Word: south
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...predicament is not unique. He is a member of South Viet Nam's educated elite, which has long opposed any and all regimes in Saigon. These days, the country's intellectuals are on particularly bad terms with the government of President Nguyen Van Thieu over the issue of peace and how to achieve it. Thieu regards men like Publisher Lau with unconcealed loathing. Not long ago, he told a group of hamlet officials: "You are more patriotic than these intellectuals who drink four glasses of whisky a day. Although they are well educated, they are slaves...
...South Viet Nam's true intellectual elite consists of no more than a few thousand people. Its members include doctors, lawyers, journalists, Buddhist monks, professors, artists, students and occasional businessmen. Some, like Lau, own property, but most live modestly on monthly incomes that range from $80 to $600. They are inveterate organization joiners. Being a member of the alumni associations of the Lycée Petrus Ky or the Lycée Jean-Jacques Rousseau, both in Saigon, is a mark of special distinction among the elite. There are other ties of common background. Many intellectuals fled the North...
...Currents. Well aware of the importance of South Viet Nam's intellectuals, the Viet Cong have long tried to recruit them-with some success. Many intellectuals have come to believe that the Viet Cong are nationalists first and Communists second, that they can be peacefully assimilated into the political fabric of the nation once the war ends. "When peace comes," says one naively optimistic Southerner, "South Viet Nam will be rich. We will have no problems, and when there are no problems, there will be no Communists." Other intellectuals, so far a minority, now back the government after years...
Heavily criticized abroad for its repressive policy of apartheid, the South African government takes its points of pride where it can find them. For years it has proudly pointed to the country's free press. But freedom ends at the racial barrier. Laurence Gandar, editor in chief of Johannesburg's Rand Daily Mail, has long been one of the few resident journalists bold enough to prod gently for gradual integration of the black majority. His reasoned crusading earned him the wide respect of foreign colleagues and the disfavor of the government for the past dozen years...
Disfavor turned to harassment in 1965, when Mail Reporter Benjamin Pogrund wrote a series of articles exposing brutality and unhygienic living conditions in South Africa's jails. Gandar editorially demanded an inquiry. Instead, the government set up perjury trials for the ex-prisoners who had been interviewed. Four were convicted, and served sentences of up to 18 months. Then, Pogrund and Gandar were arrested under a law that makes it a crime to publish information about prisons without taking "reasonable steps" to verify accuracy...