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Vietnam Slandered By Ex-Friends: Education Camps - Part of Social Change

By VVAW

By the end of the Vietnam War the vast majority of American people were in favor of US withdrawal. A military defeat in Vietnam and a vast popular peace movement here at home combined to force the US to retreat with its tail between its legs. This was a tough blow to the US ruling class. They need to exploit foreign countries in order to keep their needed profits rolling in. In order to do this they needed to play the tough guy role all over the world. The Vietnamese exploded their image.

When the final decision to withdraw was made US leaders began their efforts at face saving devices with all the hullabaloo about the POWs - men who shouldn't have been in Vietnam in the first place. Then when Saigon fell there was the orphan fiasco where the US actually kidnapped Vietnamese children to save them from the coming "bloodbath." Of course the bloodbath never came. Now the latest is a letter given wide circulation by the US press, talking about 300,000 political prisoners, torture and religious persecution in the reeducation camps in Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The letter was signed by about a hundred anti-war activists including heavyweights like Joan Baez and Daniel Ellsberg. Americans have since been to Vietnam and reported that the contents of the letter are false, and some of the signers of the letter - like the Berrigan brothers - have recanted their original signature.

There are reeducation camps in Vietnam, but they aren't the fierce, inhuman prison camps they are made out to be. They are necessary for the rebuilding of Vietnam. To understand their necessity one must remember what Vietnam was like before. One class of people hoarded most of the wealth while the masses of Vietnamese lived in poverty. This former ruling class was propped up by US military might. It had only minority support in Vietnam, but this still consisted of over a million people - soldiers, government officials and politicians. Because of centuries of foreign colonial rule all sorts of decadence was imposed on the country. After liberation the whole society had to undergo basic change both political and cultural, and this is what the reeducation camps were designed to do.

There were two types of reeducation. For most ordinary people, reeducation as to the direction the new society was heading was undertaken in factories, schools, homes and out in the rice paddies. After years and years of propaganda by the old ruling class on the horrors of Communism people had all kinds of strange ideas about what would happen. Also people who had been devastated by the old society - whores - orphans - beggars - addicts - needed help to get back to a normal life.

Former soldiers, politicians and officials are required to take a three day reeducation course after which about 90% are released. There are still about 50,000 people left in reeducation camps. These are mainly former high ranking officials and officers who do not accept responsibility for their past crimes and refuse to accept the task of building a new society for the benefit of the broad masses of people. This former upper cruise, while being reeducated is being made to do some detestable (to them) things-like work. All in all the reeducation program is very lenient considering these people comprised the leadership of the oppressive Thieu regime.

The former anti-war activists who signed that letter of protest missed the boat. That was not the US military against all the Vietnamese people. It was the US military and its Vietnamese henchmen against most of the Vietnamese. Vietnam is re-building from centuries of devastation at the hands of foreign countries. They can't allow these former henchmen to remain free to try to bring back the old repressive ways which they've already tried to do with stockpiled weapons and counterfeit currency in co-operation with the CIA.

These former anti-war activists are only being used by this country's ruling class which is still trying to slander Vietnam in order to keep Vietnam out of the United Nations, to keep from paying reparations the US promised to pay at the war's end and to somehow salvage that goal it failed to gain militarily - to smash the spreading ideas of socialism and national liberation.