Vietnam Revisited

I had been gone from Vietnam for more than four years, and when I got off the plane in Saigon in late February, all sorts of mixed feelings went through my head.

I thought: People yell about bloodbaths, but there have been bloodbaths ever since I've known this place. But besides the bloody side, there is an idyllic view of green rice paddies and kind, well-disciplined people running around caring for them. The people who pay for the war never quite feel all this.

My week visit to Vietnam -- my second since I was an International Voluntary Service community worker there from 1963-67 -- changed my mind on some things. I did't realize how isolated the Saigon government is from the people. I didn't realize the sheer quantity and quality of the oppressive-repressive tactics unleashed on the population. I didn't realize as forcefully the effect of the whole Phoenix operation. Con Son Island, with its tiger cages, is just full of people who had no connection with any political side.

Since the Paris agreements of 1973, the repressive and arbitrary style of Nguyen Van Thieu's government has escalated even beyond what was present in the 1960s.

The request to go to Vietnam came from the Indochina Resource Center in Washington, D.C., which was looking for someone who could still get into South Vietnam to arrange some interviews for the U.S. congressional delegation. The delegation (Dewey Bartlett, Paul McCloskey, Bella Abzug, Donald Fraser, Bill Chappell, Millicent Fenwick, John R. Murtha, and John F. Flynt) went to Vietnam at the request of the Ford administration, which was hoping to convince Congress of the need for supplemental military aid for South Vietnam and Cambodia. Peace groups were hoping that interviews for the delegation could be arranged with opposition leaders, political prisoners and former prisoners, religious leaders, journalists, lawyers, and others with views different from those of the persons whom the U.S. Embassy might arrange for the delegation to see.

With the help of three or four others in Saigon (who had to work less openly than I), I managed to pry delegation members loose from the embassy schedule to talk to people like Thieu Thi Tao, who had spent about six years in prison.

She and her sister were arrested in the fall of 1968, when she was 18, after being involved in student peace activities. She eventually ended up at the Con Son Island prison and was in the tiger cages when they were discovered by Tom Harkin (now a congressman from Iowa), Don Luce, and others. She was one of the few in the tiger cages at the time who could speak fluent English.

Now released, she volunteered to speak with the congressional delegation and a meeting was finally arranged with Fraser and Abzug at the guest house where some of the congresspeople were staying.

She spent two hours telling of being hung from the ceiling; seeing her sister raped in prison; having soapy water forced down her nose and stomach; having lighted cigarettes pressed against sensitive parts of her body; seeing other prisoners die, especially on Con Son Island, where the water is not always boiled. If a prisoner gets sick, the chances of recovery are minimal.

Prison officials tried to force her in early 1974 to go over to the side of the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG) during the prisoner exchanges. Former prisoners report that few actual Communists were exchanged. Another prisoner who refused to go was in the same cell with four avowed Communists who were never given the opportunity. Now, three months after her release, Tao suffers from headaches caused by malnutrition and constant beating. Fraser and Abzug were visibly moved by her story.

At great risk to themselves and their families, a number of political prisoners talked openly about their experiences of torture, interrogation, and being forced to sign false confessions.

Another former prisoner described how the secret police offered her $150 (U.S.) if she would not talk to any foreigners about her imprisonment. When she refused, the secret police visited her a second time, threatened the family with harassment, threw $50 down on the table and left. This former school teacher had been totally apolitical until she was arbitrarily detained, tortured, and almost beaten to death by the police. She was found uncared for in a Saigon hospital by a Mennonite Central Committee volunteer, who found medical help for her.

Huynh Tan Mam, a Saigon student leader who has been in prison since 1971, talked openly to Representatives Fraser and Abzug in spite of the numerable secret police stationed near his cell. Meanwhile, Rep. Fenwick kept the deputy minister of the Open Arms Returnee Program and the others who had been present to interrupt the interview occupied. Mam handed the delegation a note written in blood before they arrived. It read: “I am infinitely pleased to welcome your delegation and take this opportunity to ask the delegation to convey my protest to Mr. Nguyen Van Thieu. Immediately stop retaliating against me. Free me immediately and the arrested university and high school students. Release political prisoners, and behave humanely.”

The delegation had less luck talking to 18 imprisoned journalists who were arrested in January.

When Rep. McCloskey visited the interrogation center where they were being held, prison officials refused to admit with him a leading Vietnamese senator, who could have identified the journalists and acted as an interpreter. When McCloskey met the hostages, each of them said they were a Communist. When he took the daughter of one of the journalists aside, who was also being held, she whispered forcefully in his ear that they had all been tortured and forced under threat to make the confessions they had made. No one was able to confirm whether the people McCloskey met were the actual journalists.

Fraser, Chappell, Abzug, and Fenwick tried to make a followup visit to the journalists later in the week, insisting on having their own interpreters and having private conversation with the journalists according to the minimal standards of the International Red Cross. Earlier in the week the lawmakers had been assured by Ambassador Graham Martin that the U.S. Embassy would forward such a request to the Vietnamese government.

When the prison authorities denied the request, the delegation refused to go through with the visits. The congresspeople later found out that their requests had never been relayed to the Saigon government as promised.

The Vietnamese euphemistically call Graham Martin "Thieu’s ambassador in Washington."

Opposition people who are not in prison are under house arrest or under constant surveillance. There are an estimated 20,000 secret police in Saigon alone partially funded by the U.S. government’s public safety assistance through AID. I was followed the whole time I was in Saigon. A friend said 30 secret police had been assigned to me. Some days I saw them in white car, some days they had gray cars. Most of them followed me on motor scooters.

On my last day in Saigon I thought I had lost the police and decided to risk having dinner with an old friend. After we sat down to eat, a neighbor informed my friend that four plainclothes police had just come by his house to gather information on him. Although he and his family will be safe for a time, I know that he will be harassed and intimidated. I carefully avoided meeting with many old Vietnamese friends because of this.

One deputy from Quang Ngai Province, Nguyen Van Ham, a leader in the recently organized Anti-hunger League, which distributes rice to needy families, was nearly killed in a questionable accident three months ago when he was struck by an on coming vehicle. Ham and his colleagues assume that the vehicle that struck him was instructed to do so by the authorities, who fear the Anti-hunger Movement. The movement -- which brings strong religious groups together -- is a threat to the Saigon government which has refused to recognize the existence of an anti-government, anti-Communist opposition.

But in spite of the lack of recognition by the government and in spite of government harassment, a third political force is emerging. Lawyers, monks, priests, middle-level civil servants, younger army officers, prisoners, and former prisoners are becoming a loosely tied force of opponents to the South Vietnamese government and its American benefactors.

The non-government opposition people argue that Thieu’s oppressive tactics prevent a genuine Vietnamese non-Communist third force or even a right-wing force from emerging. Thieu’s base is primarily military rather than political. Thieu and his American supporters are therefore assisting the Communist cause by continuing to alienate large blocks of opposition people. There is no possibility of moving the conflict from the military to the political arena when non-government, non-PRG institutions are not permitted to exist.

Many of these people pleaded with us to find ways to terminate all U.S. aid, so that the U.S.-mandated Saigon government can be replaced with a National Council of National Reconciliation and Concord, called for in the Paris Peace Agreements.

During one briefing, lawyer Tran Ngoc Lieng, head of the Committee to Protect the Paris Agreements, held up a copy of the Paris Agreements which was published illegally in Saigon. His committee is under constant harassment by the government, which has refused to implement political implications of the Paris Agreements.

A chief target of opposition groups has been the corruption which is present at almost all levels of government. “Ghost soldiers” are carried on the pay roster but never report for duty; policemen must pay their superiors in order to keep their jobs.

During the last two years, the big income-producer for a few generals has been scrap metal salvaged from old U.S. bases. It is estimated that $2 billion in scrap metal has been sold already, mostly to Taiwan and Singapore. There are stories of even planes being dismantled for scrap. There is possibly $9 billion still possible in salvage from U.S. bases, although it is hard to get the facts.

A Catholic priest friend told of a new convert who had recently acquired a job as a police officer. He knew his superior officer would require one-fourth of his paycheck. If he refused to pay, he would be banished to a distant department far away from his family. If he paid, he would have to pass on his bribery expenses by getting it out of someone else. He brought his dilemma to the priest. The Vietnamese church is full of stories such as this one.

Until recently Christians in Vietnam were the most reliable supporters of the Saigon government. Now, a few are starting to talk about reconciliation.

Ly Chanh Trung, a Catholic professor and leader in the renewal movement, argues that until powerful Christian forces in the churches reclaim the historic Christian message of reconciliation, the war will continue. He urges his fellow Christians not only to seek dialog with the other side, but to initiate the work of reconciliation in Vietnamese society. Some Buddhists have long urged such a course.

It is certain -- if peace is to be achieved -- the moral leadership of the religious communities would play a significant role. One would hope that the foreign voluntary relief agencies would be reliable partners in the effort. Most, however, have been “apolitical” or anti-Communist. The only useful foreign assistance, public or private, that the Vietnamese can use now will be highly prejudiced towards reconciliation and against continuation of the present bloodbath. The largest block of Christians still tend to be anti-Communist and pro-government, but an increasing group has become critical in the last four years, particularly the Roman Catholics. A few are trying to understand the Vietnamese situation along the lines of “liberation” theology.

The experience of the hundreds of thousands of Catholic refugees who came from the North is getting old. A second generation without strong feelings is emerging. Some of the most articulate young opposition leaders are coming from these Catholic communities.

There are a few dissenting voices within the Protestant church, but it is very small, only 50,000 people at most. Protestants have been influenced even more than Catholics by an uncompromising anti-Communism that came by way of North American missionaries.

Reconciliation supporters argue that Vietnamese have historically assimilated many different groups, ideas, political tendencies, and religions. This ability to assimilate suggests that reconciliation is possible if foreign powers cease their intervention by supplying money and weapons for war. Now more than ever there is almost total disillusionment -- of everyone not connected with the Thieu government -- with the possibility of a solution coming from foreign intervention. What foreign visitors and congressional delegations often fail to see is that we can always find a few Vietnamese who would prefer to rely on foreign aid and continue the war.

A Vietnamese nationalism that relies on neither American, French, nor Chinese aid is reasserting itself. Vietnamese are more willing to be hostile to foreigners -- in a decent sort of way. When Rep. Fenwick asked a Vietnamese at one interview early in the trip, “Do you have people to replace Mr. Thieu?” the Vietnamese replied, “That’s a very arrogant question for you to ask. What do you mean, ‘Do we have people to replace Mr. Thieu?’ Of course, we do. Do I ask you whether you have people to replace Mr. Nixon?”

The domino theory assumes that the U.S. can’t have friendly relations with a socialist government. But the traditional animosity between Vietnamese and Chinese is growing stronger. The North Vietnamese must inevitably find other strong international relationships. Vietnamese nationalism will inevitably reassert itself. Most Vietnamese just want to be left alone.

Without war, the Vietnamese are able to take care of themselves and feed themselves. If the Vietnamese were allowed to get themselves together without war, there would even be no need for the grand plethora of voluntary agencies working in Vietnam.

Perhaps when American aid can no longer be construed as intervention, only then should we send humanitarian aid. For now, more aid simply gives Thieu another U.S. vote of confidence from the States: to continue the secret police harassment; to continue the arrests and torture; to continue squelching all political forces except the Communists; to continue the widespread corruption; to continue to wrack the land with warfare.

Twelve years after I first went to Vietnam, the war still goes on.

When this article appeared, Gene Stoltzfus was a member of the Mennonite Volunteer Service in Newton, Kansas, and had recently returned from an extended visit to Vietnam. While there, he served as an interpreter for members of the congressional fact-finding team. When this article appeared, Lois Barrett Janzen was assistant editor of The Mennonite.