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North Vietnamese Army
Lieutenant General Tran Do, the famous dissident who has been fiercely
criticizing the ruling Communist Party he had faithfully served for nearly 60
years, passed away on August 9, 2002 at 79 after months of hospitalization. He
had suffered from gangrene and diabetes.
Tran Do
is a typical warrior who was fighting a long bloody war for the Vietnam
Communist Party and Marxist ideology, but turned adamant dissident against the
Hanoi tyranny.
Tran Do
was born 1923, birth name Ta Ngoc Phach, in the northern province of Thai Binh.
He joined the Communist ranks in November1940 and was quickly promoted to
lieutenant general and assigned to important political and military posts.
He took
part in many Communist military and political campaigns including the battles
of Dien Bien Phu in 1954. During the Vietnam War (1960-1975), Tran Do was
serving as Deputy Political Commissar for the Communist armed forces in South
Vietnam.
He was then appointed Deputy Chief of the
Communist Armed Forces General Department of Politics (one of the three
departments of the Armed Forces HQS under the Ministry of Defense. The other
two are General Staff and General Logistics departments).
He also
was famous in other jobs. He was a member of the VCP Central Committee
(1960-1991), and the head of the Party Central Committee's Culture, Literature
and Art Commission, the top ideologue of the Party. In the Vietnam Communist
Party, that is a key job covering the entire ideological and propaganda
activities, which Communist leaders consider more important than military
efforts.
Tran Do
was also a deputy in the Communist National Assembly (the 2nd, 7th
and 8th legislatures; Vice Chairman of the 8th), and a
deputy minister of the Ministry of Culture.
He
wrote several essays regarding political warfare especially one about armed
propaganda. He also published many books (memoirs, novels...).
Since
the early 1990s, Tran Do began criticizing the VCP's current policies. People
in and out of Vietnam have been interested in his open letters addressing the
VCP top leaders about the present deteriorating situation in Vietnam, and see
him as one of the most prominent advocates of political and economic radical
reforms, free elections and freedom of expression. He warns the party has to
"change or die" and ditch socialism to boost economic growth. In 1999
he was seeking permission to publish a private newspaper but his request was
turned down.
Since
1997, he has been under harassment and house surveillance imposed by the
central Communist authorities, which failed to silence him. At last, central
leaders expelled him from the Party in
January 1999. Recently, secret police stopped him on the street, searched him
and confiscated his 83-page memoirs.
Hanoi officials accused him of spreading documents with subversive
content.
In his
last letter, he accuses the Communist leaders of incapability, greediness,
arrogance, and neo-feudalism... He demands that the Communist Party give up its
monopoly of the press and expression, discard Marx-Lenin socialism and help
construct a true democracy.
His
outspoken statements shock the whole party, and might be frightening the VCP
top leaders as well. As a chief ideologue and with his popularity, his words
carry a convincing power stronger than that of any one else in the Party. Tran Do's defection from the party led other
prominent officials to turn in their party membership cards.
Many
overseas Vietnamese democracy activists maintain that Tran Do is still
supporting the existence of the Communist Party. In his writings, he often
praises the pre-1975 Communist regime of its achievements, high moral and
victorious civic action to win the people' s hearts and mind.
Many
others have different opinions. They said Tran Do couldn't launch an all-out
attack against the Communist leaders and their mistakes as other dissidents
such as Duong Thu Huong and Nguyen Chi Thien had done. For personal security
under a brutal regime, he must consolidate a foothold on a safe ground to
conduct his verbal ideological offensive.
Besides,
nobody could break up easily with his past, especially with his memories of a
remarkable military and political career.
Compiling
all his statements, people could see that his criticism against the Hanoi
regime is the strongest attack, sparing no living Communist leaders and their
policies. He describes the current regime as the worst tyranny at all respects.
In his 83-page memoirs, he said, "The current socialist regime in Vietnam
is much more heinous than the Ch'in Shui-Huang dynasty and the barbarism of
Hitler's Fascist regime." (Quoted by Hoang Minh Chinh, another famous
dissident, who had read the memoirs before they were confiscated). That is the
strongest speech he could use against the Communist Party.
His
firm conviction is that the only way for better economic and politic
development in Vietnam is the true democracy and the non-Communist regime.
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