Thieu Cracks Down on Saigon Opposition as Ford Claims Just Another Three Years to End of Tunnel

Intercontinental Press – March 3, 1975
By Peter Green (John Percy)

Reacting swiftly to a new political indictment of his dictatorship, Nguyen Van Thieu’s national police raided the offices of nine Saigon newspapers that were publishing the indictment February 2 and confiscated their press runs and printing plates. The statement had been drawn up by the opposition movement led by the Reverend Tran Huu Thanh.

During the next two days, mostly in predawn raids, the regime arrested twenty-four journalists and editors as “Communist agents.” Five newspapers were shut down.

Those arrested in the crackdown included two publishers, three managing editors, Saigon’s leading political cartoonist, and other well-known personalities. Some were subsequently released, but many of Saigon’s other opposition and independent journalists reportedly went into hiding.

This second indictment has broader backing than the Indictment No. 1 issued last September. It is supported by twenty-two opposition groups –journalists, lawyers, and students, as well as the Reverend Tran’s People’s Anticorruption Movement to Save the Country and Restore Peace.

The indictment accuses Thieu of having become “a mortal enemy of liberty, democracy and justice,” and says he should be “charged with high treason” for a series of political crimes. “As long as Mr. Thieu remains, there can be no peace, for he is a product of the war, he is nourished by the war and he can only survive with the war.”

“... having enriched himself during war, peace has become his greatest enemy.”

Thieu is also accused of having betrayed the army: “Now the soldiers have realized that they cannot any longer die for a corrupt clique, to consolidate the personal position of Thieu, to reinforce the generals bought by Thieu.”

Despite the seizure of the plates and press runs of the nine newpapers, the indictment is circulating clandestinely in Saigon and the provinces. Apparently some newspapers had anticipated the police raids and had secretly printed several thousand copies. The Association of Newspaper Publishers denounced the regime’s actions February 4 and called on the remaining four newspapers not controlled by Thieu to shut down in protest.

Duong Van Minh, the former general who has emerged as a spokesman for some of the opposition, also vigorously denounced the crackdown at a gathering at his Saigon villa February 5.

“This is not only an act of arrogance and arbitrariness,” he said, “but also an act of contempt of the people, contempt of world opinion, an act of contempt toward all those who struggle for peace and who love peace and conciliation. By this action, the Government is now nothing but a tyranny.”

The Thieu regime staged a news conference on February 6, where it presented what it called the “live evidence” of the Communist ring in the Saigon press.

“The two-and-a-half-hour conference,” James M. Markham reported in the February 7 New York Times, “presided over by the commander of the national police, the Interior Minister and the Information Minister, featured two men who said they were former Communist agents who had specialized in subverting Saigon’s press.”

But the report pointed out that Vietnamese and foreign reporters were not permitted to question the two after they had spoken, and that the “Communist agents” didn’t implicate any other journalists. An editor of one of the newspapers shut down by Thieu later denounced one of the “Communists” as a police agent.

On February 10 – the eve of Tet, the Vietnamese lunar new year – protests in Saigon condemned the regime’s crackdown. Opposition deputies and senators demonstrated on the steps of the National Assembly building, where they burned photos of Thieu. They chanted, “Grab Thieu’s head and pull him down” and “Nguyen Van Thieu must resign,” while a government sound truck blared out music in an attempt to drown them out.

A denunciation of Thieu signed by twenty-seven deputies and one senator was read aloud by Deputy Tran Van Tuyen. The statement charged that in January Thieu had purposely allowed the province of Phuoc Long to fall “to put pressure on the United States Government to give more military aid and to have an opportunity to oppress the opposition.” It called on Thieu to step down so that “the war shall be stopped, corruption shall be swept away and national reconciliation shall be a reality.” The deputies declared they would fast for a day in protest.

A group of twenty-seven Buddhist nuns also demonstrated near Thieu’s palace. They carried posters saying “If you repress us, we will burn ourselves.” Police seized a can of gasoline from them, herded them into vans, and took them away.

Plainclothes police attacked about fifty demonstrators on February 20 as they were marching to court to demand the release of the arrested journalists. Several of the demonstrators, who included National Assembly deputies and relatives of the arrested journalists, were injured when the police hit them with clubs and fists, the Washington Post reported February 21.

The attacks on the press were only a part of an offensive by Thieu to step up the repression. In a move February 5 aimed at strengthening his own personal power base, he promoted the commander of the national police. Major General Nguyen Khac Binh; the head of the Saigon police, Brigadier General Trang Si Tan; and four other ranking police officers.

He also reinstated Lieutenant General Nguyen Van Toan, putting him in charge of the military region that surrounds Saigon. Last October, under pressure from the opposition to clean up the army, Thieu had removed General Toan from his command in the Central Highlands. According to a report in the February 13 New York Times, Toan has “an established reputation for corruption.”

The report said the police promotions and the “surprising resurrection” of General Toan were seen by Saigon politicians as signals that Thieu will be relying increasingly on the army and the police. “In particular, the choice of General Toan seemed to indicate the end of a period of concessions to the opposition....”

Just before the crackdown on the press, Thieu ordered the dissolution of the Bao An, the 50,000-strong private militia of the anti-Communist Hoa Hao sect. The Hoa Hao has more than one million adherents, mostly in five provinces in the Mekong Delta. Hoa Hao leaders have been negotiating with the Saigon regime since last June for more arms for their militia. In a surprise move, Saigon’s police seized the leading Hoa Hao general during a negotiating session, and on January 30 police and militia units moved in to disarm the Bao An.

The Hoa Hao resisted. Their militia set up roadblocks along the highway near Phong Phu, a district capital ninety miles southwest of Saigon. Government troops removed the roadblocks and arrested members of the Bao An. Hoa Hao leader Luong Trong Tuong claimed that in the first three days of the rebellion against the government order, seven of the sect’s members were killed, sixteen were wounded, and 600 arrested. The Hoa Hao later put the figure of those arrested in the thousands.

The confrontation was all the more significant in that the Hoa Hao was the only religious sect not to have joined the anti-Thieu opposition movement. The other large sect, the Cao Dai, based in the city of Tay Ninh, recently issued a “neutralist” appeal for peace.

One possible explanation for Thieu’s attack on the Hoa Hao was reported in the February 14 Far Eastern Economic Review: Thieu’s increasing difficulties in finding cannon fodder for his army. Until now, the Hoa Hao enjoyed virtual immunity from conscription. Thieu charged that the Hoa Hao had lured government soldiers into their own local militia and had given shelter to draft dodgers and deserters.

The press in the United States seemed to be rather embarrassed by Thieu’s new offensive against the opposition. The challenge to Thieu by the press and the anticorruption movement “comes at a particularly awkward moment for the Government,” since Ford is trying to get an extra $300 million in aid from Congress, James M. Markham said in the February 4 New York Times.

An editorial in the February 5 Christian Science Monitor lamented that Thieu “sabotages his request for more American military aid when he squelches the fledgling trend toward freedom of the press in South Vietnam.”

Philip A. McCombs reported in the February 4 Washington Post that “Western observers” in Saigon were “amazed and puzzled at Thieu’s action....”

Thieu’s crackdown didn’t seem to worry President Ford, however. He went right on with his attempt to set the proper atmosphere for additional congressional funding. An article in the February 14 Far Eastern Economic Review described Ford’s campaign as coming “complete with Pentagon generals, dire predictions, a pleading Secretary of State, orchestrated press coverage and an outspoken Vice-President.”

Ford even threw in a promise that would seem to have been completely discredited during the long years of U.S. escalation in Indochina and that not even the most cynical servant of Wall Street could use again with a straight face. In an interview with the Chicago Tribune published February 9, Ford stated that if Congress would only meet his requests for the next three years, that would be the end of it.

“I would be willing to take sufficiently large amounts over a three-year period and say, ‘This is it – if the Congress will appropriate it, I would agree not to ask any more.’“

Ford’s memory may be short, but he would be advised not to project his own mental deficiencies onto the rest of the people in the country, most of whom will recall having heard that line before. At the time, they made their opinions known quite strongly to his predecessors.

Source: https://www.themilitant.com/Intercontinental_Press/1975/IP1308.pdf#page=7&view=FitV,3