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Vietnam Problems
North Vietnam, before and during the Second Indochina War,
experienced few serious internal security challenges. Disorders
were recorded, however, the most famous being the so-called Quynh
Luu uprising in 1956, in which farmers in predominantly Roman
Catholic Nghe An Province demonstrated and rioted against the
agricultural collectivization program. During the war, however,
and despite South Vietnamese and American clandestine efforts to
provoke resistance to the Hanoi regime, little internal
opposition resulted. After the war, security problems were
experienced in the newly occupied South, and a rise in dissidence
was recorded in the North. As far as can be determined, however,
in neither case were the problems serious enough to be considered
a challenge to the regime. In 1987 public attitudes in the south
remained widely anticommunist and there was greatly increased
antipathy for the party in the North. In official circles, these
conditions were labeled negative phenomena and were explained in
the press as rising criminal and counterrevolutionary activity
caused by a decline in social responsibility.
The most dangerous negative phenomenon was organized internal
resistance to the regime that occurred chiefly in, but was not
limited to, the South. For the most part this resistance found
expression in graffiti, antiparty poetry, outlaw theater, rumor
mongering, and general disinformation efforts. Less common, but
still in evidence, were more militant resistance elements, who
attempted, but rarely succeeded in, sabotaging the transportation
and communication systems, party and state facilities, and
economic enterprises. Finally, there was the armed resistance
groups, which engaged in guerrilla war. By far the most
challenging resistance effort was carried on by the people of the
Central Highlands in the South, who are usually called
Montagnards
(see Ethnic Groups and Languages
, ch. 2). Many were
associated with the organization known as the United Front for
the Liberation of Oppressed Races (Front Unifíe pour la Lutte des
Races opprimees--FULRO) and operated in the region known in the
Hanoi press as the "nameless front," that is, the area between
Buon Me Thuot and Da Lat. They were supplied and supported by
Khmer rouge forces in Cambodia and, through them, by the Chinese.
Hanoi handled the Montagnards in the South after the Second
Indochina War far less skillfully and effectively than it had
managed the northern Montagnards a generation earlier. The
primary reason appeared to be that in the North in the mid-1950s
the problem had been handled by trained party cadres, some of
them Montagnards themselves, who had dealt carefully with their
ethnic brethren. In the South in 1975 (because the war ended so
unexpectedly), responsibility was given to combat troops, who
were ill-prepared to handle such a sensitive problem. Since the
war's end, large battles reportedly have taken place occasionally
in the Highlands, some involving as many as 1,000 resistance
fighters.
The Montagnard resistance has not represented a revolutionary
movement in the modern sense because it has not tried to
overthrow or change the government in Hanoi. Rather, the upland
dwellers of southern Vietnam have sought autonomy, and they would
settle for being left alone. In 1987 a stabilized condition of
local accommodation appeared to have been achieved between local
PAVN commanders in the "nameless front" region and indigenous
Montagnard tribes.
The second most important resistance elements were the
militant southern socioreligious sects called the
Hoa Hao (see Glossary) and
Cao Dai (see Glossary), whose total membership was
more than a million
(see Religion
, ch. 2). The Hoa Hao sect is
concentrated in Chau Doc Province and adjacent provinces. The Cao
Dai is headquartered in Tay Ninh Province, and most of its
followers live in this region. In the early years after the
Second Indochina War, the two sects offered considerable armed
resistance to the new government. By the mid-1980s, however,
resistance had fallen off because it was widely believed local
accommodation had been achieved.
A third resistance element comprised various nationalistic
and patriotic groups, many of whom came under the generic term
chu quoc or "national salvation." The bulk of these were
members of the Dai Viet and the Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang, two
militant anticommunist nationalist organizations dating from the
1930s, or were ARVN holdouts in the far south. Other resistance
groups, with more exotic names, reported by emigres included the
Black Sail Group (Catholics in the Ho Nai region); the Black
Dragon Force (ex-ARVN 7th-Division Catholic soldiers in the My
Tho vicinity); the Yellow Crab Force (Cao Dai in Tay Ninh
Province); the White Tigers (Hoa Hao in An Giang Province); the
Laotian National Cobra Force (Vietnamese and Lao along the
Laos-Vietnam border); and the Cambodian Border Force (a similar
group in the Cambodia-Vietnam border region). Armed resistance,
as practiced by these groups, commonly consisted of attacks on
reeducation camps, remote military installations, and VCP
offices. Reported resistance activities during the 1980s included
launching rocket attacks on a Phan Rang reeducation camp and on a
Xuan Loc camp (during which 6,000 inmates escaped), dynamiting a
Ho Chi Minh City water pumping station, detonating a bomb near
that city's Continental Hotel, and throwing a grenade into the
yard of the former United States ambassador's residence, which
had been transformed into living quarters for several PAVN
generals. There were also reports of road mining incidents and
booby-trapped railroad switching equipment.
Catholics in Vietnam, who number almost 3 million, have
represented a significant potential resistance force of
increasing concern to Hanoi officials. Initial policy was to
control the church as an institution, while allowing free
religious expression. In the late 1970s, however, all religious
groups increasingly were harassed, and attendance at religious
services was discouraged. A few well publicized trials of clergy
followed. By the mid-1980s, it was apparent that the initial
tolerance for religion had waned. Some observers, including
church officials in the Vatican, speculated that Hanoi officials
were concerned because of the growing appeal of religion to the
young.
Intellectual dissent also was reported to be increasing in
the mid-1980s. Fueled by the obvious failure of the party and
state to solve the country's more pressing economic problems,
intellectual dissent took the form of psychological warfare
conducted by literary and cultural figures and ordinary people
alike. There had been a similar outbreak of intellectual dissent
in North Vietnam in the 1956-58 period, when the regime
experimented, to its regret, with a "hundred flowers movement"
similar to that in China. In the late 1980s, the most common
medium was graffiti such as "Born in the North to Die in
Cambodia" and "Nothing is More Precious than Independence and
Liberty--Ho Chi Minh" (a famous Ho quotation used as an ironic
commentary by southerners). The slogan Phuc quoc, or
"restore national sovereignty," was reported to have been seen on
walls in Ho Chi Minh City and in Hue. Propaganda leaflets also
were scattered along city sidewalks at night or left in
schoolroom desks, and underground literary societies were
founded, including the Hanoi Barefoot Literary Group, the Danang
Han River Literary Society, the Ho Literary Society of Hue, and
the Stone Cave and Literary Flame societies of Ho Chi Minh City.
According to editorials in the official press, the writings of
these subversive groups "depict resentment and incite antagonism"
through the use of "ambiguous symbolism and double entendres." An
example cited by Lao Dong (August 22, 1985) was the
following excerpt from a poem: "Biting our lips, hating the North
wind We lay with aching bones Lamenting the West wind." Poets
have been incarcerated for their works. A cause celebre in 1984
was the arrest of a leading novelist, Doan Quoc Sy, of the Danang
Han River Literary Society.
Resistance activity is supported by the nearly 1 million
Vietnamese emigres living abroad. There is a welter of supportive
organizations--more than fifty in California alone--about which
little reliable information is available. The broadest-based
group is the Overseas Free Vietnam Association, which has
chapters in the United States, Europe, and Australia.
Data as of December 1987
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