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University of Iowa anti-war protests, 1970

1970-10-07 ""Iowa City People's Peace Treaty Committee"" Page 22

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VIETNAM: THE NEXT PHASE 22 By Bob Greenblatt During meetings with the Vietnamese and Laotians in the last two months, I became aware of a series of dramatic developments currently underway in Indochina pointing to the prospects of a major political offensive in South Vietnam, which may well lead to a governmental crisis in Saigon. The first of these meetings with the Vietnamese took place in Havana and included members of the Committee of Solidarity with the American people, leaders of the Womens Unions in the north and south, NLF organizers who came directly from Saigon and Hue and, on a separate occasion, Phoumi Vonvichet, Secretary-General of the Pathet Lao. The later meetings took place in Paris talks including Minister Xuan Thuy and Madame Nguyen Thi Binh as well as a number of independent French journalists specializing in Southeast Asian affairs. All of these discussions, with a remarkable degree of correlation, pointed to an upsurge of organized anti-American activity, the increasing isolation of the Thieu-Ky-Khiem regime and the failure of Vietnamization, all against the background of a US expeditionary force (USEF) relying ever more heavily on destruction and terrorization of the population through artillery and air bombardment. I. The current military posture of the US in South Vietnam is an almost totally passive expeditionary force dug into enclaves around artillery and air bases with beefed up ARVN forces serving as defense perimeters. With the exception of the US invasion of Cambodia, a military and political failure of major proportions, the USEF has conducted no important ground offensive since the costly assault on Hamburger Hill over a year ago. By contrast, during the past eight months, the NLF has sustained military pressure in the mountain and coastal areas of northern South Vietnam and the Mekong Delta, in addition to repeated forays in other areas. According to NLF figures, during the current year, attacks have been mounted against 38 of the 48 province capitals, 155 our of 260 district twons and 2323 strategic hamlets. During the same period, NLF figures claim the destruction of 60 pacification teams, 1400 pacification agents and 38,400 casualties among police, militia and ARVN troops. The invasion of Cambodia, far from regaining the initiative for the US or from destroying NLF headquarters has mobilized a strong guerrilla movement in that country and has increased the level of cooperation between Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian resistance forces. Nixon's much heralded program of Vietnamization an increased reliance on mercenary ground forces, has helped to keep US casualty low but has failed in every other objective. Implementation of the Vietnamization program is the direct cause of much of the emerging organized mass political opposition to the Thieu-Ky-Khiem regime, the most important and startling facet of the current developments. II. The increased manpower needs created by Vietnamization has compelled Saigon to resort to "pressganging" recruits, resulting in high percentages of dissidents, draft dodgers and NLF sympathizers in ARVN. Crash attempts to upgrade the ARVN officer corps from the ranks of secondary school and university students resulted in galvanizing a militant student power movement against the regime. Secondary students were mobilized into action by new examinations which resulted in 80% failures and consequent loss of draft deferments. In the Coa Thanh Technical High School in Saigon, an important center of activity during the anti-Diem campaign of 1963, student protests this spring led to sit-ins, occupation of the buildings and violent clashes with police which lasted for several days. University students responded even more forcefully to Saigon regulations requiring military training on weekends and during the summer months. In the spring of 1969, those regulations set off a rash of street demonstrations resulting in the burning military offices. Attempts to revive such compulsory military training, coupled with Saigon indifference to the massacre of ethnic Vietnamese in Cambodia in the aftermath of the US invasion, set off another wave of anti-government struggle by university students in major cities this spring. This struggle is still going on despite incredible attempts to repress it through mass arrests, detention in tiger cages, torture and assassination. Man, head of the Saigon Student Union, had spent close to six months of the past year in prison. The following cable received in the US by NSA on September 20, 1970 speaks for itself: [hand drawing cartoon] " HE SAYS HE WON'T LEAVE UNLESS WE AGREE TO LET HIM STAY !" Mam and friends are in agony in jail. Students on unlimited hunger strike, May die. May immolate. Saigon Student Union continuously barricaded and repressed. Students being threatened with arrest, Need immediate action. Make general appeal in US III. Political opposition in the cities of South Vietnam is by no means confined to students. The unprecedented picture of wheelchair-bound ARVN veterans in armed combat with puppet troops in the shadow of Saigon's presidential palace managed to break through the US press blackout. But not so the massacre of 40 young monks from the An Quang pagoda, part of a much larger group that had staged a non-violent sit-in at the government-supported National Pagoda under the banner " The Pagoda Belongs to the People". Through July of this year, there were three major labor strikes and several smaller ones involving hundreds of thousands of people ranging from dock workers, bus drivers and hotel employees to water and electrical workers. Although these strikes were based on economic demands ( Saigon prices have risen 50% in less than a year), the context of Saigon makes every strike political, and a 1965 law makes every one illegal. South Vietnamese intellectuals and journalists have also become increasingly outspoken and activist in their criticism of Vietnamization; the Thieu-Ky-Khiem regime and continued US devastation of Vietnam, They began by issuing statements in support of the student struggles and those of the disabled war veterans and other victims of government repression. Even Tran Van Don, one of the more reactionary members of the Saigon National Assembly and an old flame of Madame Nhu, has openly supported the students. Saigon newspapers are dropping the quotation marks around NLF and have begun referring to Madame Binh, head of the PRG delegation in Paris, by her full title, a customary sign of respect she had not been previously accorded in these papers. Several papers openly criticize "US imperialism" and report the PRG statements issued in Paris. Tin Sang, the largest circulation Saigon daily, printed the full text of the PRG Eight Point Program as a front-page article. The regime, of course, strikes back. In the past six months alone over 200 newspapers were seized and there were many other suspensions. Tin Sang alone was seize 75 times and suspended eight times during that period. Nevertheless, the struggle not only continues but spreads and gains in strength, organization and audacity. IV. The editor of Tin Sang, Deputy Ngo Cong Duc of Vinh Binh province, is a wealthy 36-year-old landowner from the Mekong Delta, a leading Catholic layman and president of the Federation of Newspaper Editors of South Vietnam. Elected to the National Assembly in 1967 on the Thieu late, Duc is now leader of the Socialist Opposition Bloc in the Assembly and an unofficial spokesman for the emerging forces in US occupied areas of South Vietnam that are critical of the Thieu-Ky-Khiem regime, openly demanding US withdrawal and advocating coalition with the PRG. At a press conference in Paris on 21 September 1970, Duc described the role of the US troops in South Vietnam as engaged in round-the-clock massacres of our innocent compatriots. Cases such as My Lai-Son My, which each time take 500-600 victims, are by no means isolated incidents. The US has dropped more than ten million tons of bombs on our country, and scattered an untold quantity of toxic chemical products as well as nearly one hundred thousand tons of defoliants on our fields and rice plantations, which have resulted in the sterilization and destruction of all the harvests. Rich in rice, South Vietnam is now reduced to consuming American rice. As a result of the use of toxic products, South Vietnam is currently plagued with strange diseased: women are giving birth to monsters, and there is an ever growing number of women afflicted with psychic disorders. Duc described the "success" of Vietnamization and the Thieu regime in these words: On the political level, with the Vietnamization of the war, the United States seeks only to uphold the militaries and prolong the war The government of Mr. Nguyen Van Thieu is a dictatorial government which persecutes all those who struggle for peace and independence, and jails the innocent. In the single province of Minh Binh, of which I am a deputy more than three hundred people were last year arbitrarily arrested and jailed. In 1969, the Americans stated that there were only twenty thousand cadres in South Vietnam; at the end of 1969, however, the government arrested more than seventy thousand people, and it appears that the number of communist cadres has not diminished. These very figures condemn the repressive policies of the Saigon government. At the present, the Nguyen Van Thieu government severely represses all opposition movements. Several hundred war victims are being held in jails; several hundred students were taken to military training camps; the Student Union of Saigon Hue is in prison. All are subjected to the most savage kinds of torture. The statement goes on to detail the atrocities committed by US imperialism and the "dictatorial " Saigon regime, and concludes with a proposal for peace which is entirely compatible with the PRG Peace Initiative (Eight Point Program) and is in violation of Saigon treason statutes. Included is the Duc plan is a proposal to seat a fifth delegation at the Paris talks to represent the "overwhelming majority" of the South Vietnamese population in the occupied areas " demanding peace, independence, democracy, freedom and national reconciliation." Needless to say, this amounts to the total repudiation of the legitimacy of the Saigon regime. Ngo Cong Duc is no isolated or Quixotic figure. A close associate of General "BIg" Minh, often mentioned as the more likely head of a transitional coalition, Duc has the explicit and open support of leading personalities in Saigon as well as the popular political forces described earlier. A brief but instructive listing of such supporters includes: the Assistant Archbishop of the Catholic Church in Saigon, the Unified Budhist Church, leaders of the Budhist list in the last elections, the Vice President of the National Assembly (Ha Van MInh), the head of the Movement of Women to Defend the Right of Survival (Nguyen Ba Thanh), the head of the faculty of Liberal Arts (Vo Ba) and Faculty of Science (Nguyen Van Thzung) at Saigon University, as well as leading journalists.
 
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