows now. For
long years every Vietnamese had lived under the constant threat of bombs or
shells falling on his house, his garden, his children, of foreign soldiers or
local mercenaries coming to kill, burn and rape. At last, he can now live in
peace and devote himself to peaceful labour. For the first time since 1859,
after 116 years of French, then American colonisation, the country was at last
free and independent. Free to build a new life, to exploit its natural
resources for the sake of its own people, not just a few multinational
companies; free to live its own way, not according to norms and patterns imposed by
foreign conquerors. Last but not least, for the first time in 21 years, since
1954, North and South were reunited.
Another' nightmare had-also ended. For 21 years,
American imperialism, having at its disposal colossal technical and financial
means together with sophisticated mass media and other means of propaganda and
ideological poisoning, and created enormous military and police machine which
had turned many Vietnamese into torturers of their own compatriots. Worse
still, within a given family, father and son might find themselves in opposite
camps, and a man might be the murderer or torturer of his own brother. Now,
those tragedies which had happened every day in South Viet Nam under American occupation,
ceased to occur.
Peace, independence, reunification, liberation —
perhaps one has to be a Vietnamese to feel the whole depth of the feelings that
animated our people in those historic days. Millions of people were at last
able to meet again their parents, husbands or wives, children friends, colleagues.
The people as a whole, even those who had not taken part in the struggle, were
proud to be members of a heroic and indomitable nation.
Man, however, does not feed on sentiments alone. After
those years of war, the country was but an immense expanse of ruin and misery.
Let us quote a few figures, already known to all but which some are trying to
erase from the memory of men.
Fourteen million tons of bombs and shells dropped on
the country — 22 times the tonnage used in Korea, not counting napalm and
phosphorus. About 25 million bomb craters: in many regions not a single roof
was left standing, not a splint. Here is an example: in Nghia Binn province,
2.5 million coconut-palms had been destroyed by defoliants, bombs and shells;
on liberation day, there remained (inly half a million palms in the whole
province. You can imagine what had become of villages and people under those
coconut-palms.
Jf one adds up the areas of cultivated land hit by the
bombs and especially by the sprayings of defoliants, account being taken of
successive sprayings, one finds the figure of 10 million hectares. Five million
hectares of forestland were affected; large expanses of forest were burnt by
napalm following defoliation. Hillsides denuded of vegetation by defoliants
were brutally eroded by tropical rains and as a result several million hectares
of land were lost, in many cases defini-tively. About a million head of cattle
— buffaloes and oxen — were slaughtered: the American command, repeating a
practice initiated by French officers, massacred these animals with a view to
driving the rural population to famine.
In the South alone, 9,000 hamlets, out of a total of
15,000, were damaged or destroyed. In the North, material damage was not less.
The American general Curtis Lemay recommended that every industrial
installation, every factory be destroyed and that this destruction be continued
until no two bricks were left that were still joined together. All industrial
establishments in the North, and all rail and road bridges were repeatedly
bombed. All cities and towns were damaged, and some, like Vinh, Hong Gai, Dong
Hoi, and Phu Ly, entirely destroyed; two-thirds of rural communes were affected;
1,600 water conservancy works, which irrigated or drained hundreds of thousands
of hectares, were wrecked. So were 1,000 stretches of dyke which protected the
country from river Headings and prevented the intrusion of sea water into rice
fields. Sixty-eight out of 70 state farms were hit, as well as nearly 3,000
schools and colleges, 350 hospitals, and 1,500 village infirmaries-maternity
homes. The great leper hospital at Quynh Lap (2,500 beds) was razed to the
ground.
In February-March 1979, Chinese aggression upon the
six provinces along our northern border caused considerable damage; four towns
seriously damage, 320 rural communes affected, the Lao Cai Apatite mine wholly
dismantled, and 904 schools, 691 day nurseries, 430 hospitals and health
stations and 42 logging-camps destroyed. Fifteen per cent of the cattle were
killed or taken away. Let us note that in both North and South, American
ordnance continues to maim peopf e. The tonnage of unexploded American
ammunition left in our country is estimated by American experts at between
150,000 and 300,000 tons. Every day, children at play or peasants at work in
the fields are wounded or killed by a mine or some anti-personnel device. In
three years, there were 3,700 victims in Quang Nam province alone. Material damage is not the only sequel of wars. Even
more serious are the human losses and the social and moral upheavals. On liberation
day, hundreds of thousands of people werefreedfrom jails — sick and disabled.
In the South alone, war invalids numbered more than 360,000. The number of
civilian victims for the period from 1965 to 1973, when the American troops
were directly involved, is estimated at 1.5 million. Again for the South alone,
the war left 1 million widows, 800,000 orphans and children abandoned by their
American,
Korean, Filipino soldier fathers. On top of it all,
American strategy spawned a large number of 'uprooted' people — the key problem
of post-war years.
Unable to conquer rural and hill-forest areas, the
American command had recourse to the policy of forced urbanisation'. Repeated
bombings of villages and chemical sprayings of crops ended up driving 10
million rural people (figure supplied by American services) from their villages
and fields. They flocked into the towns, cities and regrouping centres under
American control.
What was to become of those uprooted country people
who overnight found themselves stranded in towns and cities where there were
no industries to provide them with jobs? When the American war began in 1960, South Viet Nam,
like other under-developed countries, had 15 per cent of its population living
in towns and the remaining 85 per cent in the countryside. When the war ended,
only 35 per cent of the population were living in the rural areas, the remaining
65 per cent were concentrated in overcrowded cities and towns.
The American strategy aimed at killing two birds with
one stone: on the one hand, to weaken the Vietnamese by 'draining away the
water', i.e. the people; on the other, to turn those same people into mercenaries
of Washington. For those men who roamed the pavements of the towns had no other
recourse than to enlist in Thieu's army and police. In this way 1,200,000 men
were pressed into that army and police commanded by more than 50,000 officers,
well-trained, indoctrinated and supervised by tens of thousands of American
advisers. If one adds to these numbers the civil servants, political agents,
and leaders of various anti-communist parties and organisations, one will find
that at least 1.5 million people were living from salaries paid by the American
budget — not to mention the taxes paid by the local population.
To serve that war machine, a whole commercial network
— especially to import the luxury goods consumed by the Americans and the
privileged strata and a 'tertiary' set-up: banks, insurance companies,
coffee-houses, bars, hotels, brothels, drug traffickers — mushroomed. On
liberation day, 300,000 Saigon households were registered as 'traders' at
least twice the number of factory workers. American military aid averaged 1.3
billion dollars a year, economic aid 600-800 million dollars; not to mention
the on-the-spot expenditures of the American expeditionary corps and services,
the CIA for instance, which maintained at least 30,000
'pacification agents', not to mention, too, aid from other capitalist powers:
France, Japan, Great Britain, West Germany. All that money — 2 billion dollars
a year on average — allowed several million people to live without participating
in any productive work. One understands why there were in South Viet Nam on the
day of liberation:
— More than 3 million unemployed people;
— Several hundred thousand prostitutes and drug
addicts;
— Several dozen thousand gangsters and other criminals,
whose number later increased with the release of the former Thieu police,
paratroops and rangers;
— One million tubercular people;
— Several hundred thousand people affected by venereal
diseases;
— Four million illiterate people.
The former regime had wholly neglected social
medicine; medical doctors cared solely for a rich clientele; endemic tropical
diseases continued on the rampage, there being cases of plague and cholera in
Saigon itself, malaria was wreaking havoc. In a word, one had to rebuild not
only a country which had been ruined materially but also a society which had
been completely perverted and turned upside down, in which millions of people
had forgotten how to perform honest labour and had lost ail sense of national
and moral values. A society which had to be' remade; people who had to be
reintegrated into the social community.
In French colonial times, the population of Saigon was
500,000. By liberation day in 1975 it had increased to 3.5 million. The city
took 80 per cent of American aid; it was the hub of the former regime's
administrative, military, police and commercial apparatus and also the main
provider of its fleshpots. American aid in food — 300,000-700,000 tons each
year — had been specially reserved for feeding its population. Immediately
after liberation, American aid and that supplied by other western powers were
cut off. Chinese aid to the North was reduced then completely interrupted.
Right at the start of its immense work of national reconstruction, Viet Nam
lost three-quarters of the assistance given to North and South in the war
years.
Neither the Vietnamese people nor their leaders
allowed themselves to be disheartened by the scope of the difficulties
encountered. An overall line was quickly defined:
— Quick reunification election of a national assembly
and a government for the whole country;
— Reconversion of the socio-economic structures of the
South with a view to turning colonial andneo-colonial structures into national
ones, and a gradual advance to socialism;
— Large-scale economic and social measures aimed at
giving work to millions of unemployed people, rehabilitating hundreds of
thousands of prostitutes, drug-addicts and delinquents, ensuring decent living
and education to nearly 1 million orphans, quickly organising a health system
capable of stemming endemic and social diseases, eradicating illiteracy in the
whole of the South while developing the school system in the whole country;
— Strenuous efforts to develop science and technology,
and a national and progressive culture while integrating traditions into this
speedy modernisation of society and culture;
— Harmonious integration of about 60 diverse ethnic
groups — ethnic minorities making up about 20 per cent of the population.
Let us give a broad outline of the achievements in
those fields: quick repair of communication lines between North and South,
which had been interrupted for 21 years; illiteracy eradicated in the South (in
the North the problem had been solved 20 years before); educational development
which made it possible for 15 million children and young people to go to school
in 1979 (total population: 50 million) with help from the North, the South has
set up a health system which reaches down to the village and set about eradicating
endemic and social diseases. Remarkable results have been obtained in the
medical and social rehabilitation of prostitutes and drug-addicts thanks to the
atmcsphere of social renovation prevailing after liberation and the development
of cadres engaged in this work. By helping clear large tracts of land of mines,
the people's army has made in possible for many villages had to be
rehabilitated and new ones to be built. The urban authorities, by setting up
handicraft workshops and getting factories to operate again in spite of
material shortages, have given jobs to hundreds of thousands of unemployed
people. The people actively participated in the general and local elections, to
the national assembly and the administrative committees of villages, town
quarters, and towns and cities. By putting under crops land which had been
devastated by war, building irrigation works, and reclaiming virgin land, about
1 million more hectares of arable land have been gained.
The champions of 'human rights' in the West, from
Jimmy Carter to the correspondents of Le Monde, are apt to forget those
results which have given back to millions of Vietnamese their human dignity flouted by a century of French colonisation and 20
years of American intervention. Human rights in a former colony are first of
all the right to national independence; the right to choose a line of
development which does not sacrifice its natural and human resources to the
greed of multinational companies, and that of a minority of landowners,
capitalists and agents of foreign powers; the right to education, health care,
work.
Let us add that wartime destructions are not the only
obstacles to the development of Viet Nam. Sine 1975 two more factors have
contributed to aggravating the situation:
— Natural calamities of unprecedented scope; and
— Peking's aggressive policy (in fact,
that of the Washington-Peking axis).
In 1977 a great drought affected the whole country for
several months resulting in a deficit of more than a million tons of rice for
that year's crop. The year 1978 saw a series of exceptionally violent floods
and typhoons, which hit areas with an aggregate population of 6 million. Three
million tons of rice were lost, not to mention the washed-away irrigation works
and bridges, the submerged orchards and drowned cattle, and the losses of
people's household possessions and personal belongings.
But the major obstacle to the progress of
reconstruction has been the aggressive policy pursued by Peking. Here are the
main episodes:
Following Kissinger's visit in 1971 and the Shanghai
Communique in 1972, Peking pledges itself to support Washington's international
policy, with a view to bolstering its anti-Soviet position, emerging as the
world's third superpower, retrieving Taiwan, and also gaining substantial
technical and financial assistance. This about-face of Chinese international
policy had manifested itself in Bangladesh, Chile, Iran . . . Starting in 1971,
constant pressure was brought to bear on Viet Nam to compel its people to
forsake all attempts to liberate the South, and moves were initiated to provoke
a 'cultural revolution' in the country. In 1974, Peking resorted to armed
aggression to occupy the Hoang Sa (Paracel) islands, which were then held by Saigon
forces. This military operation was only possible with American assent.
In 1975, the Chinese government was not at all pleased
to see Viet Nam win total liberation. But it would be difficult under the
circumstances to launch a direct attack on Viet Nam; no Chinese soldier would
have obeyed such orders. So Peking had Vietnam's South-
Western flank attacked by Pol Pot's Kampuchean forces,
which were equipped by China and commanded by Chinese advisers. Immediately
after the liberation of Saigon, Viet Nam had to face a new war. A war which
compelled its government to evacuate all villages located along the
1,000-kilometres-long border with Kampuchea, thus losing a not negligible area
of cultivable land. The atrocities perpetrated by Pol Pot forces also compelled
300,000 Khmer and Chinese refugees to seek shelter in Viet Nam — a burden for
the Vietnamese government.
The war by proxy made by Peking on Viet Nam by means
of the Pol Pot forces was soon followed by a series of manoeuvres aimed at
sowing trouble within Vietnam itself through the agency of the numerous Hoa
community (people of Chinese origin) and through military pressure exerted on
the China-Viet Nam frontier, ending in armed aggression on 17 February this
year.
Economic or social problems were not the only ones, A
very preoccupying problem was that of security, in other words, that of
counter-revolution and civil war. Gerald Ford had announced in 1975 that there
would be a blood-bath. Why should he have committed the honour of a President
of thellnited States of America by issuing such an affirmation if he had no
good reason to do so?
The rapid collapse of the Saigon regime was the result
not of the extermination of the pro-American armed and political forces, but of
their disbandment. After liberation there still remained, fully alive, 1.2
million soldiers and police together with more than 50,000 army officers and as
'many political agents. In his book Decent Interval, Frank Sneepp, head
of the Analysis Department of the CIA in Saigon from 1972 to 1975, tells us
that the CIA had left in Saigon, besides several thousand of its direct
operatives, about 30,000 agents of Operation Phoenix, i.e. people specially
trained for the assassination of revolutionary militants.
So Washington did not consider the loss of Saigon to
be definitive, the more so since its collusion with Peking dates back several
years already. Revolutionary Viet Nam, facing as it did enormous economic and
social difficulties, would not be able to resist a two fold offensive —
internal subversion combined with external aggression. Immediately after 30
April 1975, the counter-revolutionary networks installed by Washington started
operating. Civilian and military cadres were murdered, factories and store
houses set afire
In those conditions, what was to be done about the 1.5
million soldiers, police, and civil servants of the former
regime? Pol Pot had devised a simple solution which consisted in the outright
liquidation of all those who had served the Lon Nol regime. It was clear that
die Vietnamese government could not resort to this kind of action. All those
soldiers, police, and civil servants who had had no important political
responsibilities were quickly returned to their families, and the great
majority of them were able to vote at the general elections of April 1976. But
the army officers, the 'pacification' agents, the holders of important
political posts, those who had ordered massacres, bombings, wholesale
destruction of villages, torture of prisoners, could not be released
immediately without creating the risk of a civil war. Those men, operating
within a still unstable society, would not fail to fan up troubles. Those
counter-revolutionary army officers were provided with shelter and financial
assistance by Hoa traders of Cho Lon. The subversive network created by the
Americans quickly co-ordinated its acdon with that set up by Peking with a view
to sabotaging the Vietnamese revolutionary movement.
So the revolutionary government decided to keep those
men in order to 're-educate' them. What does this mean? Kept in camps far from
towns, those army officers and other responsible agents of the former regime
were to participate in political discussions and take a look back over their
past while careful investigation was conducted on what they had done under
American occupation. The point was to assess whether so-and-so, if released,
would join a counterrevolutionary organisation.
One realises that such an undertaking could be complex
and would take time, that errors could be made and abuses committed.
That there should still be about 20,000 such men who
remain obstinately counter-revolutionary, out of the 1.5 million who worked for
the Americans, is a situation about which the revolutionary administration can
do nothing, except wait until the time comes when, helped by the evolution of
events, those men will eventually understand that socialist revolution is there
to stay in Viet Nam and that it is utterly useless for them to oppose it. The
concerted actions of Washington and Peking are certainly not designed to help
those counter-revolutionary diehards change their minds.
And so, on three occasions, in 1954, 1975, then
1978-1979, imperialist and reactionary forces have availed themselves of
difficult circumstances to provoke an exodus of refugees in Viet Nam. The aims
have remained the same: to stir up and exacerbate serious social and economic difficulties in revolutionary Viet Nam;
to weaken it from within, thus preparing conditions for renewed armed aggression.
Aggression and the threat of aggression is a new factor urging people to flee.
At present, the Chinese aggression of February this year, then the threat
uttered by Deng Xiaoping to give Viet Nam a new 'lesson' and Chinese troop
concentration along the Sino-Vietnamese border are pushing the Hoa into a new
exodus.
Economic, political, social difficulties: for those
who are not inspired by the will to rebuild their ravaged country, the only way
out is to go away and try to find elsewhere a more comfortable life.
THOSE WHO LEAVE
The first population exodus of these long years of war
took place in 1954. Under the terms of the Geneva Agreements the French
expeditionary corps was regrouped south of the 17th parallel. About 800,000
people followed them south: soldiers and police, civil servants, businessmen,
but mostly catholics (more than half a million) who had been living in villages
put under ecclesiastical authority
That influx of hundreds of thousands of catholics from
the North, conducted by aggressive priests, gave the South Vietnamese catholic
church a strongly reactionary character. For a long time, the church was to be
the main supporter of the Saigon administration and the most fervent advocate
of American intervention. Diem and Thieu, the two presidents of the Republic,
many cabinet mininsters, army officers, deputies, senators, were catholics; the
church was a real armature for the regime, a violently anti-communist church
that even refused to follow the resolutions of the Second Vatican Council.
After the signing of the Paris Accord of 1973 and
following the withdrawal of American troops, the American services,
anticipating the defeat of the Thieu regime, worked out a plan for the
evacuation of several hundred thousand people. This new exodus was to serve as
a pretext for a political campaign to discredit the Vietnamese revolutionary
government and would provide personnel for opposition movements in exile, or
even an emigre government.
The rapid collapse of the Thieu regime and the
lightening victory of the revolutionary forces left the American services
little time. About 150,000 people were taken away helter-skelter in the last
weeks by sea or air. Among that first wave of refugees there were: — Many generals
and other army officers who had perpetrated often
unforgivable crimes: Nguyen Cao Ky, the air
'vice-marshall' who had sworn to defend the country to his last breath against
the 'communists', was among the first to fly to the United States. —i- The
influential members of former pro-American Governments, first of all Thieu,
followed by many cabinet ministers, deputies, high-ranking officials, leaders
of political parties, politico-religious sects, rabid anti-communists.
— Rich merchants and industrialists who
had been able to buy then-places on the departing planes from American
officials in charge of organising the exodus;
— The staffs of
many American services, including intelligence agents and torturers as well as
cooks and maidservants taken to the States by their masters.
— People who should have no reason to
flee but who were seized by panic, on account of the terrifying rumours spread
by American psycho war services:
Those with money, gold, foreign currencies, diamonds
could settle in the United States or France to set up businesses; technicians
were recruited by the administrations or private firms of those countries; the
others had to resign themselves to doing hard work or living from subsidies. In
the United States in particular, the local populations did not give a warm
welcome to those immigrants who, not knowing the language of the host country
and lacking professional qualification, had to lead a hard life. The American
administration, like the reactionary Western organisations, has been
recruiting among those refugees agents who specialise in slander campaigns
against the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam.
Some of the refugees, former officers and mercenaries
of the Saigon army, have been receiving training in special camps. They are to
be reintroduced into the three countries of Indochina in order to man the
subversive networks there. Trained agents can come back quite easily to
Kampuchea and Laos overland; in the case of Laos they just have to cross the Mekong
river; and to Viet Nam by sea.
It would be utterly naive to believe that after their
defeat, the American services have lost all interest in Indochia and will allow
Kampuchea, Laos and especially Viet Nam to follow their destinies. The many counter-revolutionary
networks set up by the Americans in Vietnam continue to keep in touch with
foreign countries, mostly by -sea. The South Vietnamese coast, nearly 2,000
kilometres long, cannot be entirely patrolled by the Vietnamese navy.
This is the way things happen: a rich merchant wants
to leave Viet Nam, against payment of a handsome amount of cash — 2,000-3,000
US dollars on an average —- a clandestine organisation will take him and his
family to a coastal port where they will hide in one of the hundreds of fishing
boats that put out to sea every day. At sea, they are picked up by ships which
will take them to neighbouring countries. For an 'intellectual', especially a
technician with good qualifications, the journey will be free of charge, for
the point is to perform a 'brain drain' to the detriment of Viet Nam and
simultaneously raise a political hullabaloo.
Let us point out that those with relatives living
abroad, especially in France, and who submit applications to this effect, are
authorised by the government to leave the country legally in order to settle
abroad. From 1975 to 1978, there was thus a regular outflow, of limited scope,
of emigres, both legal and illegal. It posed no serious problem either to Viet
Nam or to the host countries. In 1978, a new element was to give the problem
unprecedented gravity: the Hoa.
This is the designation given to people of Chinese
descent living in Viet Nam and other countries of Southeast Asia: Thailand,
Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, about 1.5 million of them live in Viet
Nam, with two major concentrations, one in provinces bordering on China, the
other in Cho Lon, a separate part of Ho Chi Minh City. The presence of Hoa
people in Viet Nam is by no means recent, for the past 20 centuries, each time
a particularly disastrous natural calamity, or a change in the political scene,
happened in China many Chinese would leave their country to seek refuge in Viet
Nam. The Vietnamese authorities would grant them permission to establish separate
villages or town quarters. There they lived together, speaking the Chinese
language going to work in other villages and quarters, mingling with
Vietnamese folk, and would finally become Vietnamese. A large number of
present-day Vietnamese are thus of Chinese descent, and the normal historical
process was the gradual integration of immigrants into the Vietnamese national
community. There never was any discrimination against the Hoa, who were called
by the friendly and familiar appellation of 'Chu Khach' (uncle guest, uncle
foreigner).
— In the 17th century there was an exodus of partisans
of the Ming dynasty following its overthrow by the Manchus who founded the
Ching dynasty. Those Ming partisans were authorised by the Vietnamese
administration to settle in the Saigon are and in the
Western part of the Mekong delta. Side by side with
the Vietnamese they reclaimed virgin land in Nam Bo and built the commercial
port of Saigon. Their descendants were totally integrated into Vietnamese
society.
— In the 19th century China was shaken by big peasant
revolts, the Tai Ping movement in particular (18 50-1864). The failures of
those insurrections and their savage repression forced large numbers of
peasants to flee China. All along the latter half of the 19th century and the
first half of the 20th, there were great upheavals in China: disintegration of
the Ching empire, revolution of 1911, internecine struggle among 'warlords',
anti-Japanese war, civil war between nationalists and communists. This gave
rise to many waves of immigrants who were especially attracted by Saigon — Cho
Lon, then in full development.
French colonisation, begun in 1859, brought about an
important change in the economic and political status of the Hoa and iterrupted
the historical process of their gradual integration into the Vietnamese
national community. Following the classical method of conquerors, divide and
rule, the French turned the Hoa colony in Viet Nam into a separate community.
They used Hoa traders to collect rice in the villages with a view to export,
and to retail industrial goods imported from France. Thus the profits drawn
from that two-way trade were shared between French firms and Hoa merchants. A
Hoa comprador bourgeoisie came into existence which, acting in concert with the
French colonial administration, stemmed the development of a Vietnamese
bourgeoisie. Solidarity between Hoa and Vietnamese workers was impeded by the
special status accorded the former by the French, a status superior to that
granted to the 'natives'.
American intervention, accompanied by an enormous
inflow of dollars and goods, was a period of great prosperity of the Hoa
bourgeoisie. It held the practical monopoly — at least 80 per cent — of all
important commercial, industrial, and banking businesses in South Viet Nam.
Many of its members became business 'Kings', reigning over such domains as
scrap iron, cement sodium glutamate, barbed wire . . . Cabinet ministers and
army generals allied themselves with Hoa comprador bourgeois in order to get
rich.
Liberation from the American neo-colonialist system
completely upset the living conditions of the Hoa businessmen. No more US
dollars, no more US goods, no more hold on foreign trade. The stocks of goods
were quickly distributed to innumerable small shop-keepers and peddlers who took advantage of rhe
scarcity of commodities and set the prices skyrocketing. An ubiquitous network
of rumour-mongers in the immense city of Saigon-Cho Lon would at intervals create
panics and provoke a rush on such or such commodity. In this way fat profits
were reaped. With the money thus collected, I he big Hoa bourgeoisie and its
agents went to the countryside where they bought up as much as possible of the
supply of rice, meat, fish and vegetables, which would be resold to the urban
population at exorbitant prices.
This situation could not of course last for ever.
State stores and people's cooperatives were gradually organised and they
narrowed down the field of activity of the traffickers. In March 1978, the big
trading firms, whether owned by Hoa or Viet people, were ordered to close. The
stocks of goods were purchased by the state and the big traders had to devote
their capital to productive activities: handicrafts, agricultural or fishing
undertakings . . . It is to be noted that this measure affected Viet as well as
Hoa traders, but Peking nonetheless claimed it to be a discriminatory and
xenophobic step aimed at the Chinese. How strange to see a government styling
itself as a socialist one protesting against the suppression of commercial
capitalism in another country!
Peking's campaign against Viet Nam concerning the Hoa
question in fact started long before. As early as the last months of 1977,
Peking agents, acting under the direct control of the Chinese embassy in Hanoi,
were telling the Hoa community that Peking would soon make war against Viet
Nam: that in these conditions the Vietnamese would certainly start massacring
the Chinese; that the Hoa would be well-advised to leave Viet Nam as soon as
possible and go back to China was only a few dozen kilometres away, and so many
Hoa living close to the frontier opted for leaving.
When they arrived at the frontier, the Chinese
authorities did not allow them to take normal passages for crossing, thus
compelling them to ford streams and travel along jungle tracks: Chinese
camera-ment were on hand to film poignant scenes of exodus which helped the
Peking propaganda machine to present the Vietnamese people to Chinese and world
opinion as an ungrateful people who, forgetful of the great assistance granted
by China, were now persecuting and expelling Chinese residents.
In 1978, about 160,000 Hoa people left Viet Nam, and
more in February-March 1979. For, once back in China, large numbers of Hoa were given training and formed into special units
specialising in reconnaissance, commando, and sabotage operations.
The precipitate departure of Hoa people threw the
economy of some provinces into utter confusion. This economic dislocation was
to become one of the targets of Peking, specially in Ho Chi Minh city where
lived particularly large number of Hoa traders and workers. Clandestine
Peking's subversive networks urged the Hoa population to engage in economic
sabotage. The Chinese invasion of February-March 1979 and the subversive
activities of on-the-spot Peking agents put the Hoa in Viet Nam in a
particularly distressing situation; many decided to leave the country in order
to avoid having to face agonising choices. Hence the massive wave of departures
in 1979.
The impasse in the negotiations between die Vietnamese
and Chinese governments and the bellicose declarations of Deng Xiaoping with
regard to Viet Nam have given rise to great anguish among the Hoa community,
the problem of leaving the country assumes special gravity. So long as Peking's
warlike policy continues, it is to be expected that the exodus will go on.
POLITICAL PROBLEM,
HUMANITARIAN PROBLEM
In the outflow of people leaving Viet Nam it is thus
possible to make a distinction between those who are doing so for economic
reasons and the Hoa, whose departure is based on much more complex factors.
These departures give rise to two kinds of problems.
— Political
problems: who is responsible for this human tragedy? What is at stake
politically?
— Humanitarian problems: How to alleviate the
sufferings of people reduced to leaving a conntry where they have been living
for long years?
One need not be a learned scholar or a shrewd
politician to see that the deterioration of the living conditions of people in
South Viet Nam is not wanted by die revolutionary administration. The
Vietnamese are not the only people in the world to recall the responsibility of
the men who had sent their troops to Viet Nam: die Washington leaders, who are
at present among those shouting the loudest at Viet Nam.
If the American government, and its allies, had
contributed to the reconstruction of Viet Nam, this would certainly have spared
many South Vietnamese the necessity of leaving dieir country. On 1st February
1973, the dien president of the United States, Richard Nixon, sent to Prime
Minister Priam Van Dong the following message:
The President wishes to inform the Democratic Republic
of Viet Nam of the principles which will govern the United States
'participation in th post war reconstruction of North Viet Nam. As indicated in
article 21 of the Agreement on ending the war and restoring peace in Viet Nam
signed in Paris on Jan. 27, 1973, the United States undertakes this
participation in accordance with its traditional policies. These principles are
as follows:
1 The
government of die United Sates will contribute to postwar reconstruction in
North Viet Nam without any political conditions.
2 Preliminary
United States studies radicate that the appropriate programmes for the United
States' contribution to postwar reconstruction will fall in the range of 3.25
billion dollars of grant aid over five years. Other forms of aid will be agreed
upon between the two parties.
Thus the American Government can use no pretext to
evade the fulfilment of that written and formal pledge. And yet, for the past
six years, Washington has not disbursed one single dollar for a country that
American weapons had terribly ravaged.
Political obligation, moral obligation: any
self-respecting American will think of the problem in these terms, the more so
since the United States is the country which can most effectively help both in
the reconstruction of Viet Nam and in providing the emigres with a decent
livelihood.
Responsibility for the refugees thus should not fall
on the countries of Southeast Asia, as is now the case, but on the United
States in the first place.
As for the Hoa living in Viet Nam, who has driven them
to the present tragic situation? As early as 1955-1957, an agreement was
reached between the Vietnamese and Chinese Parties and Governments under the
terms of which the Hoa would henceforth fall under Vietnamese jurisdiction and
would be gradually integrated into the Vietnamese society. The Vietnamese
audiorities did all mey could to implement this agreement.
It is indeed strange that Peking should strive its
utmost to denounce Viet Nam for persecuting the Hoa while keeping its mouth
tightly shut when Pol Pot was massacring the half a million Hoa who were living
in Kampuchea.
The two main responsible parties, the USA and China,
having refused to shoulder their polticat and moral obligations, the
considerable burden constituted by the refugees has fallen on the ASEAN countries.
It is only legitimate that these countries should protest and ask to be
relieved of this responsibility. (This is, however, no justification for
inhumane measures).
If the Vietnamese regime were a ferocious one, comparable
for instance to that imposed by the Shah of Iran on his people, how could one
then explain the fact that the entire people rallied like one man behind
their government and Communist Party against 600,000 troops sent by Peking? Why
is it that the people, to whom the government had distributed arms in
abundance, did not take advantage of the occasion to liberate themselves?
Could the Vietnamese Government find any advantage,
economic or political, in this question of refugees? We can say this clearly
and distinctly: The Vietnamese Government compels no one to leave the country;
on the other hand it does not forcibly retain anyone who wishes to go and
settle elsewhere. The outflow of refugees, among them doctors and engineers,
disorganises the economy and disturbs social order. To think that the
Vietnamese Government is forcing people to leave is to believe it masochistic.
The Vietnamese Government only wants certain
principles to be observed:
— Those who leave should do so legally, after
performing all necessary administrative formalities;
— Clandestine departures, organised en masse with the
complicity of national and international reactionary forces, affect the
security of the country, disorganise
its economy, and infringe national
sovereignty; such departures are therefore prohibited.
There may be cadres who have availed themselves of the
situtation to get their palms greased, but this is not government policy. Let
us stress that while a number of Vietnamese cadres have allowed themselves to
be corrupted, no senior cadre has ever been involved in such affairs for in
Viet Nam no cabinet minister or army general keeps accounts in foreign banks or
is connected with major foreign companies (Lockheed for instance of CF.
Watergate).
The major political fact in this question is the vast
and-Vietnamese campaign launched throughout the world by the mass media of Peking
and the West in a well-orchestrated manner.
This campaign is no novelty. It has indeed started in
Washington where the American leaders, unable to use Vietnam's tribulations to
erase from people's minds the immense responsibilities of their government and
stubbornly refusing to honour their aid pledge, seek to give a good conscience
to the American people. Jimmy Carter has found the method: human rights. Viet
Nam, the victim of American barbarity, will thus find itself in the dock while
the USA will smartly join the ranks of the defenders of law and justice.
There have been former friends of Viet Nam who have lent a hand to this
legerdemain trick; some in good faith and without being aware that they are
being-manipulated; others knowing^. The mass media have immediately supported
the operation. On 27 December 1976, iheLosAngeks Times ran a big
headline: 'No human rights, no aid!'.
From the USA the campaign has spread to Europe. Now,
the Western and Pekingese press, radio and television are in a frenzy over the
question of refugees. The American and European Governments are seeking to put
the problem in tragic light and isolate Viet Nam from its Southeast Asian
neighbours. All this concerted action has given rise to an atmosphere of cold
war vis-a-vis Viet Nam.
This cold war may lead to a shooting war for world
opinion is being conditioned for a passive acceptance of a new aggression upon
Viet Nam. In the eyes of imperialist forces and the Peking leaders, this
country is guilty of at least three 'crimes'.
— That of being the third-world country which
stubbornly refuses to be integrated into the world economic system set up by
the multinational companies;
— That of being
a socialist country; Viet Nam is considered the vulnerable link of the
socialist system at present;
— That of being the major obstacle to Chinese
expansion into Southeast Aia (in fact it has played this role repeatedly in
the course of history).
It is no accident that while the campaign is being
feverishly conducted, American and French military missions have made long
stays in China to make a study of weapons to be supplied to the Chinese army
and the strategy and tactics to be recommended to it. Although the failure of
their invasion in February-March 1979 has seriously shaken the Peking rulers,
their aggressiveness has not been damped down.
The same Western and Pekingese mass media that shed
tears over the Vietnamese refugees are hushing up the fate of Palestinians
forced into exile and have let the millions of victims of the 'great cultural
revolution' sink into oblivion. Human rights are not their true concern. All
this hullaballoo should not cause men of goodwill to forget that there is a
human problem, a tragic one in certain respects, that should be solved and for
which quick and appropriate solutions should be found. For several categories
are to be observed among the refugees:
— The great
majority have left Viet Nam for economic reasons, unable to bear the privations
and having failed to find occupations to their liking. Among them are not only big traders
and rich traffickers but also mere employees — bartenders for instance — whose
trades have dropped out of use and who could not muster the courage to go and
reclaim new land;
— Some are former war criminals or are now members of
counterrevolutionary networks who feel they are about to be discovered;
— In the case of the intellectuals, there are various
factors which combine in varying degrees. All have experienced a serious drop
intheir standard of living; when a medical doctor who used to travel in a car
and live in an air-conditioned villa becomes a cadre in a public hospital, his
salary is barely one-tenth of his former income. To this is added the
difficulty he feels to adapt himself to the new society, to the constraint of a
revolutionary society which is, moreover, facing innumerable hindrances. It is
with a heavy heart that those intellectuals resign themselves to leaving a
country which, at bottom, they would like to serve.
Whatever category the refugees may belong to and
whatever reason may be behind their departure from Viet Nam, the Vietnamese Government
and the other governments concerned, together with the international community,
must coordinate their action in order to resolve the problem.
The Vietnamese Government has agreed with the office
of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (U.N.H.C.R.) that die
question be resolved on the basis of a seven-point accord which provides for
the following modalities:
— Ah" those wishing to leave shall perform the
necessary administrative formalities with the Vietnamese authorities;
— The Vietnamese Government shall hand over to the
U.N.H.C.R. the list of would-be emigres so that the latter may approach potential
recieving countries;
— The U.N.H.C.R. shall organise the journeys of those
who will have obtained the consent of receiving countries.
All those who through personal channels have obtained
the necessary visas from certain governments — diis is the case of people with
children or relatives living in France, Canada, Japan, etc. — can leave the
country through the normal ways. As we said above, illegal departures, which
may affect the security, sovereignty and economic stability of the country
cannot be tolerated. Those who are standing trial before courts of law or who
are holders of important economic and administrative responsibilities cannot
leave. Obviously those who have left can return to Viet Nam only with the formal
and individual authorisation of the Vietnamese Government. One should not
forget that the Chinese Government which drove the Hoa into a massive exodus to
China in 1978 is now demanding that the Vietnamese Government agree to the
return of that mass of refugees who had left Viet Nam of their own free will.
Such a massive return of those Hoa will give rise to innumerable economic and
political difficulties.
The Government of rich countries, the USA hi
particular, should give assistance to the countires of Southeast Asia on which
the burden of the refugees, especially the Hoa, has fallen. To date the Governments
of some of the richest countries have only picked technicians and intellectuals
from the mass of refugees, abandoning the rest to the care of the ASEAN
countries.
The Vietnamese people, fully engaged in healing the
wounds of long years of war, fervently wish that this painful problem be
resolved in the quickest and most humane way possible. Those who leave will
remain for them brothers, friends, compatriots.
We earnestly call on people of goodwill throughout the
world to
— Actively help the emigres to obtain decent living
conditions in the receiving countries;
— Demand that the American and Chinese Governments
fulfil their duty vis-a-vis people whom their warlike policies have uprooted
and driven into exodus;
— Be on their guard against political exploitation of
the problem with a view to preparing for war.
For its part, Viet Nam is resolved to cooperate with
all international organisations to settle this problem in the most humane way
possible.
(From a statement released in Hanoi on
July 18, 1979)
