In his televised announcement of the Peace agreement, President Nixon stated that the U.S. would continue to consider General Thieu’s administration as “the sole legitimate government of South Vietnam,” and will continue to supply, arm and finance it. Unfortunately, the historical record indicates that Pres. Nixon’s statement means that the U .S. will attempt to maintain in power a government which has no popular support in South Vietnam. This government therefore must rule through assassination, censorship, and jailings. Its survival depends totally on U .S. aid. There is absolutely nothing in its past that indicates that the Saigon government can survive free political competition—and no indication that its U.S. sponsors intend to allow General Thieu and his colleagues to be swept from power. Too strong a series of statements? Let’s look at exactly who our “ally” is.
OVER 200,000 IN JAIL
In October, 1971, while President Thieu was staging what even the U.S. government termed a one-man presidential election, the man who had run second to Thieu in the 1967 elections, Truong Dinh Dzu, was still in jail. According to a deputy in the South Vietnamese government’s Lower House, Hoang The Phiet, over 40,000 South Vietnamese were jailed in that month of October for their opposition to the lack of choice in the elections (reported in the largest Catholic daily newspaper in Saigon, Tin Sang, on February 2, 1972).
Over four years ago, in July 1968, the Saigon Daily News reported that there were over 100,000 political prisoners in Saigon’s jails. In the last year the number has been increasing dramatically: on July 10, 1972, Time magazine reported that “arrests are continuing at the rate of 14,000 per month.”
ASSASSINATIONS
According to Thieu’s Ministry of Information, 40,994 civilians were killed by the Phoenix Program from August 1968 to mid-1971. The program is a joint CIA-South Vietnamese effort to assassinate political officials of the Provisional Revolutionary Government. U.S. officials have expressed concern over the fact that the South Vietnamese Government has used the program to eliminate all of its political opposition, not just PRG civilians.
CENSORSHIP
There appears to be no freedom of the press even for anti-communist Catholic and Buddhist publications which print news deemed harmful by the Thieu government. According to Ngo Cong Duc, a deputy in the Lower House, editor of Tin Sang, and nephew of the Archbishop of Saigon, reporting to the International Press Institute in Munich, June 7, 1972, during the period from March 1970 to February 1972, his paper was confiscated by the government 295 times, condemned 120 times, and finally closed down by the government indefinitely. Gio Nam, the publication of the Buddhist Church, has been confiscated daily and forced to cease publication. Duc went on to list numerous other publications which have been closed down. Duc, himself, was jailed in 1971 for five days, and now has been sentenced in absentia to three years for leaving the country illegally. At present, at least 50 Saigon reporters are in jail for writing articles considered “harmful” to the national interest. Last fall, Thieu issued new decrees which resulted in the closing of one-third of all the papers left in South Vietnam. (Washington Post, September 16, 1972).
CORRUPTION
The South Vietnamese government is corrupt from its lowest to its highest levels.
The corruption of the government of South Vietnam is indicated by numerous reports by U.S. officials in Vietnam that appear throughout the Pentagon Papers:
The primary interest of GVN (Government of South Vietnam) officials in Bien Hoa province is money. The lucrative U.S. presence, with all the various service trades that cater to the soldier, have created a virtual gold mine of wealth which is directly or indirectly siphoned off and pocketed by the officials. (Pentagon Papers, Gravel Edition, Vol. III, p. 407).
HEROIN
A 1971 report of the U.S. Provost Marshal claimed “the degree of sophistication which the traffic in drugs (especially heroin) has achieved could not exist without at least the tacit approval, if not the active support, of senior officials of South Vietnam.” The report named customs official Tran Thien Khoi, the brother of Prime Minister Khiem, as a major heroin smuggler. NBC news on July 15, 1971 claimed that both Thieu and Ky profited from narcotics. NBC’s Saigon correspondent Phil Brady went on to call General Dan Van Quang, Thieu’s closest military advisor, “the biggest pusher in South Vietnam.”
ELECTIONS
The South Vietnamese Government has never allowed anything resembling free elections to take place. In the eighteen years of its existence, the South Vietnamese government has staged three presidential elections:
1955: Life magazine reported that U.S. officials had told President Diem that a 60 percent “success” would be quite sufficient, but Diem “insisted on 98 percent.” The way he acquired his total is evident in the election returns for the city of Saigon: Diem got 605,025 votes with only 450,000 voters registered.
1967: When the election committee of the National Assembly placed the names of General Minh and Au Truong Thanh, Premier Ky’s former Finance Minister, on the ballot, Ky announced that Minh would be barred from returning to the country and that the Saigon Police had discovered that Thanh was a communist and had arrested him. He was later exiled. The Assembly then met, with the head of the National Police, General Loan and two of his lieutenants armed with automatic rifles present in the balcony. After Loan declared that those who did not heed their words would hear their guns, the Assembly quickly ratified the exclusion of Minh and Thanh from the ballot. The man who was allowed to run and who finished second to Thieu and Ky in a race with eleven candidates, Truong Dinh Dzu, was jailed right after the election.
1971: Only Thieu was allowed to run, shunting aside even his old partner in power, General Ky.
LEADERS OF SOUTH VIETNAM
The leaders of the Government of South Vietnam are men whose backgrounds have been hidden from us.
Ironically, they are all from what is now called North Vietnam.
They all fought on the side of France in its effort to retain Indochina as a colony.
Richard Critchfield, writing in the Washington Star, March 26, 1972, about the coup of 1965 which brought President Thieu to power, stated:
The seizure of power by this cabal, grouped around a secret society known as the Mandarin Dai Viet and its preservation through national elections in 1967 and 1971 has effectively denied the South Vietnamese people any chance whatsoever of creating a government of the people, by the people, for the people.
U.S. SUPPORT
The role of the U.S. in running and aiding the Saigon administration cannot be overemphasized. In 1965 Premier Ky’s Foreign Minister told a delegation of visiting American religious leaders, “Without American support the government would not last five days.” In 1967, Premier Ky himself lowered that estimate to three days.
General Thieu is completely dependent on the $2.7 billion in military appropriations promised him by the U.S. for 1973.
Reprinted by permission, The Indochina Peace Campaign.
