Dissent and repression in Vietnam
INTRODUCTION by Pierre Rousset
THE preparation of the 7th Congress of the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP)
is turning out to be difficult. Unable to reach agreement at January's central committee meeting either on a draft political report or the name of a successor to the seems that neither Vo Nguyên Giap nor Nguyên Co Thach can really be considered as "consistent reformers."
Giap is respected for his past — as a key military Icader of the anti-colonial wars — and because he has fallen vicvinced liberal in economic matters, but his "liberalism" is less evident as far as politics are concerned. tim to bureaucratic manoeuvres. But he is now very old and may be out of touch. Thach, meanwhile, may be a conpresent general secretary Nguyên Van Linh, the party leadership decided to postpone the congress it initially scheduled for May, probably for several months. The leadership is trying to suppress debate by taking measures against the most outspoken critics and controlling the organization of the preparatory meetings. According to Phong Quang, the Central Committee Secretary has, in a series of circulars, effectively forbidden any talk of pluralism and recommended that no supporter of pluralism should be made a delegate to the Congress.!
The leadership has decided to make public the expulsion from the party of Bùi Tín, joint editor in chief of the party daily Nhân Dân ("the People"), despite the fact that his own cell had rejected the expulsion last January. On March 7, 1991 the official Vietnamese press agency denounced Bùi Tín for having "betrayed the party through his activities and speeches in the foreign press and radio."
The political bureau has not forgiven him the "petition of a citizen", which he made public in November 1990, and the three hour interview that he gave to the BBC, in which he called for an emergency programme to get the country out of its crisis and for the calling of an "extraordinary political conference."3
However, despite this new turn of the repressive screw, appeals in support of democratization continue to multiply. Last January, the writer Nguyên Khac Viên addressed a letter to the Patriotic Front. Hoang Minh Chinh also took up the pen to make public his criticisms. This ex-resistance fighter and former rector of the Philosophy Institute had attended the Higher Party School in Moscow from 1957 to 1960 and had returned to Vietnam convinced of Stalin's crimes. A great signer of petitions, he spent 15 years in prison and under surveillance for having sent one to the party leadership in 1963(at the time of the "second Maoization" of the VCP) and again in 1981 (a year in which Nguyên Khac Viên also sent a "letter" to the
We publish below two important documents. The first is an interview with Bùi Tin which appeared in the December 1990 issue of the review Diên Dàn Nguoi Viêt ("Vietnamese Tribune"), published in Canada. It explains the reasons that led him to make his views known via the foreign radio; his thoughts on pluralism; on the mistakes of the VCP leadership; and on his own objectives.
The second is the "letter" sent by Nguyên Khac Viên to Nguyên Huu Tho, the president of the Patriotic Front, an organization controlled by the VCP. It was published in French in the March 1991 number of the review Doàn Kêt ("Solidarity") published in Paris. In this letter Doctor Viên sounds the alarm, stating that the coming VCP Congress is the "the last chance congress." He denounces the total monopoly of power exercised by the CP and calls for the radical separation of party and state. He analyzes the process of degeneration of the party following the victory of the revolution in terms which recall those used by a leader of the Soviet Left Opposition to Stalin, Christian Rakovsky, in his 1928 letter from exile on the "professional dangers of power." He expresses his wish that the central leaders of the party, far too old and prisoners of their old modes of thought should "themselves retire" and give way to new people.S
He defends the necessity to step up the struggle for liberties — on both the national and international levels - and to found to this end a "people's democratic front", to act as a counterweight to the development of the market economy, the apparatchiks and their dehumanized logic. These documents show the sharpness of the debates underway and the importance of the coming 7th VCP congress. * 1. Phong Quang, "L'année de tous les dangers", Doàn Kêt, no. 431, February 1991.
3. See International Viewpoint, no. 201, March 4, 1991. 4. Hoàng Minh Chinh's document is not yet available. He became acquainted with Khrushchev's "secret speech" denouncing Stalin's crimes when in Moscow. On his return to Vietnam in 1960, he was at first able to get his ideas accepted, but he came into conflict with the party leadership in 1963 when the VCP finally took Beijing's side against Moscow. It is impossible to say how far at the time Hoàng Chinh Minh was an anti-Stalinist and how far 5. This judgement by Nguyên Khac Viên gives me the opportunity to correct something in my previous article. It to the magazine Diên dàn Nguoi Viêt ("Vietnamese Tribune") and translated from the French version which appeared in Doàn Kêt ("Solidarity") published in Paris.* DOCUMENT
B Y rejecting the draft resolu-
tions to be presented to the 7th Congress of the Vietnamese Communist Party, and in making public your own ideas via the BBC', you have broken party discipline. Why?
I have not rejected these two drafts, which I have studied with attention. I think, however that the conditions do not exist to tackle long term questions which concern the next few decades. Today socialism is undergoing a global crisis, both theoretical and practical, not only in eastern Europe but also in Asia and Cuba. The long term problems need to be looked at in a more serious way that excludes haste (we Vietnamese have suffered too much from precipitate decisions). This is why I have simply asked for the debate on these two texts to be postponed so that we can concentrate our efforts — all our efforts - on getting the country out of its crisis, which is getting worse by the day. When the house is on fire you must first put out the fire before discussing future development plans.
As for my petition, I must point out that I had already sent one to the [party] leadership in 1986, but they did not bother to reply. This time, therefore I felt I had to use a more circuitous route, that of the BBC — which has always been considered in Vietnam as an imperialist and reactionary radio station. But this was the only way in which I could rapidly and widely make my petition known to my *For reasons of space, we have condensed the questions addressed to Bui Tin and made a few cuts in his replies. The full version was published in French in Doàn Kèt, December 1990. This review is in Vietnamese, but there are always some pages in French. For further information, and to obtain the complete version of the BBC interview, write to: Doàn Kèt, 193, rue
1278, 75582 Paris, Cedex 12 (France): tel(33-1) 42 13
72 78 08. April 15, 1991 • #204 International Viewpoint
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VIETNAM When the house is on fire WE publish below an interview granted by Bùi Tín
VIETNAM
Who is Bui Tin?
(Pen name, Thành Tin)
- Born in 1927 in Hanol
- Joined the People's Army in September 1945 (leaving it in 1982 with the rank of colonel).
- Member of the Communist Party into account the concrete situation in each country. As a general rule the existence of several legal political parties is a necessary condition for democracy. Multipartyism stimulates political life, engenders emureciprocal control. There are however exceptions due to specific historic conditions. It has happened that a single party has had to assume a hisvictimize particular protagonists, but in order to enrich our historical experience, our national wisdom and also to bring peace to souls.
Among the main mistakes that have been committed, I would put in first place the leftism that has marked our party for a long time. It began with the slogans of 1930-31 "tear out by the roots the intellectuals, the rich, the landowners and the notables," and the discriminatory policy since 1946.
- During the first resistance war against the French intervention, he saw action in the centre and then the north of Vietnam, and in 1954 took part in the famous battle of Diên Biên
- He took part in the general offensive of 1975. On April 30, he accepted the surrender of the Saigon forces as the highest ranking officer of the tanks which had entered the presidential palace in Saigon. - Joint chief editor of Quan dôi
Nhân dần ("Army Daily'') between toric task; and this was the case in Vietnam before 1975. There are, on the other hand, countries, such South Korea, where multipartyism is no proof of democracy.
But to affirm that in Vietnam, since the VP has been the sole leading party, it must remain until the end of time, is a sign of a simplistic and subjectivist conception of history.
It is all the more regrettable that this has been said by the highest leader of the party?. This type of affirmation may lead people to think that the Communists hang on to towards other patriotic organizations, as for example the Viet Nam Quôc Dân Dang party (the Vietnamese equivalent of the Chinese bourgeois nationalist Guo-
Then there are the serious mistakes committed during the land reform of 1953-56 which led to the deaths of some ten thousand innocent people. In the following decades the priority given heavy industry and the rapid collectivization of agriculture held back the productive forces and caused immense losses to
There have been numerous "political affairs" such as the Nhân Van-Giai Pham
1972 and 1981. - Member and spokesperson of the
North Vietnamese delegation to the four-party military commission in Salgon in 1973. - From 1982 onwards member of the editorial board and from 1986 joint editor-in-chief of Nhân Dân ("The People" the Communist Party daily).* compatriots. I thus reached an agreement with the officials of the BBC's Vietnamese section according to which they would broadcast without modification the whole of the interview, which I had listened to again with care. I also insisted on the right of reply to any tendentious commentary. In short, I consider that I made good use of this means of communication without being used by it. • In your interview you did not deal with the most burning subject: pluralism and multipartyism. What are your views on this subject?
I was seeking above all to convince. This is why my petition was framed in a measured, calm and courteous manner....
My point of view on pluralism is the following: plurality was certainly one of the strong points of the renewal process launched in 1986. It became a reality in the economic field, when the existence of five economic components was recognized, and our constitution and the law guarantee religious freedom. Political plurality exists from the moment when a debate of ideas and public dialogue are encouraged. Artistic and cultural plurality exist when there is a recognition of the existence of different styles, schools and methods. Thus there are already elements 14 of pluralism.
As for multipartyism, you have to take International Viewpoint #204 • April 15, 1991 power simply out of their own interest. In a democracy the country's leaders must be chosen by the people, elected by the citizens. • What does the party want? The renewal process launched in 1986 was well underway when the eastern European events exploded. This led to a strong and regrettable reaction of panic in the party. The leaders have analyzed what happened badly. For them the eastern European events were above all provoked by the hand of imperialism and reactionaries, also due to the rightist/ opportunist line of Mikhail Gorbachev.
From all this they have drawn a lesson: redouble vigilance with regard to the imperialist and reactionary forces and defend Marxism-Leninism; these are to be the party's two priority tasks. This error of judgement and this psychosis, have, in my opinion, blocked the renewal and even provoked a return to the past with its procession of errors as well as giving a bad impression to the
Three years ago, the leaders called on the writers and artists to tell the truth, to refuse to write to order, to win creative freedom for themselves. But those that took the leaders at their word have found victimized. This is not logical and is in any case a regrettable error. • The VCP's mistakes are not of recent date.
Vietnam's contemporary been marked by the great victories won in the course of the national liberation struggle. On the other hand a series of problems have been left on ice, and these must be looked at again, not in order to affair, the affairs of the "revisionists, antiparty elements and reactionaries" in which [leading army officers, political cadres, journalists, academics, artists and intellectuals] were caught up, without forgetting the 12 colonels arrested just after the congress of the party organization inside the army in 1986.3
All these matters must be publicly cleared up in conformity with the law. The victims must be publicly rehabilitated in a clearcut fashion. • At present, the VCP intends to pursue the economic opening while rejecting any political relaxation. While there is an entente with China, America is also being courted.
In my opinion, the renewal process must be coherent, and politics and economics must be developed reciprocally Furthermore, internal and external policies must innovate side by side, cach as an extension of the other. In this restructuring, the respective roles of the party, the national assembly, the elected organs and the front must be clearly and precise-
On the diplomatic level, relations must be normalized in every direction and any exclusive alignment must be rejected, so that our country becomes a factor of stability and cooperation in the region, and we are firmly integrated into the international community.
Any relation of vassalage towards Beijing with the aim of normalizing relations with the Chinese Communist Party, or 1. The BBC interview will be published in the forthcoming issue of Chroniques vietnamiennes, which can be obtained from: Boîte postale 246, 75524 Paris, cedex 11, France. 2. By Nguyên Van Linh, the VCP's general secretary in a speech on September 1, 1989.
going cap in hand to the United States, smacks of political fantasy. It would be pitiable and vain.
As for internal policies, the primordial task is to democratize in a consistent manner, without hesitation. Deeds must conform to words. To promote national unity through the mobilization of all the material, intellectual and moral capacities of all our compatriots, including those in the diaspora, appealing to their love for
Reconciliation and national harmony must be sincerely and deeply put into practice, and all discrimination against the overseas Vietnamese and against religions must be abolished. • At the end of November 1990, the 10th plenum of the Central Committee of the VCP stressed the need to reinforce public security.
I have sensed rising panic among our leaders since the 10th plenum. Tighten the belt, rely on our own forces, deliberately exaggerate the external threats... It is not with slogans such as these that the crisis will be overcome. On the contrary they risk making things worse.... • Who are you addressing by making your petition public? And what consequences are you preparing
....If this petition has any strength, it lies in its rationality, in its realism. I hope that it will reach not only the ears of the leaders (who will probably throw it into the wastebin) but also and above all those of many of my compatriots. I believe in the power of public opinion. Since I believe this, I have avoided demagogic proposals, limiting myself to spelling out what seems true to me, to say: there are things wrong in Vietnam.
I thus hope to contribute to stimulating, enriching and democratizing the debates in the society and in the party's congress-
It is through a vast democratic debate that a way out will be found to the crisis from which our country is suffering. I am not driven by personal political ambition. I am simply trying to take up my responsibilities as a citizen.
By prolonging my stay in France, I am not seeking political asylum. I am intending to return to Vietnam and join my efforts with those of our compatriots in order to find a solution to our country's problems. * 3. The group of intellectuals known as Nhân Van-Giai Phâm ("Humanism and Letters") was harshly repressed in 1956. From 1963, when the VCP took the Chinese side in the Sino-Soviet split, until 1967, when the Chinese "Cultural Revolution" caused a crisis in Sino-Vietnamese relations, there were a series of "affairs" in which cadres were accused of "revisionism" or being "anti-party" or "reactionary". Finally, in 1986, the VCP organization in the army refused to elect the top military leaders as their delegates to the 6th congress. Pressures and repression against 12 colonels followed.
A "people's
democratic
front"
DOCTOR Nguyên Khac Viên did not attend his Patriotic Front meeting to discuss the draft texts for the 7th Congress of the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP). He explained his reasons in a letter of January 7, 1991 addressed to the Front's president Nguyên Huu Tho. DOCUMENT
F IRST of all, excuse me for not
attending this meeting of the Patriotic Front. Without doubt you want to know my reasons, and I will therefore give them to you here. I do not want to debate the "Programme" or the "Strategy"; this is not the time. There are other, more urgent, things to do.
The essential problem facing the 7th Congress is not political programme, it is to resolve the question of organization. The 6th Congress [in 1986] came out with a correct line but did not establish a new organization; this is the main contradiction of the past few years. If this question is not resolved, there will be no progress. Worse, we can only sink deeper
The party apparatus is today totally powerless, plunging society into disorder and preventing any development. This impotence originates in the fact that:
1. The party's committees, both at central and local level, hold all power. The Political Bureau, the Secretariat, the Central Organization Commission, the Central Commission for Culture Ideology decide all concrete questions, while the Council of Ministers, the National Assembly, the ministries and the departments simply carry out instruc-
At the provincial level, each federal party secretary is an overlord who decides everything, from economics to culture, passing through the naming of personnel. The same is true at the level of each district, and each community.
The result of this confusion between the party and state apparatuses is a situation where decisions can only be taken slowly and where each tries to shift
VIETNAM а я responsibility onto someone else. Finally, in the real sense of the terms there is neither leadership nor management, and the impotence of the state apparatus goes hand in hand with the degeneration of the party.
Power corrupts...
The party is degenerating because it directly holds power. If, in the past, to join the party was to voluntarily join in its struggles and risk imprisonment, today it is no more than a way of getting promotion. The opportunists pounce on the party and each leader is surrounded with courtiers, while anyone who shows signs of rectitude, resolution or uprightness is isolated and discouraged. For as long as the party retains power the degeneration will continue, and neither educational activity nor criticism and will be any help. There is nothing that is more easy for the corrupt people than to repress their accusers and to do this in the name of the party itself.
2. The population, the cadres and the party's rank-and-file militants have lost all confidence in the leading personnel. The Political Bureau, the Secretariat, the Central Organization Commission the Central Commission for Culture and Ideology only include comrades who are too old, physically incapable after 70 people should retire)? or too rooted in the old habits of thought and work and unable to follow present day trends, to be in step with the new generations, or to grasp new
My wish is that the 7th Congress should concentrate its efforts in order to definitively sort out two problems:
a) The party must firmly state its intention to give back to the different elected and state organs all their powers. Concretely, it should proceed to the dissolution of a series of organs of the Central Commitice and party committees at a local level; it must give back property and two thirds of its cadres to the state; the reduction of personnel must begin with 1. The "Political Programme for the Construction of Socialism" and the "Strategy for Socio-economic Stabilization and Development until the Year 2,000" are the two official draft documents for the 7th VCP Con2. The average ental Commit me polical Barcau 15 is 74 years, of Central Committee members 64 years. April 15, 1991• #204 International Viewpoint
Doctor Viên
DOCTOR Nguyên Khac Viên is 78 years old. He heads the Centre for the
Study of Child Psychology, a non-governmental organization. The first NGO of this type in Vietnam, it was founded in October 1988 by a group of pediatricians
VIETNAM the party's organizations. b) The comrades currently at the head of the CC's organs should retire and give way to new people. This would be an act of the highest patriotism, highly appreciated by the population and the cadres, susceptible to recreate the confidence that has
Despite his fragile health (he had a lung removed in his youth), Viên has been so much undermined. If these comengaged in militant activity since 1943 until the present day, first as an antistaying in place this will rades insist on colonialist Vietnamese nationalist and then as a Communist. He spent 25 only detract from their glorious past and years in France before returning to Vietnam in 1963; doctor Viên is at home in they will be responsible for the coming two cultures collapse.
Just after the Second World War, Viên collaborated with Trotskyist militants
If the Congress is unable to clearly and in the Vietnamese workers' organization in France. In 1949, however, he two questions these definitively tackle rejoined the French Communist Party and adopted all its positions, including and my most sincere wish is to see my blind support of Stalin and the denunciation of Yugoslavia's Tito or the Trotskypredictions disproved) our country faces ists in France. However, according to Hoang Giang, unlike many others, he
I would like to put forward some ideas preferred to use political means in such struggles rather than outrageous slanon the situation in the country:
ders (See Chroniques Vietnamiennes. no. 4, summer 1986, p.21).
The private economy is going to devel-
On his return to Vietnam in 1963, he naturally joined the VCP. Out of respect op and foreign firms will invest in Vietfor his personality he was able to keep his "seniority" in the movement despite nam. This is a tendency that cannot be the change of party - an exceptional measure.
resisted and which will allow scientific
He became director of Études vietnamiennes, a magazine of high quality, and technical progress and will permit until his retirement age. Throughout the years he has been one of the best some people to use their abilities. The known Vietnamese intellectuals and one of the most convincing official spokesnational bourgeoisie and foreign capital persons of the VCP. Many of my generation, aroused to act by the imperialist are going to make an alliance to exploit war in Indochina, learned much from him, both about the country itself and the resources and labour force. To service about its war of liberation.
this economic structure there will be a
Later on, Viên turned his attention to the problem of the bureaucracy. He threefold apparatus: the apparatus of ecobecame increasingly involved in the struggle for the reform of the party. In nomic management; the state apparatus of
1981, he sent a first open "letter" to the National Assembly (in order to undergovernment (administration, police); and line the preeminence that he would henceforth accord to the state over the parthe cultural apparatus (which controls the ty) which castigates the bureaucratic inertia and Maoist heritage of the VCP.
Now, from the moment when there is a
In the run-up to the 6th Congress in 1986, he came out resolutely on the side market economy, profit is king, and talk of the renovators. He also appears to have expected a lot from Gorbachev's of humanity is out of the window. Furthermore, humanity is not the hallmark of
The new "letter" that we republish here shows that his thinking is continuing bureaucratic apparatuses. Faced with such to develop. It seems to show the end of illusions in the Soviet leadership and an economic/political/ideological apparathrows a harsh and clear light on the current state of the VCP. It also raises a tus, which is both national and internawhole range of questions on the lessons of the current upheavals in the world.
tional (in that a higher cadre of this apparatus will consider him or herself at once as Vietnamese and as belonging to
Mitsubishi, Toyota or Philips) the people must form a democratic front as a counterweight and defend:
• Democratic liberties.
• Social justice (to assure reasonable pay for the workers; avoid excessive social differentiation; assure education and health; defend culture).
• The environment.
• Peace.
Such a front, while rejecting armed struggle, must put to work all forms of democratic struggle to obtain above all:
* The freedom of the press and of thought.
* Freedom of association to organize its own activity free from apparatus dictates.
It was through a constant 200 year struggle that the populations of the developed capitalist countries were able to establish a regime that we have wrongly qualified
"bourgeois"
democratic. Democratic as liberties and social rights were torn from the bourgeoisie in struggle and should thus be called popular liberties, if the real meaning of the development is to be
16 being founded, word fine of capital is understood. If a world front of capital is
International Viewpoint #204 • April 15, 1991 democratic popular front on a world scale, is also in formation. Our people cannot stay on the sidelines. It is not only in the so-called socialist countries that we have friends. The moment will come will no longer have any importance. The democratic front will have changed its
Freedom of the press, of association, of petition, of demonstration, to strike and of election are the forms of struggle of our epoch; they are proven means that can lead to profound reforms. According to the context of each country, the formation of the front will be more or less slow
Let us hope that our party will be able to reform itself and become part of the framework of such a front. Today, the party leadership is heading in the opposite direction. The lack of democracy in the party and society have led it to reject persons of conviction (such as Bùi Tín, Duong Thu Huong, those Vietnamese living outside the country who have signed the "letter" and before that such comrades as Lê Liêm, Ung Van Khiêm, or
Dang Kim Giang) and made them into opponents. A great number have been demoralized, among them, one can say almost all the idealistic youth and intelligentsia.
These are some of my thoughts and hopes, since, at my age, and in my weakened physical condition, I no longer have other ambitions. I will devote the years that remain to me to the development of studies in child psychology in the framework of the N-T Centre which, along with friends, I have helped to set up over the past two years. 4 * 3. For more on Duong Thu Huong and the "Letter" of diaspora Vietnamese see International Viewpoint, no. 201, March 4, 1991. For Bùi Tín see article on page. 13 of this number of IV. The three other "comrades" to which Viên refers were condemned for "revisionism" or "anti-partyism", during the "affairs" that shook the VCP in 1963 and 1967. Lê Liêm was CC member and vice-minister of culture, Ung Van Khiêm was minister of foreign affairs and Dang Kim Giang was a general in the people's army. 4. N-T is the Vietnamese abbreviation of studies in infantile psychology, the non-govemmental organization led by Viên.
Putting politics in
THE US war in the Gulf is, in its broadest contours, an effort by the Us to define a new military-centrec global order in which markets, income and resource shares are defined not by technological market power, but by political-military dominance.
The following article, which first appeared in the
March 2-9 edition of the Bombay journal Economic and Political Weekly, attempts an overview of the strategy of the US military/industrial complex and its limitations. The article was written before the command end of the war. JAMES PETRAS
T HE UNITED States war in the