(the only U.S. newsman to enter N. Vietnam in 10 years) The victors came in sandshoes bearing machine guns on tote poles. The vanquished left in tanks. —a reporter’s description in July, 1954 of the Vietminh take-over in the North Vietnamese capital of Hanoi as the defeated French Army withdrew following the Geneva Agreements. ANOI, North Vietnam.—Now that the 169 members of the 64 delegations to the International Solidarity Conference have scattered to all corners of the globe, both the impact on world public opinion and the likely practical fruits of the pro-Vietnamese gathering may now be assessed. The most direct immediate sequel will be an all-Indochina “people’s peace congress,” called by Prince-Norodom Sihanouk for mid or late January in the Cambodian capital of Phnompenh. The theme will be the immediate need to end the fighting in S. Vietnam, in Laos and along Cambodia’s border areas.
The general hope of those attending, including Buddhist monks from Vietnam, will be that internationally guaranteed neutralism will accompany the peace.
Almost certainly the week-long congress will help to accelerate the strong neutralist tide in war-weary S. Vietnam. Simply because this austere Communist capital was the site of the Solidarity Conference, it would be a mistake to dismiss the well-organised meeting as nothing more than a forum for the Communist faithful. The full title of the conference: International Conference for Solidarity with the People of Vietnam Against U.S. Imperialist Aggression and for the Defence of Peace—did not deter the neutralist African governments of Guinea and Mali, for example, from designating their local ambassadors as official delegates, and President Sekou Toure of Guinea cabled his personal greetings. Also from “the third camp” President Ben Bella of Algeria picked the head of the Foreign Relations Department of his National Liberation Front to lead the Algerian delegation. Cambodia, which officially frowns on its handful of “Communist-leaning” youth, sent a prominent delegation led by the deputy speaker of the National Assembly. Indonesia, officially neutralist, eager for “Third World” support in the Malaysian dispute, was represented, as were numerous underground movements from parts of Africa still under colonial rule. The New Zealand delegate, a whitecollar professional employed in Wellington by General Motors, took time off from his job to come here with the endorsements of numerous New Zealand unions and church groups. During the sessions, officials from the powerful anti-A and anti-H bomb organisations in Japan announced that
they were adding to their movement’s slogans the demand that the U.S. military “get out of Vietnam.” To loud applause, a tape-recorded message from Earl Bertrand Russell, calling for implementation of the 1954 Geneva Agreements and a_ withdrawal of U.S. forces, was played at an early session. philosopher also sent the head of his Peace Foundation to represent him. At a recapitulation session on the degree of global support one revelation was reminiscent of the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. The chairman itemized a large and_ steady volume of money and medicines being contributed to the guerrillas from persons and groups around the world. Throughout South-East Asia, Radio Hanoi broadcasted live the proceedings that were held in a large new convention hall across a city square from Ho Chi Minh’s presidential palace. A battery of interpreters provided simultaneous translations into six languages. As predictable, the delegations maintained a steady 5-day drumfire of attacks on the U.S. and Saigon governments. But the North and South Vietnamese speakers also provided a regular daily diet of generally unreported information about the war, for delegates to take back to their countries. To those in the West who question the authenticity of these statistics, this correspondent recalls from Panmunjon a decade ago that accounts of the war’s progress
The 92-year-old -
by “our side” often failed to stand up,
while the North Korean and Chinese
tallies proved-many times to be right.
If the comparative losses reported by
the Pentagon had been generally
correct since 1961, American GIs
would presumably be enroute home
by now.
First 9 months of 1964: “50,000
puppet soldiers either deserted, dis-
banded or crossed over to the resist-
ance ranks.”
On S. Vietnam’s total area of
170,000 square kilometres: “U.S. im-
perialism has set up 11 big military
ports, 111 military airfields and has
increased the number of U.S. soldiers
there to more than 30,000 today.”
In 1962 and 1963: “The U.S. and
their lackeys conducted more than
70,000 raids, big and small, to terror-
ise and massacre our people.” Quot-
ing a Reuter’s dispatch on July 7th,
1964, “in 1963, the U.S. Air Force
made over 300,000 sorties.”
Over the past ten years: “200,000
of our compatriots have been killed;
over 700,000 wounded and disabled;
half a million others have been de-
tained and tortured in more than
1,000 prisons and detention camps.”
“Over 80 per cent. of the 8,000
‘strategic hamlets’ have been razed to
the ground by the people.”
During the past 3 years the guer-
rillas “have fought about 64,000 small
and big battles, put over 300,000
enemy troops out of action, including
3,065 U.S. aggressors, shot down or
destroyed on the ground over 1,500
military aircraft of different types,
sunk over 600 U.S. naval craft includ-
ing the 15,000-ton U.S. aircraft carrier
‘Card’ right in the Saigon port, de-
stroyed 145 military trains, and cap-
tured tens of thousands of U.S.
guns.”
“The U.S. Embassy in Saigon (has ©
been) turned into a military camp
surrounded by barbed wire and watch
towers.”
“Most remarkable is the resound-
ing victory of the S. Vietnam Libera-
tion Army in the recent attack dur-
ing the night of October 31st, on the
U.S. strategic air base at Bien Hoa
where they killed or wounded 293
U.S. aggressors, destroyed 36 U.S.
military aircraft, including 21 nuclear-
capable B.57 strategic jet planes.”
Havana-based Robert F. Williams,
the exiled chairman of the NAACP
in Monroe, N.C., who attended and
spoke at the conference, recalled that,
immediately after the guerrilla
attack at the Bien Hoa airbase,
Senator Strom Thurmond, known for
his pipelines to the military, de-
clared in a campaign statement that official U.S. figures on losses and casualties had been falsified and that, in fact, 300 Americans had been killed and wounded. The South Carolina lawmaker, who became a Republican during the recent presidential campaign, was attempting to embarrass the Johnson administration and to enhance the election victory chances of Barry Goldwater. Guerrilla intelligence and the senator’s intelligence appear to agree. Throughout the war in the South, guerrilla intelligence is known to have been excellent. Mr. Williams was only one of many speakers who referred to the racial struggle in the U.S. and linked it to the worldwide anti-colonial movement. Mindful of the numerous desertions by Algerians and other Africans from the French Foreign Legion in Indochina a decade ago, delegates privately expressed the hope that at least a few of the Negro Gls in S. Vietnam will defect. A Cambodian official told this reporter of information reaching Phnompenh that Negro airmen at Bien Hoa had sabotaged and blown up some of the 36 U.S. planes while the airbase was under mortar attack from the guerrillas. No delegate voiced the slightest doubt that victory for the guerrillas is assured. Through the dozens of platform statements ran a common theme that the U.S. is nearing a military and political Dienbienphu and that the only solution for Washington is to “clear out.” Escalating the war, it was argued, would provide no salvation for the “encircled” Saigon forces. A S, Vietnamese delegate quoted Ho Chi Minh as having said: “The U.S. and the Khanh clique are like a fox who, with two legs already caught in a trap, is nevertheless jumping into another.” The conference was repeatedly told that the balance of forces in the world has changed in favour of revolutionary wars of national liberation and that “no peace should be made that leaves the enemy the slightest foothold in Indochina.” Last summer, the architect of the French collapse at Dienbienphu in 1954, North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giau, told a French newsman: “We are in no hurry. The longer we wait, the greater will be the Americans’ defeat.” Throughout the five days, in veiled references and indirect language, observers caught overtones of Sino- Soviet rivalry for world leadership of revolutionary forces. © Hemmed in
by the Kremlin’s line of peaceful coexistence, the head of the Russian delegation endeavoured within those confines to match the militancy of his Chinese opposite number. Peking’s allies, the Albanians, ridiculed “the revisionists” for regarding Presidents Kennedy and Johnson as “peace presidents” and for maintaining that “imperialism will understand reason and give freedom to the various nations.” “The only correct way to settle all arguments with imperialism,” said the Albanians, “is to struggle and wage revolution.” Prolonged applause greeted each of the many references to China’s new bomb, usually termed “a bomb for peace, a people’s bomb and a freedom bomb for the oppressed.” Any realistic appraisal of the smoothly-run conference must concede that its three-fold purpose was largely fulfilled. A large body of articulate world opinion was mobilised behind the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, producing, perhaps, some inhibiting effects in Washington. Asian, African and Latin American delegates in particular, the young men and women who will be making their own revolutions in the next half decade, left Hanoi reinforced in their conviction that the U.S. is their leading enemy. The phrases varied, the thought was the same: “the contemporary Hitler,” “the modern barbarians,” “the world oppressor,” “the latter-day Italians in Ethiopia.” As if timed for the conference, revulsion swept the auditorium when the chairman interrupted the proceedings to announce the U.S. airlifting of Belgians and mercenaries into the area of Stanleyville. Equally important as lining up moral support was the success in bringing encouragement to the warweary people in the South, and in assuring them that they are not alone. It has taken nearly three years for the facts and significance of the South Vietnam war to sink into the general consciousness of mankind. However well or poorly the day-to-day proceedings have been reported by the U.S. wire services that monitor Radio Hanoi, the conference was a landmark among the two billion hungry people who are shopping for effective revolutionary answers. If the U.S., with all its equipment, is expelled from South Vietnam, the guerrilla fighting in the Congo, in Malaysia and in Venezuela will take on a new optimistic tone. An intercontinental strengthening of ties between revolutionary groups and
leaders was one by-product of this
Solidarity Conference.
By the same token, one assumes
that the atmosphere of confidence
here did not help the morale of the
already unenthusiastic Saigon forces.
A Reuter’s dispatch in the early edi-
tion of the New York Times of
October 25th appeared to indicate
that the S. Vietnamese officer corps is
aware of impending defeat. The
dispatch reported the “mystification”
of U.S. officials that Saigon forces
refuse to “take military action to put
out of operation . . . efficient and
well-equipped hospitals” of the guer-
rilla army.
Given the well-documented tortures
practised since 1961, the refusal can
hardly be explained on humanitarian
grounds. More likely, generals of
the 600,000-man army are now con-
cerned about the prospect of war
crimes trials. In effect, in absentia,
the civilian and military leaders in
the South were on trial here before an
international jury over five indict-
ment-packed days. Adjudged guilty
even before the fighting yields to
another Geneva settlement, the men
in charge of Government operations
will conceivably be even more reluct-
ant to make and carry out military
decisions that will not turn the tide
of events but might put them in a
Nuremburg dock at Saigon when the
men in sandshoes finally enter the
capital, replacing the political mush
and terminating the military siege.
INTERNATIONAL
SOCIALIST —
JOURNAL
Year 1 - Number 5-6
Lelio Basso
The Workingmen’s International
Association
Tony Topham
The implication of “package deals”
in British collective bargaining
Lorenzo Torres
The political situation in Spain
Stephen Rousseas
The economic condition of the
negro in the United States
Marcel Deneckere
How can the left come to power
in Belgium?
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