Word: huong
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...power to Duong Van Minh. "Big" Minh, as he was universally known, was a former general who headed what he described as a neutralist "third force" and was acceptable to the communists. But Thieu chose to follow the South Vietnamese constitution, and yielded power to Vice President Tran Van Huong, who was 71, ailing and nearly blind. Huong did call for a cease-fire and peace negotiations, but vowed, if the North refused, to fight "until the troops are dead or the country is lost...
...Huong's moment in the sun was brief and illusory. The communists had announced in advance that they would not deal with him. Throughout the seven days of his presidency, South Vietnamese politicians and their American and French advisers intrigued furiously to arrange another transfer of power. Air Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky, a former head of government and advocate of dead-end resistance, alternately got the impression from American visitors that he was being urged to stage a coup and fight to the last, or that the U.S. wanted him to smooth the way for Big Minh to take over...
...next day, April 27, Huong finally stepped down as President, and the National Assembly quickly elected Big Minh; the same day, four rockets hit the capital. Minh formally took office at 5:30 p.m. the next day. Only half an hour later, Saigon was jolted by a bigger series of explosions signaling that the war had finally embraced the capital...
Limits remain, though. The press is still tightly censored, and outspokenness is punished. Duong Thu Huong, whose 1988 novel Paradise of the Blind portrayed the communist system as exploitative and corrupt, spent six months in jail in 1991 and remains under surveillance. Two of the country's most prominent Buddhist prelates are in prison or under house arrest for political activities. Though many of the country's leaders are themselves Buddhists, they are determined to keep religion from undermining their authority...
Duong Thu Huong presents an indelible portrait of three northern Vietnamese women and the sacrifices men and communist society wrest from them. The main characters of Paradise represent real women in Vietnam--not the extremes portrayed by the passive Phuong of Graham Greene's The Quiet American nor the whores of Stanley Kubrick's "Full Metal lacket." Despite their ordinary occupations and status as second-class citizens, though, the women of Paradise are nothing short of extraordinary...