CSVN Betrayed: Truong Nhu Tang

By Chris Peterson

PARIS May 6, 1985

Amid the torrent of publicity surrounding the 10th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, a former Vietnamese revolutionary leader sits in a small, simply furnished Paris apartment and remembers with bitterness.

Truong Nhu Tang stands out from other refugees who fled their homeland after the fall of Saigon and the communist takeover of South Vietnam in April 1975.

He was a founder of the South Vietnamese National Liberation Front (NLF), known to the Americans as the Viet Cong, and a former minister in the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG) which took power after the ỤS.-backed regime fell. It held power until North and South Vietnam were reunified in 1976.

In 1979, disillusioned with events, Tang fled by boat, the only senior revolutionary to do sọ In a rare interview, he discussed his life and the reasons behind his decision to fleẹ

A small, gentle, grey-haired man in his 60s, he told Reuters: "Today, 10 years after we won, I am personally so, so disappointed. I feel so sorry for my people, for my country, in as much as our revolution has been betrayed, and we have been cheated of our liberation."

A book by Tang on his experiences came out in April in the United States and is due to appear in Europe later this year.

Accusing the northern-dominated leadership of being idealogues who want to model the country on the Soviet Union, he said: "Those who act against the interests of the people will be overthrown by the peoplẹ They will be judged by historỵ"

Tang, who as minister of justice in the PRG assumed the same job when Saigon fell, spoke of his bitterness at learning that after years of fighting alongside North Vietnamese army regulars, he and his fellow NLF guerrillas were to be edged out in the subsequent struggle for power.

On May 15, 1975, two weeks after the fall of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), Tang and his PRG colleagues were flown south from Hanoi to attend the victory paradẹ

After describing how the serried ranks of North Vietnamese Army regulars marched past them on the reviewing podium under the red flag with the single yellow star of North Vietnam, Tang then told of the small NLF contingent's arrival.

"They came marching down the street, looking unkempt and ragtag after the display that had preceded them. They were marching under the North Vietnamese flag and not our own PRG flag."

Tang said he turned in horror to North Vietnamese Gen. Van Tien Dung, who had masterminded the final thrust on Saigon.

"'Where are our divisions One, Three, Five, Seven and Ninẻ,' I asked him. He smiled and told me the army had already been unified.

"I told him we had not been consulted or informed. He said nothing, but his ironic smile was the first indication I had of what was to come," Tang said.

Tang finally decided to flee in 1979, leaving by boat and ending up in Paris, where he had studied after World War II and met Ho Chi Minh, the revolutionary who became North Vietnam's leader -- a meeting he said was a turning point in his lifẹ

Tang, who stoutly maintains he was a nationalist, a revolutionary, but never a communist, said of Ho Chi Minh: "He always maintained that the south was forever in his heart and that the south was always part of the motherland. He was a political leader who was very human.

"He always knew how to create an intimate family climate with his compatriots."

Ađed Tang: "He is often described as firstly a revolutionary, secondly a patriot and thirdly a communist.

"But there was also Ho Chi Minh the moralist."

Tang said he and his non-communist colleagues in the NLF wanted to establish a form of federation in Vietnam, consisting of North and South Vietnam and two autonomous areas.

"Most of my compatriots' ideas conformed to the realities in Vietnam. But those ideologues from the north wanted to centralize all power with their dogmas," he said.

Tang still maintains that the NLF and the PRG were misunderstood, mainly by the Americans.

"We were not all communists. We were revolutionaries certainly, who wanted the foreign troops out. We were not created by the Hanoi government. But the Americans used the all-embracing perjorative title Viet Cong, which in our language means communist Vietnamesẹ We weren't."

His five brothers did not join him in the movement, but one is in a reeducation camp. The rest have left Vietnam.

"For me, the last straw was the reeducation camps. We had agreed with our northern brothers on a policy of reconciliation . . . My conscience is clear. I gave up everything that could have given me a happy life, I sacrificed it for my people and my countrỵ

"(Vietnamese leaders) Le Duc Tho, Le Duan, they want to copy the Soviet model. In Vietnamese we say they are like fish that once swam in the water. The water is the peoplẹ Now the fish is on dry land and the water passes it bỵ"