A Political Change in My Country
By Khuong B. Huynh
__Mr. Huynh lives in Orange.
In the 20th Century, the most important and terrible political change in Vietnam, my country, occurred in April 1975. After the Geneva Accord of 1954 between the United States, France, Vietnam and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (which was the communist government in the jungles supported by the USSR and China), there were two Vietnams: The Republic of Vietnam in the South (south of the 17th parallel) and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (communist)in the North (north of the 17th parallel).
On January 27, 1973, there was the Paris Agreement restoring peace in Vietnam between the United States and the Republic of Vietnam on one side, and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (communist North Vietnam) and the Republic of South Vietnam (the Viet Cong, created by North Vietnam) on the other side.
However, the Vietnamese communists did not implement this Agreement, and the war continued.
And, on April 30, 1975, the North Vietnamese communists and the Viet Cong supported by the USSR and China completely violated the Agreement and invaded the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam). President Duong Van Minh surrendered on the morning of April30, and the North Vietnamese communists occupied the Presidential Palace at 11 a.m. on April 30, 1975.
Communist North Vietnam erased the Republic of South Vietnam by unifying the land.
The effects of this political change in 1975 were terrible.
First, all the Republic of Vietnam’s “officials,” from the president to the privates in the military, which included 1,100,000 in the military, and about 300,000 policemen and executives, were laid off.
Out of only four army corps, commanders of (South Vietnam’s) Second and Fourth Army Corps, Major General Pham Van Phu and Major General Nguyen Khoa Nam, committed suicide.
Former Minister Tran Chanh Thanh, vice-commander of the Fourth Army Corps, Brigadier General Le Van Hung, and commanders of the Fifth and Seventh Divisions, Brigadier General Le Nguyen Vi and Brigadier General Tran Van Hai, and several field officers also committed suicide.
Many police chiefs in some provinces and many chiefs of villages in the Fourth Tactical Region were killed.
In June 1975, Bishop Nguyen Van Thuan (recently installed as a new cardinal by Pope John Paul II on Feb. 21, 2001 in Rome), 32 generals, many officials – secretaries of state, senators, congressmen, members of political parties in South Vietnam, about 300,000 officers of the army, of the police, non-commissioned officers of certain arms, and high government employees were kept in reeducation camps in both South and North Vietnam. Most of them spent from three to 14 or 15 years in reeducation camps.
A reeducation camp was a camp for hard labor in which prisoners had to toil in the forests and were always hungry, because the camp gave prisoners very little food. In 1976, camp officials spent only about $2 a month for each prisoner for food.
The policy of the reeducation camp was to keep prisoners always hungry, so they could not oppose the regime. During the first three years, families of prisoners in North Vietnam were not permitted to send them food or to visit them.
Many field officers committed suicide in these camps. I was a major in the Army of South Vietnam, an attorney-at-law at Saigon Court of Appeals, and expert at the Coordination and Implementation of the ParisAgreementCenter in the Presidential Palace, and was sent to several of these camps in both South and North Vietnam, from June 14, 1975 to January 5, 1981.
On June 25, 1976, in the Tan Hiep reeducation camp in Bien Hoa, South Vietnam, I saw a lieutenant colonel commit suicide by taking medicine. And on the way to North Vietnam, on June 29, 1976, I saw a lieutenant colonel sitting near me in the bottom of the Song Huong ship commit suicide by taking medicine.
While we were in reeducation camps , how were the Vietnamese people doing under the new regime? I can say Saigon was never so deserted as in those days in May and June of 1975. Big factories, firms and workshops were nationalized immediately under the socialist regime, because then the means of production belonged to the nation.
After 1975, the land also belonged to the nation. A person could possess a house, but he couldn’t buy the land. Naturally, under the old regime before 1975, everybody could easily buy the land.
Also the people could not have gold by law. So, if someone had gold in his or her house, the authorities would confiscate it. Capitalist homes and houses of the rich were searched for gold and money.
In South Vietnam, all employees of the medical and educational branches (of the government) were permitted to continue to work, but the salary had to be cut. Employees of others branches could continue to work if they were selected. Doctors had to clean the toilets in the hospitals.
All judges were laid off and the bar association couldn’t function in the new regime.
There was no freedom of opinion. The newspapers were not permitted to continue publication. There were only newspapers and magazines of the new regime. Since 1981, there have been only newspapers and magazines of the Communist Party.
Freedom of belief was not permitted. Churches and pagodas were not allow to function as they did before 1975. Each time a priest or a monk preached religion, there was always a policeman sitting there. In November 1975, I saw a picture of Vietnam’s communist leader “Uncle Ho”( Ho Chi Minh}, which was put in front of Christ’s statue in a church in Bien Hoa, in the South. In 1976, I saw desolate churches in the north of North Vietnam.
In South Vietnam, after April 1975, under the new regime, people could not go to another city or province to stay a few days without permission. And it was very difficult for people to get permission to move to another city or province.
In each area of about one thousand people, there was a policeman of the area (cong an khu vuc), who managed all the people in that area. This policeman knew every house and every person in his area.
About a dozen houses formed a group, and every week there was a meeting of the people in the group, in which everybody criticized each other in the presence of the policeman of the area.
All songs and pieces of music of the old regime were prohibited. People had to sing and play “revolutionary songs and pieces of music” of the new regime.
Before 1975, we officers in the army disliked the Vietnamese Communists, but we believed they were fair-minded and that they did not have corruption. Now, in fact, the corruption in society is bigger than ever. When I was in Vietnam before 1994, there had been a director in Thanh Hoa who was very rich and had 43 concubines at the same time. After that, he was imprisoned because of the corruption and the newspaper published his case. With more important cadres, we can’t know what they did.
As for the society of the Communists, if someone hasn’t lived in it, he or she could never know it clearly. When a person reads communist books, they always present an ideal society with freedom, democracy and charity for the reader to visualize. On the contrary, under the socialist regime in Vietnam, the people always live poorly under the dictatorship and the one-party rule of the Communist Party.