Word: hanoi
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Hieu and Toai charge that the Communists psychological manipulation extends to the general Vietnamese public. Although both Hieu and Toai fought against Thieu, they now say the Hanoi government is harsher and more totalitarian than was the Thieu regime--a government hardly noted for its tolerance of political opposition, much less for its respect for the average citizen. "The only thing better now than under Thieu are the jails, "Toai says...
...Hanoi government is much better at cloaking its repression under the banner of the public good, or blaming mysterious "counter-revolutionaries" for unpopular curtailments of freedom, the men assert...
...also say the Hanoi government makes especially good use of scapegoats to soften the impact of harsh policies. Hieu describes what he termed the government's strategy for preparing the public for the nationalization of key industries. "If they want to monopolize the fish industry in Saigon, they order the fishermen not to send their fish to Saigon. The prices shoot skyhigh, and the government launches a propaganda campaign blaming the capitalist monopoly fish industry and then they take it over," Hieu says. Hieu also charged that the Hanoi government periodically publicly executes scapegoats to combat public uproar over...
Hieu and Toai's accusations reflect their complete disillusionment with Communism, a sharp turnaround from their earlier revolutionary actions. Toai in particular is bitter about the failure of the NLF ideals, and blames the Hanoi regime for co-opting the NLF and radicalizing its more moderate platform. He says he refused to serve on the NLF Finance Committee because he was chosen to draw up a plan to confiscate all private property in Vietnam, not an original NLF proposal. The idealistic people in the NLF sought to rely upon the power of Hanoi to overthrow the Saigon government, but once...
...Toai blames the NLF's naivete for allowing the North Vietnamese to take control. "The first thing the Hanoi Communists did was to unify all military forces under the command of North Vietnamese leaders, but the NLF was unprepared--they never believed that Hanoi would do this to them," he adds...