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Letter to VVAW on Vietnam from Vietnamese Revolutionary

By Hoang Van Hoan

Hoang Van Hoan, comrade in arms of Ho Chi Minh and founding member of the Vietnamese Communist Party has been sentenced to death by the Vietnamese government.

Vietnam Veterans Against the War:

I am indeed very glad to know that your organization, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, has consistently been concerned with the situation in Vietnam. In their struggle for national liberation, the Vietnamese people enjoyed the sympathy and support shown by many soldiers in the U.S. armed forces, and, in particular, by the members of VVAW. Your just and courageous actions made an invaluable contribution to Vietnam's brilliant victory in 1975. The Vietnamese people very much appreciated and were grateful to your deeds.

With the withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Vietnam and the total collapse of the Nguyen Van Thieu regime, the Vietnamese people did have a fine opportunity to follow the wise advice of our great leader Chairman Ho Chi Minh to build Vietnam into a peaceful, united, independent, democratic and prosperous country. But this wise advice has been flagrantly betrayed by Le Duan and company as they have attempted to push an expansionist drive in Southeast Asia. Facing angry eyes of the progressive and righteous-minded people of the world, they defiantly sent troops to dominate Laos, to invade and occupy Kampuchea, and to provoke boarder conflicts in the north so as to carry out a policy of hostility against China, which is the close comrade-in-arms of the Vietnamese people. Therefore, the Vietnamese people once again cannot but lead a life of utter poverty and misery under war conditions with all their democratic rights and freedom deprived, while Vietnam as a nation has become economically, politically, militarily and in foreign affairs a vassal state of a foreign power and lost all its international prestige. All this is brought about by the crimes committed by Le Duane and company and not the result of the withdrawal of U. S. troops, as a few Americans tended to believe.

If to say that in the past, the Vietnamese people had to sacrifice all that they had to fight against U.S. imperialism and its lackeys, today they are compelled to rise up again to fight the dictatorial and corrupted rule of Le Duan and company.

I am confident that the Vietnamese people will receive sympathy and support form you and other progressive people of the U.S. in their struggle to make their motherland a peaceful, united, independent, democratic and prosperous country.

With friendly greeting,
Hoang Van Hoan