Impressions vietnamiennes (ESSAI ET DOC) (French Edition)

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Elle n'a pas produit de fruits tangibles dans le contexte vietnamien. Nous n'y reviendrons pas. Cela fut d'autant plus fructueux que, face au. Ces faits ressortent d'un rapport officiel de la mission: Il s'appuie, entre autres, sur une lettre de que nous n'avons pu retrouver. Il n'est pas impossible qu'il y ait en l'occurrence une confusion avec Pina. On nous permettra d'en donner deux exemples. Rhodes fut, sans conteste possible, un grand missionnaire, mais non un surhomme: Pour ce qui est du dictionnaire, il faut faire un constat analogue.

La culture vietnamienne a deux sources principales, qui sont entre elles en rapports dialectiques: Ils permettent enfin d'emprunter directement et librement au fonds chinois, de sorte qu'il se produit une osmose constante. La entre les deux est donc superflue pour un locuteur vietnamien. Alexandre de Rhodes' s services to Vietnam are immea- surable It is time to correct the erroneous appraisal Dictionnarium Annamitico -Latinum, Serampore [Inde], Sur ces affirmations hasardeuses, voir la mise au point.

Haudricourt est, par ailleurs, auteur d'articles remarquables sur la langue vietnamienne et son histoire ; entre autres: Alexandre de Rhodes, Divers voyages et missions du P. Voir aussi note Voir le texte de cette intervention: Sur la question du patronat du roi du Portugal sur les missions d'Orient, voir notamment: Ihre Organisation und das portugiesische Patronat, vom Jahrhundert [Les missions catholiques en Inde, en Chine et au Japon. New-York et Taipei Concernant ces tentatives, voir entre autres L. Date de la prise de Malacca par Afonso de Albuquerque.

His life, his time, 4 vol. Dans une circulaire du Francisci Xaverii aliaque eius scripta [ Envoyer du personnel ailleurs est une perte de temps et une regrettable dispersion des efforts: Being the narratives of Galeote Pereira, Fr. The famine was an important issue in the political strategy of the Vietminh.

Vietminh filled the power vacuum After the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan capitulated on 14 August On August 16, the Liberation Committee, that had proclaimed itself the Provisional Government, called for a general uprising. The Vietnamese Catholics also gave their support.

They also under no circumstances wanted to restore the French colonial government. On 19 August, the army of the Vietminh took Hanoi and on August 23 the old imperial capital of Hue fell in their hands. Because of the support of the Americans, and inspired by the American Declaration of Independence of , he said,: They are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The entire Vietnamese people are determined to mobilize all their physical and mental powers and to sacrifice their lives and property, in order to safeguard their freedom and independence. Bishop Le Huu Tu, now an adviser to Ho Chi Minh, and three other bishops of Vietnamese origin, asked the international community to recognize the Nationalist government.

The powerless emperor Bao Dai transferred power to the Vietminh, including his sword and ivory seal. In his attempt to seize power, Ho Chi Minh was prepared to do anything. In he dissolved the Indochinese Communist Party in order to take the wind out of the sails of his opponents. But the recognition of the Provisional Government of Ho Chi Minh by the United States remained in the balance because the true form of the Vietminh became ever clearer.

Communist executives took charge in most places, which was disputed by the other coalition partners. French authority laboriously restored The Vietminh also tried to seize power in the south of Vietnam. Over there the movement was less strongly developed because of the grip of the militias of the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao on the countryside.

On 25 September a general strike called by the Vietminh got completely out of hand In Saigon the central market was burned down, the airport was stormed and hundreds of prisoners were freed. And hundreds of others were taken hostage. Because of this brutality the Americans halted all aid to the Vietminh and aimed for the restoration of the French colonial government. For now, after the German surrender on May 8, and the fall of the Vichy regime in France, the international tide had turned.

With the support of British troops the French recaptured large parts of southern Vietnam while Vietminh fighters retreated to the central highlands and left a trail of destruction in their wake. Both arrived in Vietnam in October. Thierry d'Argenlieu was ordered to restore the colonial authority in Saigon and Leclerc was given the same task in the Gulf of Tonkin.

The latter noted that the two hundred thousand ragged Chinese soldiers who had to disarm the Japanese, mainly engaged in looting. Freed criminals terrorized the countryside and in some villages communist people's courts sentenced mandarins to death. The Vietminh wanted to prevent the restoration of French authority in the north.

But when a clash with the French soldiers of Leclerc seemed inevitable, Ho Chi Minh suddenly made a degrees turn and began to work together with France. At that time, his Democratic Republic of Vietnam barely got any international support. The Soviet Union was furious about his pro-Western independence speech. The leader of the French Communists, vice president Maurice Thorez, advocated the maintenance of the French position in Indochina and the Chinese communists were still embroiled in a power struggle with the nationalist troops of Chang Kai-shek.

Truman, the successor of Franklin D. Roosevelt who had passed away on April 12, also was determined to restore the French colonial government for fear of contamination of Asia by communism. First Indochina War ended in armed peace Agreement remained a dead letter The Vietminh won of the seats in the parliamentary elections of January in the north of Vietnam. Yet the new constitution of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was democratically inspired.

It provided for freedom of speech, press and association in order not to offend the non-communist nationalists and the French negotiators. On 6 March , Ho Chi Minh reached an agreement with Jean Sainteny, the representative of the French Government, on the reform of the colonial administration and the gradual independence of Vietnam within the French Indochinese Union. But that agreement was immediately under attack. Firstly the conservative circles in Paris torpedoed the plan for a referendum.

They dreaded the loss of direct control over their colony. Secondly many Vietnamese feared for a sale of their revolution. Uncertainty was further increased when shortly afterwards 15, French soldiers arrived in the Tonkin countries. Thousands of soldiers were killed or languished in the concentration camp of Luc Yen Chau. For in the ancient Vietnamese tradition the Communists ruled over the territory that they controlled with an iron fist.

A new constitution was promulgated and a government put in place that was fully dominated by the Communists. Until Catholic militias fought against the Communists. Meanwhile, negotiations on the implementation of the agreement with France continued in Fontainebleau since May But Admiral Thierry d'Argenlieu, the High Commissioner for Indochina, violated an earlier agreement by appointing a government for the southern region Cochinchina. After the interruption of the consultation in September , Ho Chi Minh, who had remained in France as the only representative of the Vietminh, signed a modus vivendi that was disadvantageous for him.

This agreement provided for the cessation of hostilities and the maintenance of 25, French soldiers in the north of the country until Nevertheless France was not much interested in the agreement. The country was bogged down because of an institutional crisis in which one government followed another. The fear prevailed that the withdrawal from Vietnam would lead to the loss of several colonies. In the port of Haipong riots took place between French and Vietnamese troops and after the murder of a number of French officials French warships and aircraft bombarded from 23 to 28 November the city from the sea and from the air During the conflict people were killed or wounded on the Vietnamese side.

The Vietminh withdrew, and also left the capital Hanoi in December after fierce fighting. In January French sovereignty was restored in six provincial capitals in the north and in February, and after a siege of six weeks the former imperial capital of Hue was back in French hands. In August followed the restoration of French control of the border with China. The Vietminh, who did not yet want a confrontation with the French, further built up their armed forces.

They engaged in guerrilla attacks from the 'liberated' countryside and jungle. With their superior firepower on land and in the air the French hoped that , French soldiers would be sufficient to control Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Their mobile tactical elite units however had to operate in the mountainous jungle, a terrain with which they were not familiar.

Moreover, the commanders were accountable to superior officers in Paris that were frequently replaced by new superiors. The French had therefore increasingly less grip on their opponent. The army of the Vietminh moved in accordance with the imagery of Mao Zedong as "a fish in water. Moreover, General Vo Nguyen Giap trained a regular army in the jungle. The Vietminh compensated for their limited military and logistical equipment by the motivation of their soldiers, their knowledge of the terrain, the support of the population and their objective to expel the French.

On 20 October this attack was followed by operation Ceinture. Then Major General Marcel Alessandri, the commander of the French troops, cut off the rice supply to the Vietminh by occupying the delta of the Red River. As from the communist army grew to , units and expanded the area under their control. Yet the tide really turned after the Communist takeover in China in Chinese soldiers trained the soldiers of the Viet Minh and Mao provided the Vietminh with light and heavy weapons as well as logistical supplies.

The government of Cochinchina sank into a quagmire of corruption In April , the Vietminh lost their last chance for cooperation with the influential Hoa Hao Buddhist sect in Cochinchina because they murdered their leader Huynh Pho So. In communist ranks there was a growing awareness that priority should be given to the liberation of the north.

Indeed, the conquest of the south promised to be a long process. Pending full independence, the French maintained control over the key ministries of Defense and Finance. They hoped that Bao Dai would form a strong coalition that would bring together conservative nationalists, Catholics and other groups that could take over the leadership of Vietnamese nationalism from Ho Chi Minh.

But many prominent nationalists, including Ngo Dinh Diem, refused to join and left the country. On 7 February , Great Britain and the United States recognized the government of Bao Dai, although this was sinking into a morass of corruption. He is the youngest in a family of five children and literally a latecomer.

His eldest brother Nguyen San was Although the family of Van Ly was poor, two homeless children were adopted: The atmosphere in Ba Binh was very pleasant. No distinction was made between the social classes in the community. Apart from more affluent families, poorer families also lived in Ba Binh. The area was part of the parish Ba Ngoat. Like every inhabitant of this exclusively Catholic community, he experienced the pure Vatican faith from a young age.

Without exception, he attended Mass at 5am and at 6pm he attended the evening service. Until the age of eight, Van Ly struggled with a speech impediment. Smiling, the parishioners saw how he sat in the first row during church services and enthusiastically repeated in his high voice the verses said by the priest. As a young man, Van Ly was impatient. Instead of reading, he would rather play with his friends. Later he helped with work in the rice fields and when one day he stole grapes in the orchard of a neighbor his older brother Tri Nguyen Hong An punished him.

This brother was indeed responsible for his upbringing. Because the parish Ba Ngoat had no primary school, illiteracy was widespread. Many young people learned to read and write during the religious instruction when prayers were taught. Often seminarians assumed that task. As from , Van Ly walked 3 Km every day to the primary school in the neighboring parish Thach Han.

First encounter with the Communists Despite the presence of French missionaries, the people of the Catholic enclaves were opponents of the colonization because of the systematic exploitation they experienced first hand. And because of their faith they were naturally against the nascent communism. They yearned for freedom and peace. But under the impulse of communist sympathizers and partisans from the neighboring non-Catholic villages, propaganda visits as well as military attacks occurred in Ba Ngoat at night.

From the mids, parishioners between eighteen and sixty years formed a militia for their self-defense and they carried firearms. The village was fortified and the church and the presbytery of Ba Ngoat grew into a fortress. The Vietminh also regularly killed parishioners and took others prisoner. The man was released from prison one year later, but the difficult living conditions in the camps had weakened him. After a long illness Thomas Nguyen Dang Thu died in Domino theory By establishing diplomatic relations with the Yugoslavia of Marshal Tito, who sailed an independent course within the communist world, Ho Chi Minh made it clear that he was not a puppet of the Soviet Union or China.

But the Western powers thought otherwise. He was of the opinion that following the victory of Mao in China, the tide of communism threatened all of Indochina. President Truman to increase his involvement in Vietnam. This theory received great support in the United States, because at that moment U. Senator Joseph McCarthy had launched a hate campaign against the "red peril". His delusional idea that the Communists could count on a number of hidden supporters in the United States led to a witch hunt against real and especially alleged communists.

The Western capitalist bloc led by the United States faced the communist bloc under the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union. Thus, the former Japanese colony of Korea at the 38th parallel was divided into two zones. The north was occupied by the Soviet Union and the south by the United States. When on 26 June an unusually bloody war erupted in Korea, the conflict in Vietnam also escalated.

Both France and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam assured themselves of additional international aid. On the other hand the French, who had increased their military effort in Indochina, obtained additional American political, economic, financial and military support. The Western media no longer spoke about a colonial war, but a crusade against communism.

Via short wave, The Voice of America broadcasted propaganda in Vietnamese. In the wake of the first American military advisers followed deliveries of aircraft, artillery, tanks, boats, weapons and communication equipment. In , the U. By the end of , the United States supported one third of the French war budget and on top of this they supported the government of Bao Dai.

In early , the U. In a first phase, they carried out guerrilla attacks, followed by larger operations. Only when the balance was tilted in their favor, they would be tempted by fighting a conventional battle. The Vietminh operated in cells of three, four or five persons who were responsible for each other. Their leaders had no privileges. They lived with their men, ate the same food and wore the same clothes. Through good organization, motivation, indoctrination and an iron discipline the soldiers endured many hardships: Their leitmotif was the sacred belief that the French could be defeated.

This inspiring idea won the sympathy of many villagers and their leaders. Between and the Vietminh troops already consisted of , units. They faced , French soldiers, part of the Foreign Legion, African colonial troops and , Vietnamese soldiers. Ho Chi Minh realized that time was on his side. The longer the war lasted, the more exhausted the French would be and public opinion in the motherland would turn against the war.

In an interview he said: It will be a war between an elephant and a tiger. The tiger does not stand still. He rests in the jungle by day and operates at night. He will jump on the back of the elephant and tear out large chunks of flesh from its body, and thereafter withdraw into the dark jungle. And slowly the elephant will bleed to death. It was attended by two hundred delegates who represented the members.

The party that was temporarily abolished for opportunistic reasons in was recreated under the name Dang Lao Dong Viet Nam or the Vietnamese Workers Party. Even now due to strategic reasons, no reference was made to the Communist roots. De Lattre Line made the French vulnerable In order to protect the cultivation of rice, the French built fortifications along the Red River.

When the Vietminh increased pressure on the isolated French garrisons, the French abandoned the rural areas as from and withdrew into the cities. But as a result of the increasing strength of the Vietminh also larger garrison towns were in the crosshairs. After the conquest of Dong Khe, the city of Cao Bang was threatened: The French withdrew their troops along the Route Coloniale No. They immediately left the town of Lang Son in haste and also abandoned the cities of Laokay and Thai Nguyen, whereby again six thousand French soldiers were slain or captured.

Vietnam War

The loss of control over the 1, km border with China led to the replacement of the French High Command of the Armed Forces. That same month the Americans signed an agreement in Saigon for economic and military aid to the French High Command. In the conquered areas are the Vietminh were faced with the challenge to provide the people and the soldiers with food, because the French did not abandon the rice fields in the delta of the Red River.

They also were easier to defend than the border with China. In a quick move, the De Lattre Line was established: That defense held up well against the attacks of General Giap against the rice fields, the city of Vinh Yen near Hanoi and the port of Haipong, which was crucial for the import of French aid. During the fighting the French for the first time dropped napalm bombs. The Vietminh suffered a heavy defeat, but as time went on, the De Lattre Line made the French more vulnerable.

Unlike the free operating resistance fighters, the French troops who were living in barracks could not be reallocated to other battlegrounds. By the end of the French launched an offensive against Hoa Binh, a stronghold of the Vietminh, who then attacked the French supply lines. The subsequent war of attrition led to heavy losses on both sides. Despite the increase in the number of troops under French rule to half a million, the Vietminh increasingly took the initiative thanks to the monthly supply of four hundred tons of Chinese weapons and supplies.

Assisted by Chinese advisers, General Giap launched attacks against the French garrisons in the northwestern highlands. By the end of , the Vietminh had conquered half of the villages in the delta of the Red River. French defeat at Dien Bien Phu In April , the Vietminh, who for some time had been in control of the border crossing with Laos, attacked the north of that country.

In Laos, an independent state within the French Union, the army was still under French command. Henri Navarre, the new French commander in Vietnam, led surprise attacks on food depots and outposts of the Vietminh and wanted to cut off the Laotian supply lines in key places. Dien Bien Phu, a plateau in the T'ai mountains at 16 kilometers from the border with Laos is situated in a strategically important location. It is completely surrounded by jungle, but can be supplied from the air.

The French built Dien Bien Phu into a fortress. This war claimed 3. On the diplomatic front, Ho Chi Minh accepted a French proposal to reach a negotiated solution. In February , one agreed to organize a peace conference on May 8, in the Swiss city of Geneva. The strategists of the Vietminh, under the leadership of General Giap, thought that it was possible to conduct a decisive attack on Dien Bien Phu even before the start of the conference.

At the beginning of the battle on March 13, , 10,, later 16, French soldiers faced fifty thousand soldiers of the Vietminh, 55, auxiliary troops and a hundred logisticians. Antiaircraft guns destroyed 62 French planes and also destroyed the runway on March 27, effectively trapping the French. The battle lasted for 55 days, claiming 2, deaths and 5, wounded on the French side and 7, deaths and 15, wounded on the side of the Vietminh. Of the 11, French prisoners of war few returned home. From a military standpoint, this battle was not decisive because only part of the French Army was defeated.

But psychologically France never recovered from this defeat. In France, the public was fed up with la sale guerre - the dirty war. The final balance amounted to 94, French and allied deaths and , Vietminh victims. The war cost France two and a half times the aid that the country had received in the framework of the Marshall Plan.

But also the Americans who did not directly intervene, were licking their wounds. In the period they had invested three billion U. This mainly served their mutual interests, but it was anyway preferable to a recrudescence of the battle. In Geneva, two documents were signed. France and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam drew a provisional military demarcation line at the 17th parallel, and France withdrew its troops to the south while the Vietminh moved its soldiers to the north of the line.

In between a demilitarised zone of ten km was established. The inhabitants were given a period of three hundred days to move north or south of the DMZ. An International Control Commission involving India, Poland and Canada supervised the implementation of the agreement.

Furthermore all countries approved a final declaration on 20 July Under the supervision of the International Control Commission elections would reunite the country within two years. The superpowers also promised to stay away from the independent and neutral countries Laos and Cambodia. Under the Geneva Accords neither the West nor the communists acquired control over Indochina. But because of misunderstandings and misinterpretations the hatchet was not buried.

The French retreated, but the ideological struggle between the capitalist and the communist power bloc continued. To the fury of the Vietminh, the one point the great powers quickly agreed upon was the cancellation of the elections. North Vietnam had indeed the largest population, and the Americans would under no circumstances allow a communist South Vietnam to exist.

On the other hand China preferred a divided Vietnam over a strong southern neighbor because that would exert a disproportionate influence on the neighboring countries Laos and Cambodia, which the Chinese preferred to keep within their sphere of influence. But above all Mao did not want to tempt the United States to send troops to Vietnam because these troops could also have threatened China.

Le Portugal et la romanisation de la langue vietnamienne. Faut- il réécrire l'histoire ?

Parish Ba Ngoat moved In the second half of , , French soldiers moved towards the south, while 90, fighters and sympathizers of the Vietminh moved in the opposite way. The Vatican wanted the priests to stay in the north to avoid a repetition of the Chinese drama. In , as a result of the departure to Taiwan of most priests in the wake of Chiang Kai Shek, millions of believers on the communist mainland were orphaned. Many North Vietnamese priests however did not trust the Communists and left with all their parishioners. An additional motivation was that the new strong man in South Vietnam, the Catholic Ngo Ding Diem, had promised them a fertile soil.

French and American planes and ships transported , to one million people to the south, including at least , Catholics. But in the remote rural areas not everyone who wanted to did succeed in effectively moving. As a result of this migration South Vietnam has more inhabitants than North Vietnam. The parish Ba Ngoat which is just north of the 17th degree of latitude, was now part of North Vietnam. In fear of the Communists all believers under the leadership of Pastor Truong Van Thien left the parish.

Most of them only took some clothes and food for the road and left their homes behind. A number of parishioners crossed the 17th parallel on foot, while French soldiers transported most of the refugees by truck to a refugee camp around a shrine in Trieu Phong district in the province of Quang Tri. Over there other believers took care of them. At the request of the pastor and the elders, they refused the transfer to the south of the country. They wanted to stay in the neighborhood in order to return to the land of their ancestors after the elections and the promised unification of Vietnam.

During the persecution of Christians in the first half of the 19th century many people on death row requested to die in La Vang. La Vang grew into one of the most popular pilgrimage destinations in Asia. In , after the inhabitants of the village of Long Hung ceded part of their land, six new villages were established around the dense, hilly forest surrounding the shrine.

Most parishioners of Ba Ngoat got shelter in La Vang center, two kilometers from the pilgrimage site and a small number were housed in La Vang Up. The new location is only forty kilometers from their former village. With support from the United States family homes were built around the new church. The new village is located in the municipality Phu Hai, Hai Lang district, 15 km from Quang Tri, the capital of the eponymous province.

Due to the arid east wind, this new location is less fertile and despite the presence of water, rice culture is not possible. During the first years the inhabitants still got the support of the South Vietnamese government and the Catholic Relief Service of the United States, but most families lived in poverty. They grew grain and vegetables such as cassava, maize, potatoes and beans on the three acres that each family was assigned.

Some worked the wasteland outside the village. The socio-economic situation of the emigrant families deteriorated, but on the other hand, education was more developed and career opportunities increased. A number of residents worked for the administration or enlisted in the South Vietnamese army. In the delta of the Red River, the war had destroyed much of the rice production. Only the Soviet Union-funded imports of rice from Burma prevented a new famine. Furthermore a large part of the infrastructure was in ruins. Railways and bridges were blown up, buildings destroyed, hospitals, factories and port facilities dismantled.

Already in the Communists launched a land reform in the territory they controlled. The inspirer of that large-scale operation was Truong Chinh, the ideologue of the communist party, who was inspired by the approach of his Chinese comrades. The hidden agenda was to crush any opposition. Officially, he only aimed at the elimination of the five percent landowners who owned 95 percent of the land.

In every village special teams gathered information about the local landowners, but also about the supporters of reactionary parties and critics of the regime. They encouraged the population to speak out against them at public meetings of improvised People's Tribunals. During their trial the accused, who knelt before the judges with bowed heads, were not given the right to speak. Following the testimony about several crimes by a pseudo victim, the jurors asked the people present in the room whether the accused was guilty of the crimes.

The communist cadres who were present shouted "yes", then the listeners agreed. When the judges asked for the penalty, a communist would shout "Kill the landowner", then others would repeat that cry and the accused would be put to death. In order to reach the quota of five per cent, farmers who for years had supported the Vietminh were also victimized. They were accused by people who are jealous of them or because of the settling of accounts. Children at school were encouraged to report their parents. As the reform progressed, more and more blood flowed.

An estimated 50, to , landowners and "class enemies" were slain. Their families lost their homes and all their possessions.

The villagers were forbidden to talk to them and the women of the convicts were not allowed to work for a year, so many died of starvation. Historians estimate that the toll of the runaway reform reached between , and , victims. In addition, hundreds of thousands of intellectuals and anyone who was unwilling to follow the communist doctrine, was brainwashed in reeducation camps. Despite the redistribution of more than half of the land, this reform even increased the food shortage.

In November a spontaneous uprising erupted in the rural province of Nghe An, where Ho Chi Minh was born, and spread to other regions. After the execution or deportation of six thousand insurgents, the failed reform was silently abolished. The Minister of Agriculture was fired and party leader Truong Chinh took a step aside, but remained a powerful man within the Politburo. President Ho Chi Minh uttered some self-criticism regarding malpractices, but apparently did not have the power anymore to intervene. His role was to monitor the delicate balance between the pro-Soviet and pro-Chinese factions within the Communist Party.

Totalitarian regime wanted to destroy humankind North Vietnam was insulated from the outside world, and wanted to cope with all difficulties by establishing a communist society.

After the nationalization of the mining and textile sector followed the abolition of trade and private ownership. The country got a new constitution in that sealed the communist character of society and granted the Communist Party a monopoly on power. The objective was the dismantling of the familial, social, moral and religious foundations of society, spirituality as well as conscience, and the destruction of relationships between the inhabitants. As a result of this policy, everyone stood naked before the party. Communism is not a dictatorship, but a totalitarian regime that wants to monitor all people via a closed control system.

In every town, village and hamlet a network of officers and informants spies on all residents. This system where everyone distrusts each other, results in the complete suppression of man. Many dictatorships have pursued that goal, but in history, only the Communists have ever gone that far. This one party military state adopted the Confucian tradition. The first generation of leaders embodied the tai duc or the combination of talent and virtue.

They cultivated the image of incorruptibility, moral leadership and effective management. Ho Chi Minh identified communism in the first place with the historical aims of Vietnamese nationalism.

Thus his writings contain references to the traditional Vietnamese literature and mysticism. The personality cult built around him cultivated the image of a charismatic leader who conveys uy tin or credibility, which legitimizes the claim to authority. The widespread pictures of Ho Chi Ming showed the leader as an ascetic who enjoys the company of children dwell.

Therefore the South Vietnamese infiltrators who with the support of the CIA wanted to destabilize the communist regime had no chance. At the Third Congress of the Communist Party in , the introduction of a planned economy led to the adoption of the First Five-Year Plan for the period He became the number two of the regime after president and party chairman Ho Chi Minh. In line with Soviet tradition, the emphasis was on the development of heavy industry and the military. Furthermore, consumer goods were hardly produced. Great attention was paid to education and medical care.

The family policy protected the rights of women and children and forbade polygamy, forced marriage, concubinage and rape. Through birth control, large families were discouraged. Corruption was almost nonexistent, but starvation and forced labor remained common. In started the forced relocation of large populations of the densely populated delta of the Red River to the desolate northern highlands.

The difference between rich and poor became smaller partly because Vietnam was reduced to being one of the world's poorest countries. Socialist Realism The Communists were masters in conducting propaganda and the manipulation of the population. From kindergarten on, imparting the revolutionary ethics of Marxism-Leninism was emphasized. The party newspaper Nhan Dan - The People , the official mouthpiece of the regime, launched one campaign after another. For example, the Triple readiness: In the cultural sector, the Socialist Realism was the only permitted style.

The works of Vietnamese writers and artists who had stood the test of censorship had to mobilize the population and arouse enthusiasm for the ideals of the revolution like "cultural bazookas, mortars and rifles". They were also responsible for the formation of a new corps of socialist intellectuals among the peasants. All dissident voices were silenced. In , the staff of the banned magazines Giai Pham - Works of beauty and Nhan Van — Humanism languished as "cultural and ideological saboteurs" in factories and farms. Writer Tran Dan tried to commit suicide and in application of a "cordon sanitaire" around the philosopher Tran Duc Thao nobody was allowed to speak to him.

In vain his former classmate and friend, the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, pleaded for a halt to this cruel psychological torture. Soviet and East European films and Russian novels translated in Vietnamese dominated the cultural landscape. However, like in the Soviet Union samizdat or illegal underground press was published in North Vietnam. Decree No curtailed religion. But that was only a sham operation. All Catholic churches, seminaries, schools, hospitals, orphanages, printers and booksellers closed their doors.

Church property was confiscated and all priests had to work in agriculture. The missionaries and the papal nuncio were deported and the government broke diplomatic ties with the Vatican. The Archbishop of Hanoi was not allowed to leave the capital city. The small number of priests that were not killed or put in a reeducation camp during the land reform had to register with the local People's Committee on every visit to a parish.

Diem consolidated his power in South Vietnam With the support of the U. This was done against the wishes of the French. They feared that the majority of the Buddhists would not accept this ascetic anti-French Catholic. As an ardent patriot Diem, the son of a mandarin under the Nguyen dynasty, aimed for nationalism without communism. His eldest brother, provincial governor Khoi Ngo Ding, was after all burned alive during the revolt of the Vietminh in August Diem sidelined Nguyen Van Hinh, the chief of staff of the army and a French protege who wanted to kill him.

Furthermore, he eliminated the private militia of Mafia boss Binh Xuyen who controlled the underworld of Saigon. And with American money the Cao Dai and the Hoa Hao religious sects supported his regime with an army of 25, soldiers,. The next step was the removal of Emperor Bao Dai who lost his throne in a referendum in October with The Diem regime organized the departure of the French colonial soldiers and made great efforts to integrate the nearly one million refugees from the north into society.

Because of his moral integrity he succeeded in uniting the south. Catholic model state President Diem succeeded in obtaining more and more aid from the United States during his triumphant visit in May Between and the Americans invested seven billion U. After all they watched with sorrow that many countries in the Third World who were liberating themselves from the colonial yoke ended up in the communist sphere of influence.

The United States wanted other countries to follow the South Vietnamese example. Was not the embrace of Western politics and economics the best guarantee for fast progress? For the first time since long the store shelves in South Vietnam were well filled again. Prosperity increased, whereas in the north people still went hungry, and a class of intellectuals emerged. But because of the massive imports of U.

Bishop Pierre Martin Ngo Ding Thuc, a brother of the president who became the archbishop of Hue in , used his position to strengthen the power of the Catholic Church which again became the major landowner of Vietnam. Only Catholics received promotions in the civil service and the military and were exempt from compulsory civil labor. And many Catholic entrepreneurs enjoyed tax reductions.

Some priests turned to forced conversions and looted Buddhist pagodas. Others converted to Catholicism in function of their careers and some villages hoped to receive more government support through mass conversions. The new universities of Hue and Dalat were placed under Catholic authority and in , Diem dedicated his country to Our Lady. In , a quarter million believers made the pilgrimage to La Vang under the leadership of the president. Anti- Communist campaign ran out of control Focused on the geopolitical chessboard, the Americans hardly gave any consideration to the aspirations of the Vietnamese people.

Nor did they have any historical insight. Without knowing their allies or their opponents, the Americans, as previously in Korea, wanted to go to war in Vietnam. From January they paid the wages of the South Vietnamese soldiers and four months later president Dwight D. Eisenhower sent military aid and advisers.

Eisenhower however set a limit of seven hundred advisors. They trained the army that was plagued by corruption and lack of equipment and recruited 40, soldiers from the ethnic minorities of the Degar or Montagnards in the Central Highlands. Also the 25,strong militia of the Coa Dai sect was incorporated in the South Vietnamese army.

This militia was notorious for its guerrilla techniques. President Diem fitted within the U. The well-equipped army was however poorly managed. Government troops regularly plundered and loyalty to Diem prevailed over effectiveness. In the summer of the Denounce the communists campaign was aimed at the Vietminh who were still present in the countryside. The driving force of this campaign was Ngo Dinh Nhu, another brother of the president, who held no official position, but exercised great power behind the scenes together with his wife, Madame Nhu.

Many remaining communist party cadres were eliminated, but the campaign did not fully succeed. A number of Buddhist monasteries, temples and pagodas became centers of resistance and communist units used them as weapon depots. They continued to operate autonomously in different parts of South Vietnam. Moreover, the campaign ran out of control. Many considered the intellectuals who had fled North Vietnam as covert Communists and in rural areas corrupt bureaucrats arrested innocent inhabitants who were denounced by jealous neighbors.

Specially established Security Committees headed by provincial chiefs whom Diem had personally appointed sentenced the accused. Each year, the government organized a national exam for all eleven year old children. Whoever passed the exam, received a certificate that allowed access to secondary education.

Nguygen Van Ly, who was one year ahead in elementary school, took this exam in at the age of ten. Since the birth register of Ba Binh had been lost during the war, his parents declared that he was born on 15 May , thus enabling him to take the exam. He passed the exam with flying colors. There he started his secondary studies. In he continued his studies at the Sacred Heart College in Quang Tri, where he obtained his diploma of lower secondary education in From an early age Van Ly developed a strong character. During hour-long discussions with his peers, he was not looking for glory or fame, but he defended tooth and nail his own view of the world to which he was fully committed.

Due to this harsh approach he was not the most popular pupil of the class. Authoritarian regime As time progressed, the bureaucracy, the growing corruption and erratic domestic politics were an ever bigger stain on the Diem regime. Because of his occasionally cruel approach the president created more enemies than the number of opponents he eliminated.

The capstone of his increasingly authoritarian regime was the secret service under the leadership of Dr. In order to put a democratic veneer on his dictatorship and to please the Americans, Diem organized elections in August which he overwhelmingly won thanks to massive fraud. But the open letter of 26 April in which eighteen prominent nationalists, including several former ministers, called for reforms, led to a wave of terror. The signatories ended up behind bars, the newspapers of the opposition were banned and numerous journalists, students and intellectuals were accused of links with the Communists.

Henceforth the publication of criticism of the government was banned. On 11 November a military coup against Diem failed. Meanwhile, in September , on the initiative of the U. This anti-communist military cooperation treaty guaranteed the independence of South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

Turkey, Iraq until , Iran and Pakistan also were members. The Cento aimed to be a global military defense line around the Soviet Union. Ho Chi Minh route became a solid supply line In the second half of the s, the operational units of the Vietminh in South Vietnam and their supporting cadres were decimated but not destroyed. In North Vietnam Le Duan, the rising star in the Politburo, put the struggle for the reunification of Vietnam on top of the political agenda. The construction of a supply line through winding jungle paths from Hanoi to the Mekong Delta through the jungle of eastern Laos and southern Cambodia was crucial for supporting the resistance in the south.

That road is named after the historic leader Ho Chi Minh. Construction through the jungle was a challenge because of the geographical barriers, the presence of wild animals, the lack of drinking water, the oppressive heat, the humidity and the ubiquitous malaria, dysentery and other diseases. In , after a journey of six months, the first armed company reached the Mekong Delta.

Road construction machinery from China and the Soviet Union facilitated the construction of bridges and roads. And in anticipation of possible bombings underground logistics were established: Teams of drivers, mechanics, radio operators, doctors and nurses made the transport of large troop units possible. The return via the Ho Chi Minh route of experienced cadres and militants who had migrated to the north after the Geneva Accords , gave the armed resistance in South Vietnam more backbone. During the first phase, the communist resistance fighters tried to control the rural areas by sowing terror.

They did this by raising taxes, compulsory deliveries of rice and agricultural products and the integration of abducted children as recruits in their army. Dressed in black pyjamas, they operated in the dead of night. Regular as clockwork they murdered or abducted representatives of the government and burned down their houses. In some regions, this happened so often that no one wanted to take responsibility anymore for anything.

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In cities the communists fired automatic weapons and threw grenades or placed bombs in markets, restaurants and theaters. The main targets were police stations, railway stations, military installations and bars and restaurants frequented by American soldiers. The number of murdered South Vietnamese government representatives, often of lower rank, rose from 1, to four thousand per year. Also booby traps, pointy sticks, needles or nails smeared with feces in covered holes, claimed thousands of victims.

This cruel form of warfare maimed people without killing them. National Liberation Front , or Vietcong As from June , the actions of the communist resistance were conducted in a coordinated way and in , the COSVN headquarters that had been abolished five years earlier became operational again. The headquarters were located in the middle of a rubber plantation near the border with Cambodia. This was commonly referred to as the Vietnamese communists or abbreviated to the Vietcong.

This initial broad coalition represented the various political, religious and ethnic ideologies that opposed the regime of President Diem. The leadership was in the hands of people who did not publicly identify with the Communists. Like the Vietminh twenty years earlier, the Vietcong manifested itself as a nationalist movement that hoped to attract followers in broad layers of the population. After a few years it numbered about , to , followers and a million sympathizers, including 20, communists.

But the latter kept strict control. Despite the direct directives of the government in Hanoi, the Vietcong retained a high degree of independence and charted its own course. Its government in exile was committed to a neutralist South Vietnamese coalition government that would negotiate with North Vietnam. However, from the outset the Diem government and the Americans considered the Vietcong as a pure communist front organization. Strategic Village Plan failed The cornerstone for the success of the Diem regime in the long term, was the support of the rural areas where 85 percent of the population lived.

Many peasants secretly sympathized with the Communists. The stories about the redistribution of land in North Vietnam captivated the minds. In Diem also tried to implement a land reform but met with fierce opposition from the large landowners. As an alternative, the government developed the Strategic Village Plan, a system copied from the British who had successfully applied a Village Plan in in their fight against the communist guerrillas in Malaysia. As from February , this ambitious plan required the farmers to move to 11, new fortified villages, the agrovilles , with enclosures and watchtowers where the residents themselves were responsible for the defense.

Through the concentration of farmers in armed fortresses, the government wanted to take the wind out of the sails of the Communists and to strengthen their hold on the countryside. Of the some 8, hastily built Strategic Villages, over time only 1, were viable. The operation encountered resistance because of the forced nature of the policy, the distance to the land that had to be worked, the many controls and the forced payments. Many Catholic villages were favored, but in most places the shortage of equipment, agricultural equipment, seeds and weapons had the opposite effect.

The main reason for this failure was, however, that this reform was at odds with the traditional social and economic life in the rural areas with its land-based ancestor worship. Nevertheless, the government pushed through its plan. Moreover corruption and arbitrariness of the officials drove the farmers further into the arms of the Communists. Under Kennedy, the United States sneaked into the war On July 8, , two American advisors died in a guerrilla attack by the Vietcong on the military headquarters of Bien Hoa, twenty miles northeast of Saigon.

But President Eisenhower passed further decisions in this sensitive dossier on to his successor, John F. Kennedy, who took office in January Although Kennedy was personally opposed to the deployment of U. The Americans not only made helicopters and planes available, but also more advisers and instructors. That number rose to 3, in and to sixteen thousand in C transport aircraft secretly sprayed the jungle with chemical defoliants in order to expose the shelters of the Vietcong.

Out of their feeling of superiority the Americans silently sneaked into the war. Imbued with a missionary zeal, like the French colonists a century earlier, they wanted to stem the "red peril" by basing the South Vietnamese society on western values. In doing so, they deceived not only their own public opinion, but also flagrantly violated the Geneva Accords. But the committee that monitored the implementation of the Geneva Accords watched helplessly. In the period to , the number of guerrilla units increased to 15, As of late , the PLAF attacked positions with autonomous specialized units.

Two years later, about thirty to forty battalions were already operational. They dug trenches and tunnels and bombarded the American helicopters with mortars and artillery. In , ten thousand soldiers and for the first time heavy artillery units reached South Vietnam via the Ho Chi Minh route. And in January communist units near Ap Bac in the Mekong Delta, at forty miles from Saigon, crushed a ten times stronger division of the South Vietnamese army, despite the heavy deployment of U.

Cambodia and Laos sucked into the conflict In Cambodia the weak regime of the young prince Norodom Sihanouk was wedged between Thailand and Vietnam, two hated neighbors who in the course of history had repeatedly invaded the country. To avoid being sucked into the Vietnamese conflict Sihanouk initially worked together with the Americans and at the same time did not prevent the North Vietnamese from building the Ho Chi Minh Route on Cambodian territory.

In response to the border crossings of South Vietnamese and American soldiers in , Sihanouk established diplomatic relations with China. After a rightist rebellion led by Khmer Serei failed, relations with the United States turned sour when the Americans recruited soldiers from the Khmer Krom ethnic minority in South Vietnam.

After , neighboring Laos remained a major strategic link for the United States. The Americans paid the entire budget of the royal army and from , advisors took care of their training. The communist insurgents of the Pathet Lao under the leadership of Prince Souphanouvong with the support of the Soviet Union and North Vietnam were a growing threat, while in the border area with South Vietnam the Ho Chi Minh route was being constructed. But as from , the country fell prey to civil war. With the support of the CIA, a rightist regime came to power under the leadership of Prince Boun Oum and the royalist army of General Phoumi Nosavan chased the neutralist government of Prince Souvanna Phouma out of the capital Vientiane.

An air bridge from the Soviet Union came too late, wereupon Phouma entered an alliance with the Pathet Lao. During the development of the pro-American regime in Laos, the Hmong tribe played an important role. The Hmong regarded the advance of the communists as a threat to their independence and their lucrative opium trade. In , the Americans had trained and equipped ten thousand Hmong. In May , fourteen countries, including the United States and the Soviet Union, participated in a conference in Geneva on the future of Laos.

The agreement of 23 July installed a neutral coalition government headed by Prime Minister Souvanna Phouma in which both the Pathet Lao and the royalists participated. Also, all American, Soviet and North Vietnamese troops had to leave the country. As with the Geneva Accords of , the situation was only defused, but it remained explosive. Both North Vietnam and the United States secretly continued to support their allies. Partly due to the bad functioning of the government the war spread further. With American air support the Hmong soldiers sabotaged the positions and supply lines of the communists during the rainy season, while the latter conquered the Hmong villages during the dry season.

After having passed the entrance exam he was accepted as a seminarian. The much loved director, Francois Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan, acted as the spiritual leader of the seminarians. For his parents this was an honor. As staunch Catholics, offering of a child to the church was a form of extreme obedience. The seminarians lived in halls of forty persons. During daytime Van Ly completed the higher cycle of his secondary studies at the Institute of Providence, Thien Truong Huu, five hundred meters from the Minor Seminary.

This institution was both a college and a high school and was also managed by the Archdiocese of Hue. Here many children of senior officials, lawyers and doctors, attended school.

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