> Whose problem? How is it a problem relevant to anyone on lbo? Do you
> have a solution? Should anyone here have a solution? This is inane.
>
> Carrol
There was a unified resistance to the S. Vietnamese regimes, so cutting off aid which the McGovern-Hatfield amendments did, led in a few yrs. the the Liberation of April 30th, '75. Which both Nixon and Hayden agreed on would be the consequence. (Which was far more a conventional military victory than one by the NLF which had been sidelined after Tet which, was not a military victory for the NLF.)
These Proposals by the PRG, my how well they were implemented by Hanoi after the Liberation!
Repression in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam: Executions and Population Relocation http://www.jim.com/repression.htm
Peace Proposal of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Viet Nam, July 1, 1971 2. Regarding the questions of power in South Viet Nam.
The U.S. Government must really respect the South Viet Nam people's right to self-determination, put an end to its interference in the internal affairs of South Viet Nam, cease backing the bellicose group headed by Nguyen Van Thieu at present in office in Saigon, and stop all maneuvers, including tricks on elections, aimed at maintaining the puppet Nguyen Van Thieu.
The political, social and religious forces in South Viet Nam aspiring to peace and national concord will use various means to form in Saigon a new administration favoring peace, independence, neutrality and democracy. The Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Viet Nam will immediately enter into talks with the administration in order to settle the following questions:
A) To form a broad three-segment government of national concord that will assume its functions during the period between the restoration of peace and the holding of general elections and organize general election in South Viet Nam. A cease-fire will be observed between the South Viet Nam People's Liberation Armed Forces and the armed forces of the Saigon Administration as soon as a government of national concord is formed.
B) To take concrete measures with the required guarantees so as to prohibit all acts of terror, reprisal, and discrimination against persons having collaborated with one or the other party, to ensure every democratic liberty to the South Viet Nam people, to release all persons jailed for political reasons, to dissolve all concentration camps and to liquidate all forms of constraint and coercion so as to permit the people to return to their native places in complete freedom and to freely engage in their occupations.
C) To see that the people's living conditions are stabilized and gradually improve, to create conditions allowing everyone to contribute his talents and efforts to heal the war wounds and rebuild the country.
D)To agree on measures to be taken to ensure the holding of genuinely free, democratic and fair general elections in South Viet Nam
(For the record of the political behavior of the North towards the NLF and PRG after Liberation see, "Cruel April, " by O. Todd, a French anti-war journalist and Vietnamese NLF official, Doan van Tai's memoirs.)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,175-2459437,00.html
Internet battlefield pits dissidents against the State
>From Richard Lloyd Parry in Ho Chi Minh City
IF NGUYEN DAN QUE had any doubts about the danger of the internet, they were dispelled the night that he began his last long spell in captivity. It was a Monday evening, and Dr Nguyen, a veteran opponent of Vietnam's communist Government, was quietly working in his local cyber-café.
The plainclothes security police had severed the telephone line at his home, so he depended on the café to read the news and exchange e-mails with Vietnamese dissidents at home and abroad.
"I was surfing the internet when somebody grabbed me with an arm, choking my throat," he recalls. The police dragged Dr Que away from his screen, and into jail. It would be two years before he was released for the crime of "abusing democratic rights" — posting on the internet statements denouncing Vietnam's suppression of the media.
"The internet is a battlefield of the Government and dissidents," he said at home in Ho Chi Minh City, as government spies with cameras hovered outside. "It's a dangerous weapon of repression in the hands of the Government. But we have to exploit this tool, even if it means going to prison."
This weekend, as President Bush and the leaders of China, Japan, Russia and 17 other countries fly in for the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) Forum, Vietnam has a rare opportunity to present an attractive modern face to the outside world. Behind the smiles, however, ugly realities are concealed.
The Paris-based Vietnam Committee on Human Rights, says that homes of dissidents in Hanoi have been blockaded by police and signs posted in English ordering foreigners to stay away. Ho Chi Minh City, or Saigon, as it was called until 1975, is such a lively city that it is difficult to imagine it as a place of repression. A visit to Dr Que reveals the reality.
Two plainclothes policemen stand by the gate and film me as I arrive, and my taxi is followed by a relay of young men on motorbikes when I leave. Inside, Dr Que, 64, draws the curtains and gives me an envelope containing an account of his career as a dissident.
"Take this now," he says. "If they come in after you, we will not have time to talk." Since 1978, he has spent 20 of his 64 years in jail, and has suffered torture, beatings and grievous medical neglect.
For much of the rest of the time he has lived, as he does now, in a state of virtual house arrest — his phones bugged and frequently disconnected, his movements followed, his friends and family harassed.
Politically, his demands are the bare democratic minimum — a free press, freedom of speech and assembly, and an end to the 31-year old monopoly of the Vietnamese Communist Party. Until recently his was a lonely and isolated voice.
Dr Que insists that it is the harshness of the repression that has silenced the majority — but the internet is fast changing that.
"You have to face brutal measures when you stand up to these authorities," he says, "but this year the democratic movement has been progressing a lot compared with the past two or three decades. That momentum will continue."
One in six of the 84 million Vietnamese people is estimated to be an internet user, compared with one in nine a year ago. Most do not have home computers but use the 5,000 cyber-cafés for a few pence an hour.
Dissidents also make use of online voice services such as Skype to speak in person to one another in a medium less susceptible to tapping than fixed or mobile telephone lines.
Even the Venerable Thich Quang Do, the 77-year old Buddhist monk who is perhaps the most eminent and revered dissident in Vietnam, is installing an internet connection in the temple where he has spent eight years under "pagoda arrest".
The authorities are now blocking access to dissident websites and recruiting the proprietors of cyber-cafés to spy on their customers.
Some dissidents suspect that anonymous contributors to chat rooms may include agents provocateurs hoping to flush out and identify dissidents. "The communists are like a person afraid of the wind blowing outside," says the Venerable Do. "They won't open the door because they fear they will catch a cold." -- Michael Pugliese