[ndlr] Article de Doan Cam Thi sur l’écriture de l’écrivain vietnamien Bao Ninh autour de son ouvrage qui fit grand bruit dans le Viêt Nam du début des années 1990. Elle interroge l’écriture de la guerre dans le Viêt Nam communiste et analyse la “confession” de Bao Ninh. Cet article a été publié initialement dans la revue en ligne La Revue des Ressources. Il est extrait de Doan Cam Thi, Écrire le Vietnam contemporain (Presses universitaires Paris Sorbonne, 2010).
Un témoin a besoin d’un état civil.
Marc Bloch, L’Étrange défaite
Il n’est pas vrai qu’il peut se taire et oublier. Il faut qu’il explique, qu’il raconte, qu’il domine ce monde dont il fut la victime.
Georges Perec, Robert Antelme ou la vérité de la littérature
Si l’homme a toujours occupé une place centrale dans le réalisme socialiste, il n’a été qu’un thème idéologique, en liaison avec la lutte de libération nationale et l’édification socialiste, deux objectifs de la « Révolution vietnamienne ». Il a été cet « homme nouveau » que la littérature « devait contribuer à construire » selon les instructions du Parti communiste dès 1957. Modèle importé de l’Union soviétique et de la Chine populaire, fils du marxisme léninisme, l’« homme nouveau » portait une conscience de classe qui lui permettait de faire la révolution pour changer le monde.
Concrètement, il devait avoir « un sens élevé de la collectivité, une forte aspiration pour la science et la technique, l’amour de la littérature et des arts, le patriotisme accompagné de l’esprit internationaliste prolétarien » [1]. L’écrivain avait en conséquence pour mission de « découvrir l’homme nouveau et faire l’éloge de ses vertus afin d’en faire une figure artistique, un exemple à suivre pour tout le monde » [2]. Psychologiquement, ce personnage littéraire était unifié, cohérent et analysable. Positif, il luttait contre les « mauvais éléments » et triomphait en chaque circonstance.
Dans quelles conditions la littérature vietnamienne a t elle pu soudain, au milieu des années 1980, renoncer à ce héros collectif pour produire l’être individuel ? Par quel travail a t elle pris de la distance avec les notions orthodoxes du sujet, afin de pénétrer dans les zones d’ombre du moi et d’en faire un véritable objet de création romanesque ?
Maître de conférences à l’Institut national de langues et civilisations orientales (Inalco), Doan Cam Thi a publié Écrire le Vietnam contemporain. Guerre, corps, littérature (Presses de l’Université Paris Sorbonne, 2010), Au rez-de chaussée du paradis. Récits vietnamiens 1991-2003 (Philippe Picquier, 2005), Poétique de la mobilité. Les lieux dans Histoire de ma vie de George Sand (Rodopi, 2000). Elle a traduit en vietnamien La Douleur de Marguerite Duras (Hanoi, Les Éditions des Femmes, 1999), en français L’Embarcadère des femmes sans mari de Duong Huong (Aube, 2002) et Chinatown de Thuân (Le Seuil, 2009). Doan Cam Thi est lauréate du prix « Le mot d’or de la traduction 2005 » (Unesco – AIF – Société française des traducteurs).
Table-ronde organisée et animée par Olivier Tessier (EFEO) – 08 nov. 2012 – 18h00 – Auditorium de L’Espace à Hanoi
Participants : Mme Huyen Mermet (Dao Thanh Huyen) et M. Dang Duc Tue, journalistes et co-auteurs de « Dien Bien Phu vu d’enface » (Paris, Nouveau Monde éditions, 2010).
L’atelier portera sur la vie des habitants de Hanoi et du Nord Vietnam (RDVN) pendant la guerre du Vietnam. Ce travail est le fruit d’une enquête de terrain réalisée sur près de 100 témoins ayant vécu les 12 jours et nuits de bombardements aériens à Hanoi en 1972.
Traduction simultanée
Entrée libre
* * *
Vivre et mourir à Hanoi en 1972
Exposition organisée et coordonnée par Olivier Tessier (EFEO) – 11 oct./09 nov. 2012 – Hall d’exposition de L’Espace
La vie quotidienne à Hanoi sous les bombes en 1972.
L’Exposition vous présente aussi chronologiquement l’enchaînement des phases de bombardements (cibles stratégiques, forces aériennes engagées, destructions et victimes civiles et militaires) ainsi que le processus des négociations parallèles.
Par RFI – Norodom Sihanouk est décédé lundi 15 octobre 2012 [1] à Pékin à l’âge de 89 ans. La nouvelle a été délivrée par l’agence Chine-Nouvelle, qui n’a pas donné plus de précision. L’ancien souverain venait régulièrement en Chine pour y recevoir des soins. dans un communiqué, Pékin déplore le décès d’un «grand ami». Sihanouk, dont le règne avait été l’un des plus longs d’Asie, est considéré comme l’un des pères fondateurs de la Francophonie et du Mouvement des non-alignés.
C’est un monument de l’histoire du XXe siècle qui vient de s’éteindre. « Sihanouk est le Cambodge », considère tout bonnement son biographe officiel Julio Jeldres. Cinéaste, journaliste, compositeur, poète, demi-dieu pour les siens, Norodom Sihanouk était en fait et surtout un animal politique, le souverain qui aura perdu et retrouvé son trône à deux reprises. Un personnage déroutant et ambigu.
Pour l’Agence France-Presse, « pendant plus de 50 ans, le petit homme au caractère souvent déconcertant et à la voix haut perchée, grand amateur de champagne et de foie gras, (…) s’est déployé inlassablement sur la scène diplomatique internationale en dépit d’une carrière à éclipses ».
Né le 31 octobre 1922 à Phnom-Penh, il n’a pas 20 ans lorsque la France coloniale, en 1941, le choisit pour succéder à son grand-père. Il obtient sa couronne de roi avec l’aval du gouverneur général d’Indochine, l’amiral Jean Decoux.
Dans les années 1950, après la brève incursion japonaise dans les affaires indochinoises puis le retour des Français, le jeune monarque goûte à la gestion politique à proprement parler, en véritable chef de gouvernement. Il se lance alors dans la première œuvre de sa vie : la « croisade royale pour l’Indépendance », qui porte enfin ses fruits en 1953, sans violence.
Libérateur de son peuple, Norodom Sihanouk consacre alors le reste de sa vie à la politique. En 1955, il cède sa couronne à son père mais garde le pouvoir, et peaufine sa stratégie de neutralité entre les deux blocs. Il est en première ligne entre 1955 et 1956, au côté de l’Egyptien Nasser, du Yougoslave Tito, de l’Indonésien Soekarno et de l’Indien Nehru, pour lancer le Mouvement des pays non-alignés. Il dirige son pays sans opposition jusqu’en 1969, sur la base d’un vaste rassemblement royaliste et socialiste.
Les années 1960 constituent une période d’alliances plus affirmées. Le monarque se rapproche d’abord du bloc de l’URSS, puis de la Chine à la fin de la décennie. Le général de Gaulle est reçu à Phnom-Penh en 1966. C’est également au début des années 1960, au côté des colonies africaines fraîchement libérées (la Tunisie de Habib Bourguiba, le Niger de Hamani Diori et le Sénégal de Léopold Sédar Senghor) que le Cambodgien milite pour que la communauté linguistique francophone, auquel il attache une grande importance, se dote d’institutions intergouvernementales durables.
La suite de l’histoire de Norodom Sihanouk est digne d’un roman, tandis que le pays s’enfonce dans l’instabilité. Le roi perd son trône en 1970, s’installe en Chine, récupère le titre de chef d’Etat en 1975 au côté des Khmers rouges (dans une alliance improbable avec Pol Pot), avant de démissionner un an plus tard, d’être placé en résidence surveillée par ses alliés, puis de fuir en Corée du Nord à leur chute.
Dix ans plus tard, après plusieurs années d’activisme international, il revient au pays en héros, fort d’avoir obtenu la signature des accords de paix de Paris en 1991. Il reprend sa place en 1993. Et en 2004, Norodom Sihanouk abdique une dernière fois, en faveur de son fils Sihamoni, invoquant son âge et des raisons de santé.
Pendant les onze dernières années de son règne, il aura vu grandir, impuissant, l’influence du Premier ministre Hun Sen et de son fils Norodom Ranariddh, président de l’Assemblée nationale. Après son retrait, il continuera de donner de ses nouvelles et publie ses observations sur la vie publique par internet. Parfois avec humour, comme le pointe notre correspondant à Pékin, Stéphane Lagarde. AinsiNorodom Sihanouk déclarait, en 2005 sur internet, «se porter de mieux en mieux», tout en présentant «ses plus humbles excuses à toutes les personnes qui souhaitent sa mort». Ses proches faisaient alors l’objet de vives attaques de la part du Premier ministre Hun Sen.
En 2009, après six mariages, une nombreuse progéniture (dont une partie décimée par les Khmers rouges) Norodom Sihanouk écrit : « cette trop longue longévité me pèse comme un poids insupportable ».
The following story appeared in the October 1969 issue of TYPHOON magazine. The TYPHOON was published by First Field Forces Vietnam (IFFV) of the US Army Vietnam (USARV).
Looking like their fathers of 1,000 years ago, the Montagnards are riding out of the past. They are sure that
Their Time Has Come
By 1LT Roy C. Russell
In the Highlands near Gia Nghia, lives a pretty Montagnard girl, lithe with delicate features and black hair that streams out over the back seat of her jeep when she lets it blow in the wind. If you are a friend, she calls you grandson (though she is only 27), and she will get you discount prices on Ba Muoi beer at the local bar.
But say the Montagnards are savages, and the flash in her eyes says she would like to come at you with anything from a M16 to a crossbow. Say they are nomads who should not own land, or say they are too ignorant for schools, to superstitious for hospitals, and too primitive to make good soldiers, and she will erupt with the torrent of rebuttals that would scare the Black Panthers.
She can talk to you in French, Vietnamese, several Montagnard dialects, and English. “Where did you learn these?” you ask.
“In the forest,” she answers, and her eyes twinkle just long enough to accent the mystery that surrounds her. “You know I am 107 years old. That is long enough to learn many things, but I am still a Montagnard.”
She represents a new generation of Montagnards, proud of its past, but demanding a modern role in the future of the Highlands. You can help a village sacrifice a water buffalo by beating it to death with sticks and rocks. You can watch a woman plant rice by poking small holes in the ground instead of plowing it up and disturbing the spirits. You can sit through hot afternoons drinking ricewine inside smoke-filled longhouses which have not changed for centuries. You can imagine you are living a thousand years ago. But when the talk turns to politics, you know you are in the 20th Century. The Montagnards know what time it is, and a variety of groups — some militant, others peaceful — are making sure no one else forgets.
For generations, the Montagnards have lived in the Highlands, unconcerned about the Vietnamese along the coast. The feeling was mutual because Vietnamese fishermen and rice-farmers had no reason to leave the lowlands. Traditionally separated, the two groups viewed one another with suspicion and, eventually, prejudice. But in 1954, South Vietnam’s president, Ngo Dinh Diem, resettled approximately 200,000 ethnic Vietnamese lowlanders into land the Montagnards considered their own. he also attempted to blanket the Montagnards with Vietnamese culture. He eliminated tribal courts and disregarded Montagnard self-government and other institutions.
Over several months, many Montagnard tribes began to organize a resistance movement. It started with casual grumbling as men sat around their longhouses complaining quietly about strangers from the lowlands who were taking up more and more of the land, and about the government which seemed to ignore their established customs. Then, as occasional visitors travelled through the village, they learned that other tribes were talking about the same things.
Soon, messengers were hurrying along the highland trails to call a meeting of tribal leaders. In 1958, these leaders formed a group called “Bajaraka,” a name derived from the initials of four powerful Montagnard groups — the Bahnar, Jarai, Rhade, and Koho. United in this way, the Montagnards began working to make the Highlands a separate nation with its own army. When letters and petitions to the Vietnamese government, the United Nations, and various diplomatic missions were ignored, Bajaraka staged demonstrations throughout the Highlands. These brought results, but not the ones desired: all the Bajaraka leaders were arrested and jailed by President Diem.
After the overthrow of Diem, the government of Nguyen Khanh released these Montagnards. Paul Nur, who is now the GVN Minister for Ethnic Minorities, seeks peaceful cooperation between Montagnards and Vietnamese while preserving Montagnard culture and traditions. Y B’ham Enuol, once exiled and now living in the Cambodian jungles, became the leader of a militant faction known as FULRO (United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races), which wanted virtual Montagnard autonomy, a separate nation. FULRO has since been replaced by a legitimate political party working for Montagnard advancement within the Vietnamese nation. The third man, Y Bih Alio, joined the Viet Cong and fought to bring the Montagnards under communist control. A recent VC prisoner reported that he had seen Y Bih dead in a jungle a year ago.
Part of the communist strategy for victory in the South depended on driving a wedge between the Montagnards and the Government of Vietnam. Communist Montagnards and Vietnamese cadre from North Vietnam were sent into the highlands to live in villages, where they successfully exploited Montagnard prejudices and their hopes for independence. At the same time, communist military units terrorized the Montagnards, stealing their crops and forcing them to fight against the government. Since there were very few GVN representatives in the highlands, the VC cadre were not contested seriously, and by 1961 it appeared the government had lost the loyalty and cooperation of much of the Montagnard population. To counter this, the GVN let the US send Special Forces advisors into the highlands to train village defense units, border patrols, and other reconnaissance teams. Spirited and well equipped with modern weapons, these Montagnard units succeeded in reversing the communist success in the highlands. Even so, the relations between the GVN and the Montagnards did not improve. By 1964, the movement for Montagnard independence, which had begun peacefully, had become more militant. But its goal was the same: Montagnard independence.
In late 1964, Montagnard yearnings for autonomy were increasing at a time when they had the arms with which to revolt and when the countryside was weakened by repeated coups and disunity. This environment bred the first armed Montagnard revolt on September 20, 1964. Montagnard strikers (Civilian Irregular Defense Group soldiers in Quang Duc and Darlac provinces) revolted, killed some 70 Vietnamese, and marched on Ban Me Thuot. The organization which planned and conducted this revolt identified itself as FULRO (United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races). It appears to have been an outgrowth of the Bajaraka movement with the addition of an armed military organization. With American assistance, the GVN persuaded the Montagnards not to attack Ban Me Thuot. But Y B’ham, the FULRO leader, fled to Cambodia with several thousand followers.
Immediately after the revolt, the government of Nguyen Khanh met with Montagnard leaders and planned an assistance program that showed respect for Montagnard traditions. The Highlanders would choose their own representatives in the National Assembly and hold positions in the central and local administrations. The traditional Montagnard court system would be reinstituted. Entrance requirements for officer and NCO students would be revised to admit Montagnards, and a pre-military school for children would be opened. The government also agreed to recognize Montagnard ownership of land and to provide assistance in developing it. Additional schools would be built for Montagnards, and scholarships to high school and universities would be granted. Except for autonomy, most of the Montagnard’s grievances were recognized by Khanh, and he proposed remedial action.
The Khanh government, however, was replaced through a coup in 1965, and his successors did little to implement this program. The Montagnards felt the promises made to them had been broken. Tensions in the highlands increased. On December 18, 1965, there was a second FULRO uprising at various places in Quang Duc, Darlac, and Phu Bon. The rebellion was put down in a day, and its leaders were either imprisoned or executed.
At that point, there appeared to be little hope for improved relations. In 1966, the government of Nguyen Cao Ky began to implement General Khanh’s program. In February, a Special Commissariat for Highlander Affairs was appointed commissioner. At this time, FULRO forces began negotiating the conditions for their return to the GVN. Finally, on October 17, 1966, 250 FULRO soldiers swore allegiance to the government, by Y B’ham who was still the nominal FULRO leader, remained in Cambodia.
During the following year, tensions eased between the Vietnamese and Montagnards. Six Montagnards, including a member of FULRO, were elected to the National Assembly; President Nguyen Van Thieu signed a special law which recognized the Montagnards’ right to own their land; and the GVN established the Ministry for Ethnic Minorities with Paul Nur installed as a regular member of the Cabinet.
While most Montagnard leaders recognized that the GVN had outlined a credible minority policy, Y B’ham remained dissatisfied. Having lived in exile for three years and still in command of a force of militant Montagnard guerrillas, he claimed to have the underground support of thousands of other Montagnards within the Republic of Vietnam itself. Finally, in July, 1968, the government invited him to Ban Me Thuot for further negotiations. Y B’ham returned in August to a Special Forces camp in Quang Duc Province. From there he was flown by Caribou to Ban Me Thuot. After a week of meetings, Y B’ham’s position narrowed to a few specific issues. He still wanted some degree of regional Montagnard autonomy within the political framework of the GVN and with himself installed as Commissioner General. He also asked the GVN to arm Montagnard forces commanded by Montagnard officers to protect Montagnard villages and fight the communists.
He rescinded two other demands he had made earlier: the right of the Montagnards to receive foreign aid directly from other countries, and separate Montagnard representation in all international conferences dealing with Vietnam.
With this understanding, Y B’ham returned to Cambodia and notified his representative in South Vietnam, Y D’he Adrong, to make final agreements for FULRO’s permanent return to the country. An agreement was reached on December 12, 1968. Among other things, it specified that the Montagnards could form their own political party, fly their own flag in the same manner as do other political parties in the Republic of Vietnam, and that the returning FULRO soldiers would be trained and organized into Regional Force companies with Montagnard leaders. Y D’he returned to Saigon with the news.
In January 1969, more than 1,300 FULRO soldiers and their families filtered across the Cambodian border into Quang Duc Province, collecting near the Special Forces camp at Bu Prang. From there, they were flown to Ban Me Thuot, where an official ceremony on February 1 marked the renewal of their allegiance to GVN.
Everything had gone according to plan, except for one thing: Y B’ham, the FULRO leader, had stayed in Cambodia. The reason for this is still not clear. Either he was not pleased with the final agreement Y D’he negotiated with GVN, or he was held captive by a dissident and radical FULRO faction which tried to subvert the FULRO-GVN accord. In either case, Y B’ham’s absence did not stop 1,300 of his former followers from rallying to the government.
During the ceremony, Y D’he announced something which seemed to take most FULRO members by surprise: not only would they swear allegiance to the GVN, but they would also formally dissolve the FULRO organization and replace it with a new, non-militant Montagnard political party, later named the Ethnic Minorities Solidarity Movement (EMSM). While Y D’he’s followers did not expect this mandate, they acquiesced quickly.
Since then, Y D’he has played a less active role in Montagnard politics and has turned more to farming. Another former FULRO leader, Y Bling, took charge of the new party and continues as it chairman today. While the EMSM works to preserve Montagnard customs and to protect the full citizenship rights of its members, it advocates peaceful accomodation with the GVN, not militant secession. This is its principal difference from FULRO.
In a series of written agreements, the GVN has promised to issue land titles to Montagnard farmers; to provide better schools, medical facilities, and agricultural assistance; and to establish Montagnard Regional Force companies while integrating other Montagnard officers into regular ARVN units.
EMSM is now the strongest force uniting the Montagnards. Y Bling claims 65,000 dues-paying members, but probably many fewer are ardent supporters. Still, EMSM has emerged as the first viable form of political leverage the Montagnards have had — at least it is the first which has gained significant support from the GVN. How long it can contain the undercurrent of militancy in the Highlands depends on how well the GVN can fulfill its plans. In wartime, it is hard to build schools and train politicians. The Montagnards know this. But they also know this is the 20th Centry and that it is time they have a place in the future of the country.
[ndlr] Très rarement mentionnée, l’édition française de l’ouvrage clé de Hoang Van Chi sur la RDVN des années cinquante existe pourtant bien (1). Alors que ce témoignage capital sur le Nord-Vietnam paraît dans plusieurs pays à la fois, une édition française voit le jour en 1965 dans une collection diffusée uniquement en Afrique au prix de 100 CFA/2FF. L’ouvrage, traduit de l’anglais par Pierre Nicolas, est paru sous le titre Du colonialisme au communisme. L’expérience du Nord-Vietnam (Tours, Mame, Coll. Dialogues #3, 1965, 345 p.) avec une préface de P. J. Honey comme pour l’édition en langue anglaise. Nous reproduisons ci-dessous le texte de présentation au dos de couverture.
Patriote nord-vietnamien et combattant de la liberté, nul n’est mieux qualifié que l’auteur, Hoang Van Chi, pour décrire la longue lutte de son pays conte l’impérialisme. Comme beaucoup d’autres nationalistes vietnamiens, Hoang Van Chi avaient cru que les communistes et les progressistes non-marxistes pouvaient coopérer pour édifier une société véritablement démocratique. Il fut amèrement déçu de voir le mouvement vietminh progressivement transformé par Ho Chi Minh jusqu’à devenir un régime satellite de la Chine rouge.
Alliant à son témoignage personnel une masse de renseignements convaincants, l’auteur relate avec précision la mainmise communiste sur le Nord-Vietnam et démontre ce que signifie pour son jeune pays le fait que sa vie économique, politique et culturelle soit contrôlée par les communistes. Il analyse sans ambiguïté les buts véritables et les méthodes des dirigeants du Nord-Vietnam. Sans passion mais sans équivoque, il passe au crible de la vérité les mobiles, le processus terroriste et les conséquences de la prétendue « Réforme agraire ». Il met particulièrement l’accent sur les techniques de « réforme de la pensée » et les méthodes qui ont permis au parti communiste d’imposer une obéissance aveugle à tous les Vietnamiens.
Du colonialisme au communisme, l’expérience du Nord-Vietnam est une étude approfondie de la pénétration d’un nouveau pays par le communisme militant. C’est un livre qui, à ce titre, mérite d’être lu avec la plus grande attention.
* * *
Hoàng Văn Chí (1913-1988)
“Autobiographie. L’auteur a connu très tôt des engagements politiques. Avant 1940, il est membre du Parti Socialiste français. Dès 1945, il se rallie au Viêt-Minh. La première étape de la Guerre de Résistance est plutôt enthousiasmante. Mais il vit mal l’influence chinoise, relayée par les cadres communistes vietnamiens. Il dénonce ce qui est vite devenu un “régime totalitaire”, (Chapitre III), en particulier la Réforme agraire (description des méthodes et des résultats dans le Chapitre V). Il quitte la R.D.V. [République Démocratique du Vietnam] en avril 1955 pour se réfugier au Sud, puis à l’étranger” (La Guerre “française” d’Indochine (1945-1954). Les sources de la connaissance, sous la direction d’Alain Ruscio, Paris, Les Indes Savantes, 2002, p. 437).
“Hoang Van Chi, membre du Parti Socialiste français dès 1936, avait rejoint les rangs du Viêt-Minh en 1945. Des fonctions de cadre (technique) lui furent confiées pendant la période de guerre. Il quitta la RDVN en avril 1955 pour se réfugier au Viêt-Nam du Sud, puis à l’étranger. Son témoignage constitue un apport essentiel pour mesurer l’influence et la présence de la Chine populaire dans les maquis vietminh, notamment au début de la période de réforme agraire (1953-1956)” (François Joyaux, La Chine et le règlement du Premier conflit d’Indochine. Genève 1954, Paris, Université de Paris-I Panthéon-Sorbonne, Institut d’histoire des relations internationales contemporaines, 1979, p. 420).
(1) L’entrée de Wikipedia sur Hoang Van Chi omet de citer cette édition française, mentionnée à juste titre par le site vietnamien Talawas lors de la mise en ligne de l’édition vietnamienne.
Andrée Viollis (1870-1950) fut une grande journaliste, saluée en son temps pour son talent et connue pour ses nombreux engagements. L’un d’eux concernait l’Indochine et les Indochinois, et plus généralement la question coloniale. L’étude du soutien qu’elle manifesta aux peuples colonisés, dès ses débuts dans le journalisme au tournant du siècle jusqu’à ses derniers articles et prises de position pendant la guerre d’Indochine, permet de questionner la notion d’anticolonialisme, à la fois comme courant de pensée et comme engagement, et son évolution au cours de la première moitié du xxe siècle. Cette étude porte, d’une part, sur les motivations et sur les formes concrètes de l’engagement de Viollis en faveur des colonisés et, d’autre part, sur l’ensemble polyphonique de contestations du système colonial dans lequel celle de Viollis s’insère. Le problème indochinois étant au cœur de l’engagement de Viollis sur cette question, il a servi de fil conducteur à cette recherche et en a fourni le cadre et la chronologie.
Sources
Archives publiques et privées ont été croisées pour mener à bien cette enquête. Les papiers d’Andrée Viollis, conservés en partie en main privée et en partie aux archives du Parti communiste français, contiennent de la correspondance, des photographies, des carnets de notes, des manuscrits et de la documentation relatifs aux questions coloniales, au problème indochinois en particulier. Ces documents ont été mis en regard des écrits publiés par Viollis (ouvrages et articles), d’articles parus dans la presse de métropole et d’Indochine à l’époque, de publications diverses sur les questions coloniales et de nombreux autres documents d’archives provenant des autorités (ministère des Colonies, ministère de l’Intérieur, gouvernement de l’Indochine), conservées aux Archives nationales et à la préfecture de police de Paris, et d’autres acteurs des affaires coloniales, contemporains de Viollis, comme Léon Blum, Daniel Guérin, ou la Ligue des droits de l’homme.
Première partie
La découverte de l’Indochine (1931)
Chapitre premier
Invitations au voyage
Quelles furent les motivations de Viollis, grand reporter attachée à sa liberté de déplacement et de point de vue, à accepter l’offre de son rédacteur en chef au Petit Parisien de couvrir le voyage officiel du ministre des Colonies, Paul Reynaud, en Indochine, à l’hiver 1931 ? La première était son envie d’aller en Extrême-Orient, portée par son goût des voyages et son environnement familial et professionnel. La deuxième était son intérêt pour les questions coloniales, qui remontait à ses débuts journalistiques dans La Fronde au début du siècle et que l’actualité ne faisait qu’attiser. Viollis avait parcouru en 1930 l’Inde déjà soulevée contre les Anglais. La mutinerie de Yen Bay en février 1930, les retombées de la crise économique et l’ouverture de l’exposition coloniale de Vincennes en mai 1931, avaient mis l’Indochine sur le devant de la scène coloniale française.
Chapitre II
La couverture du voyage ministériel
En trente ans de carrière, Viollis était pour la première fois confrontée à ce genre d’exercice professionnel. Dans Le Petit Parisien, elle rendit compte des déplacements et des allocutions officielles du ministre des Colonies dans un style qui faisait une large place au pittoresque et à l’émotion. Elle resta volontairement en retrait sur les questions politiques et ne fit qu’esquisser quelques ombres au tableau de la colonisation française en Indochine. Dans ses carnets de notes au contraire, au cours du voyage officiel (octobre-novembre 1931) et après le départ du ministre (décembre 1931), elle accumula des faits précis et saillants qui accusaient le contraste entre le décor officiel et les réalités politiques, économiques et sociales de la colonie.
Deuxième partie
Quelques notes sur l’Indochine (1933)
Chapitre premier
Le tournant intellectuel et politique des années 1932-1933
À son retour, Viollis fut sollicitée de toutes parts pour témoigner de son expérience asiatique et pour soutenir les mouvements naissants de lutte contre la guerre et le fascisme. Après avoir beaucoup réfléchi au sens de sa mission de journaliste et à l’articulation possible entre son métier et ses engagements, Viollis accepta de s’engager publiquement. Elle manifesta notamment son opposition à l’hitlérisme, sa sympathie pour l’URSS et, concernant l’Indochine, son soutien aux prisonniers politiques. Elle devint avec Francis Jourdain l’une des figures centrales du Comité de défense et d’amnistie des Indochinois, fondé en mars 1933 pour réclamer l’amnistie des prisonniers politiques indochinois. Dans ce contexte, la mise au net de ses carnets de notes devenait de plus en plus une nécessité.
Chapitre II
Un témoignage accablant (décembre 1933)
Viollis mit beaucoup de temps à mettre en forme et à publier son témoignage pour plusieurs raisons, dont sa crainte des retombées que lui vaudrait une telle critique des autorités coloniales françaises. Intitulé « Quelques notes sur l’Indochine », il parut dans Esprit, une jeune revue progressiste chrétienne, qui avait déjà montré sa conscience du problème colonial. Viollis abordait plusieurs problèmes qu’elle n’avait pas traités dans ses articles du Petit Parisien : le régime des prisons, les dénis de justice, les troubles politiques et leur répression, la famine et la misère, le manque d’égards envers les Annamites. Elle rapportait aussi des cas de torture pratiquée dans les commissariats sur les prisonniers politiques.
Chapitre III
Prolongements
Les notes de Viollis ne passèrent pas inaperçues dans la presse de gauche et dans la presse chrétienne. Une polémique eut lieu pendant un an entre la jeune revue Esprit, qui continuait à s’engager sur la question coloniale, et l’ancienne revue Études animée par les jésuites. D’autres réactions, échelonnées dans le temps, vinrent alimenter des publications et des manifestations qui allaient toutes dans le sens d’une critique du système colonial, que ce soit dans son principe ou seulement dans ses réalisations. Viollis relayait les campagnes du Comité d’amnistie auprès de ses amis et de l’opinion.
Troisième partie
Indochine SOS (1935)
Chapitre premier
Le devoir de publier
Peu de temps après la publication de son article dans Esprit, Andrée Viollis fut encouragée à aller plus loin, à compléter ses notes et à en faire un livre. La parution tardive de l’ouvrage peut s’expliquer par l’urgence du combat antifasciste, mais aussi par les difficultés rencontrées par Viollis liées à ses engagements. Indochine SOS sortit au mois de septembre 1935 chez Gallimard, avec une préface d’André Malraux, dans un contexte de relance du débat colonial, à l’occasion de la guerre d’éthiopie. Viollis tenta de faire une place à ce débat dans Vendredi, le nouvel hebdomadaire politique et littéraire qu’elle codirigea avec André Chamson et Jean Guéhenno à partir de novembre 1935.
Chapitre II
Des documents à charge
Dans Indochine SOS, les « Quelques notes sur l’Indochine » parues dans Esprit sont complétées et insérées dans un ensemble de textes – la préface de Malraux, l’avant-propos de Viollis, les annexes et la bibliographie – qui font de l’ensemble un document à la fois littéraire, journalistique et politique. L’étude de la genèse de l’avant-propos permet de mesurer à quel point il fut difficile pour Viollis de concilier ses idées avancées sur la question coloniale et la nécessité de se faire entendre de l’opinion qu’elle essayait d’alerter. Viollis laissa parler ses notes et surtout les annexes, ensemble de documents tirés de la presse ou inédits qui mettaient en lumière les dysfonctionnements et les injustices qui régnaient en Indochine.
Chapitre III
Un livre qui fit grand bruit
Indochine SOS valut à Viollis de nombreux comptes rendus et commentaires, élogieux ou hostiles. Elle trouva auprès de ses amis des marques de soutien, comme le banquet qui fut organisé en son honneur et en celui de Félicien Challaye à la fin de décembre 1935. Le SOS de Viollis se fit assurément entendre, même si le problème indochinois, et plus largement le problème colonial, paraissait moins menaçant que les manœuvres hitlériennes. Cette publication renforça la légitimité de Viollis à intervenir sur les questions coloniales. La notoriété de Viollis, la reconnaissance professionnelle dont elle jouissait, profitèrent aux partisans des réformes coloniales.
Quatrième partie
De l’espérance à la désillusion (1936-1945)
Chapitre premier
Vigilance en faveur des réformes et contre la répression
La victoire du Front populaire souleva de grandes espérances tant en France que dans les colonies. L’humanisme colonial qui semblait l’inspirer devait pouvoir conduire à des réformes politiques et sociales. Les premières mesures ministérielles furent cependant ambiguës et limitées. Sur les questions de l’amnistie politique, du Congrès indochinois, de l’épuration de l’administration, Viollis, et avec elle Francis Jourdain, ou encore Daniel Guérin, tentèrent en vain d’infléchir les décisions de leur ancien camarade de lutte au Comité d’amnistie, Marius Moutet, nouveau ministre des Colonies du gouvernement de Léon Blum.
Chapitre II
L’échec de la Commission d’enquête dans les colonies
La constitution de la commission d’enquête parlementaire sur la situation politique, économique et morale dans les territoires français d’outre-mer, prévue par le programme du Rassemblement populaire, fut longue et problématique. La nomination d’Andrée Viollis, comme celle d’André Gide ou de Louis Roubaud, suscita de vives oppositions. Viollis ne put participer activement aux travaux de la commission, retenue par son métier, en Espagne notamment. Elle contribua toutefois dans le cadre de la 3e sous-commission et avec Victor Basch, président de la Ligue des droits de l’homme, à l’élaboration d’un rapport sur les aspirations politiques des Indochinois. Pour Viollis et pour tous ceux qui comme elle croyaient en la possibilité de réformes libérales dans les colonies, l’enterrement de la Commission d’enquête, à la fin de 1938, faute de crédits suffisants, resta emblématique des efforts avortés de cette période en matière coloniale.
Chapitre III
Priorité à la lutte antifasciste
Face à la montée des périls, Viollis se rangea à l’analyse selon laquelle il fallait en priorité lutter contre le fascisme avant d’aider à la libération des colonies. La conclusion du reportage qu’elle fit en Tunisie pour Ce Soir allait dans ce sens. Certes, les réformes avaient trop tardé et il était urgent de les mettre en œuvre, mais selon elle, la stratégie de Bourguiba – qu’elle rencontra en prison et qu’elle jugeait trop extrémiste – n’était pas la bonne. Viollis redoubla d’efforts pour venir en aide à l’Espagne républicaine, mais elle continua aussi son combat pour faire avancer la cause de l’amnistie des prisonniers politiques en Indochine, en appuyant notamment les démarches du Secours populaire de France et des colonies.
Cinquième partie
La guerre d’Indochine et la réédition d’Indochine SOS
(1945-1950)
Chapitre premier
Éviter la guerre
La question indochinoise fut la première sur laquelle Andrée Viollis se pencha dès la fin du conflit mondial. Cinq articles écrits en octobre et novembre 1945 témoignent de son intérêt et de sa compétence sur cette question et marquent le début de son engagement contre la guerre et en faveur d’une politique de négociations. Cet engagement se traduisit aussi dès 1945 par la défense des Vietnamiens poursuivis en métropole et la présidence d’un meeting en faveur de l’amitié franco-vietnamienne. Membre fondateur de l’Association France-Viêt-Nam, elle s’attacha à faire connaître les revendications de la République démocratique du Viêt-Nam. Elle rencontra les membres de la délégation vietnamienne lors de leur passage à Paris en vue des négociations de Fontainebleau, ainsi que le Président Hô Chi Minh. À partir de l’hiver 1946, elle assista, impuissante, à la rupture des négociations et au déclenchement du conflit.
Chapitre II
Dénoncer la guerre
Alors que Viollis était en reportage au début de 1947 en Afrique du Sud où elle s’intéressait au problème racial et social sud-africain, la France s’était engagée davantage dans la guerre en Indochine. Au cours de cette année 1947 qui vit cette guerre susciter des refus prononcés, Viollis signa l’introduction d’une brochure éditée par le PCF intitulée La Vérité sur le Viêt-Nam et soutint la campagne de l’hiver 1947-1948 organisée par le parti pour la libération des Vietnamiens emprisonnés. La protestation anticoloniale prit de l’ampleur à la fin de 1948 et en 1949, à l’occasion de l’affaire malgache et du mouvement pour la paix. Viollis se rendit en Afrique noire et s’indigna du déroulement du procès de Tananarive.
Chapitre III
La réédition d’Indochine SOS
Dans le contexte de mobilisation croissante d’intellectuels contre la guerre d’Indochine et de décolonisation en marche (Inde en 1947, Birmanie en 1948, etc.), Indochine SOS fut réédité à la fin de 1949 par une maison d’édition du Parti communiste, les Éditeurs français réunis, avec une préface de Francis Jourdain. Le livre paraît alors qu’un débat sur les « atrocités françaises » en Indochine agite l’opinion depuis l’été 1949. C’est surtout à travers ce thème que la mémoire d’Indochine SOS, de 1945 jusqu’à aujourd’hui, a perduré. Les débats sur la torture pendant la guerre d’Algérie et plus généralement sur le bilan de la colonisation ont mis en lumière toute l’actualité de ce livre.
Conclusion
Si, dans tous les courants de pensée, des voix se firent entendre pour contester certaines pratiques coloniales, l’idée du bien fondé de la colonisation, la croyance en la mission civilisatrice de la France dans les colonies étaient largement partagées. Viollis elle-même était imprégnée par la culture impériale de son temps, même si très tôt elle perçut les contradictions idéologiques et politiques de l’entreprise coloniale menée par la Troisième République et les dénonça. Dans les années 1930 et 1940, sa volonté d’alerter l’opinion sur le problème colonial et ses difficultés à le faire témoignent de la complexité du combat anticolonialiste et réformiste. Viollis reste un nom symbole de ce combat et son engagement permet d’éclairer celui d’autres intellectuels.
Annexes
Carte de l’Indochine dans les années 1930. — Chronologie du voyage d’Andrée Viollis en Indochine. — édition des articles d’Andrée Viollis, envoyée spéciale du Petit Parisien en Indochine. — Index des groupes et associations, périodiques, lieux, personnes.
Nguyen Chi Thien at The Gates of Hell (Stanford University, California)
Autobiography of Nguyễn Chí Thiện
I was born in Hanoi on February 27, 1939. My natal village is My-Tho in the district of Binh-Luc, Ha-Nam Province, North Vietnam. My father, Nguyen-Cong Phung, was born in 1898. He died in 1976. Before 1954, he was a low-ranking official of the Hanoi Tribunal. My mother, Nguyen-Thi-Yen, was born in 1900. She died in 1970. She was a little merchant.
I have two sisters: Nguyen-Thi-Hoan, who was born in 1923 and Nguyen-Thi-Hao who was born in 1925. Nguyen-Thi-Hao died in Hanoi in November, 2004. Nguyen-Thi-Hoan lives in Hanoi with her family.
When my parents died I was in a concentration camp called Phong-Quang in Lao-Cai Province. Once my sister Hao visited me there at the request of my mother before her death. My sister’s visit for the purpose of telling me of the death of my mother was the only family visit that I received while imprisoned for fifteen years. This was not due to callous disregard on the part of my family; it was due to deliberate constant changes of prisons and camps by the regime. Because I was not imprisoned with trials, they did not know where I was. They had to hear from released prisoners where I had been, but I would be likely to be moved by that time. Political prisoners were shuffled regularly by jailors so they would not form associations for rebellion or escape.
My brother is Nguyen-Cong-Gian; he was born in 1932. He was a lieutenant-colonel in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam and, like all other officers, was imprisoned in a re-education camp after the communist victory in 1975. His term was for thirteen years (1975-1988). He and his family came to the U.S.A. under the Humanitarian Operation (H.O.) Program, a joint agreement between the U.S. and Vietnam allowing political asylum for military officers of ARVN who had been imprisoned in Vietnam for more than three years. My brother and his family came to the U.S. in 1993, and have lived in Virginia since then. Because the times of both of our imprisonments and surveillance in our homeland did not allow us to meet, I did not see my brother Gian from the time of our youth until I arrived in the U.S.A. on November 1, 1995, a period of forty-one years. He and his family met me at the Dulles Airport.
My family was poor, but my parents did their best to give their sons and daughters a good education. It was beneficial to be the youngest in the family because the older ones helped me to learn. For example, my sister Hao taught me the French language at age six just as she had been taught in the colonial French schools. This longtime use with the language may be the basis for my interest in French novels and poetry as relaxation. My brother Gian was always studious and serious, whereas I was more interested in boxing and swimming as a youth.
During the Resistance against the French Army, which broke out on December 19, 1946, my family moved to My-Tho, our natal village, fifty miles from Hanoi. We lived in the home of a nephew of my father. This was because Hanoi was a battlefield in the war between France and Vietnam and we were fleeing danger. Everyone in Hanoi went to the countryside of the many regions of their births at this time.
At the end of 1949, my family came back to Hanoi, which was then occupied by the French Army. From 1949 to 1956 I went to high school at Nguyen Hue, Minh-Tan, Van Lang, Albert Sarraut, and Khai-Thanh. These were private schools as was common in North Vietnam at that time. After 1950 both boys and girls went to the same schools, but were so timid that we almost never talked to each other.
My sisters had married before 1945 and lived in Hanoi. When necessary we lived at the home of my elder sister, Nguyen-Thi-Hoan, and her husband and children.
On March 9, 1945, when France had been liberated from Germany by the Allied Army, the Japanese made a coup d’etat on only one night and imprisoned the French governor of Vietnam and the French Army. In the void following the Japanese surrender to the Allied Powers in August, 1945, there was a genuine revolution in my homeland. This revolution was bloodless; it was the people taking care of themselves. However it was soon co-opted by the communists with the assistance of the Soviet Union. This was the establishment of the Viet Minh and return of Ho Chi Minh. The nationalist leaders and many supporters of this Vietnamese revolution were soon imprisoned or killed by the communists.
After the Geneva Accords of July 20, 1954, nearly one million people left the North for the South, fleeing communism. My parents decided to stay in Hanoi, believing that the Vietnamese communists were patriots; they had led the people in the fight against French domination, for national independence. Moreover, their doctrine supported the poor.
That naivete would have disastrous consequences. My brother, who had been mobilized in the National Army (quan doi quoc gia) in 1954 was the only one who went to the South, by traveling with the Army. Later, he was a lieutenant-colonel. After the fall of Saigon, he was put in a re-education camp in North Vietnam for thirteen years. During the war he married a lady from Saigon.
I remember the 10th of October, 1954, as if it were yesterday. That was the day Ho Chi Minh and his Party returned to Hanoi. Like everyone my friends and I went out on the streets to welcome him. Our hearts were full of joyous enthusiasm, thinking the red banner with a golden star would brighten our fatherland! At that time, I used to invite some Viet Minh soldiers, victors of Dien-Bien-Phu, to my home for dinner, admiring them as true heroes.
My foolish exuberance, like everyone’s, soon vanished. Perfidy and violence had started their way—trampling down all basic human rights, executing and imprisoning hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Under the totalitarian yoke, the whole country turned into a huge prison. All liberties were pitilessly destroyed. No one could let out one peep against Ho Chi Minh. The Party had gagged the people’s mouths. A terrifying atmosphere pervaded the entire population. French colonialists began to be sorely missed! Compared with Uncle Ho’s socialist regime, the French colonial domination was PARADISE!
Under Ho Chi Minh’s regime, everyone was poor, and did not have enough to eat. However, this made me strong enough to withstand the starvation in the communist prisons, as well as other Vietnamese prisoners who were accustomed to a small diet and are not large people. By contrast, when the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu and 10,000 soldiers captured and imprisoned, two-thirds of them died with a few months because of privation as well as torture by the Viet Minh using well-known communist methods.
The social changes of the communists began to take effect beginning in 1950, and were firmly in place by 1959. This is the period of my teenage years. My parents quickly began to feel they had made a mistake in not choosing to go South when they had the opportunity in 1954 and 1955.
In 1956, at the age of seventeen, I contracted tuberculosis. Unable to work, I lived a parasitic life. My elderly parents had to nourish me. In the beginning of 1957, my parents and I moved to Haiphong, a harbor town seventy miles from Hanoi. They had to sell our home in Hanoi in order to pay for my treatment, because antibiotics were very expensive. We lived with the family of my elder sister, at 136 Station Street.
Although I said and did nothing against the Party, I had much trouble with Security Forces. The authorities regarded me as “a discontented element” because my brother was in the quan doi quoc gia VN, the National Army.
In December, 1960, a high school history teacher who was one of my friends asked me to assume his task for two hours because he was ill. The required textbook was Cach Mang Thang Tam 1945 (History of the August Revolution), which was published by the Su That Publishing House in Hanoi. The textbook falsely stated that the Japanese surrender in World War II was to the Soviet Army’s victory over the Japanese armed forces in Manchuria. I explained to my students that Japan had surrendered to the Allies because of the two atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the U.S.A.
About two months later I was arrested, accused of “Anti-propaganda,” and condemned to two years in prison. In reality, I had to live three years and six months in labor camps in Phu-Tho Province and Yen-Bai Province. Although labor was hard in these camps, I was still young. Prisoners could talk to one another on our way to and from work, which was primarily agricultural, growing vegetables. About ten of us enjoyed gathering in the yard at dusk to secretly read poetry and discuss literature. This was necessarily secret because the guards would break up groups, especially those who met regularly.
During those years in detention, I created about 100 poems on the subjects of the prison scene and anticommunism. When I was released in 1964, I continued to write poetry and recite it to my closest friends who went on reciting it to others, in Haiphong and Hanoi. We did not have much money so we met in parks, on benches, in the evening. My job at this time was to do bricklaying, especially the carrying of bricks in a basket across my shoulders. The duty of reporting on others, even your own parents or husbands, to the cadres is a norm under the communist reign. Whenever anyone would pass by when we were reading or discussing poetry and politics we would change the subject until they were out of hearing range.
My friends and I rejoiced that the Americans had entered the war on the side of South Vietnam and were bombing Haiphong. We were given careful surveillance by Security Forces at all times because we were suspected of being saboteurs; however the only sabotage that we undertook was that of keeping our minds free of the demands of communism. All over North Vietnam, it was required of everyone to glorify the regime, especially in schools. If not, and the student remained silent, that student would be reported to the Party. Many friends of mine were put in prison because of their mouths.
My parents always loved me and made me feel that I had not done wrong in not adopting the ways and habits of the communists. They blamed themselves for my prison life. If they had only gone South along with my brother, they felt we would have a happy life. We wanted South Vietnam to invade North Vietnam and take over the Communist government, and felt the American bombing was not enough to end the war, let alone to remove the regime.
In February of 1966 I was arrested again. The Security Forces suspected that I was the author of the poems that were transmitted from mouth to mouth in Haiphong and Hanoi. When interrogated, I denied it, saying that I knew nothing about these “reactionary poems.” Without receiving a trial, I was sent to the concentration camps in Phu-Tho, Yen-Bai, and Lao-Cai Provinces.
I never think that I am talented, but that I was able to write poems that affected people because of inspiration, or a sacred fire that was inside me. My vitality of life was put into creating poems even if I was in stocks or irons. I used to work on poems at night, because in the daytime it was too noisy. They took several nights to write, and memorize, and revise the words carefully, before completion. If a poem was not good, I would throw it out of my mind with the same method.
First I would consider the necessary rhythm of the poem. Then I would place the words, the verses, and memorize them. The following night I would repeat them and revise them and commit them to memory. Then I would recite them to my friends in prison camp who were also poets when we gathered after work in the evening. We would help each other.
It was at the Phong Quang camp, in Lao Cai Province, that I gained my closest friendship in life, the poet Phung Cung. Because writing on paper was not allowed, everyone had ways to meter the verses. Phung Cung would use his fingers to count. He would do this with such concentration that other prisoners and jailers thought he was crazy. But he was not, he was simply counting words. I did not use body methods, even reciting aloud, just my memory. Most of my poems (about 300) were created during the second period of imprisonment, eleven years between 1966 and 1977. These are the years of my twenties and thirties.
In July, 1977, (two years after the surrender of South Vietnam) a dozen prisoners and I were temporarily liberated, making room for the increasing number of prisoners who arrived from the South. These dozen included friends and fellow-writers who had come to know each other at the Phong-Quang concentration camp where I had been taken in 1970.
Returning to my elder sister, Mrs. Nguyen-Thi Hoan, and her family, I lived at their home at number 136 Station Street in Haiphong. I was dismayed to find the house also occupied by ten families crammed into the house. Those were families of cadres and party members, of the bloc leader and also of the police officer of this ward by the name of Thanh. The ward police, the district police, the city police often came to “inquire about my health”. Under those circumstances, I did not dare to shut myself in my room of 8 m2 to write. I often rode my bicycle – its brand was a bear but it was so rickety that even a thief would not want to steal it – to an outer suburb to buy a few litres of rice brandy to sell to the dog meat stalls. When the moonshine business was busted, I went to Hanoi. Vu Thu Hien helped me find a job delivering baking flour. Mr. Trinh, a former lieutenant in the National Army, gave me a few sets of bicycle spokes, which I took to Haiphong to sell. That’s how I managed to scrape through. Friends were so preoccupied with survival that they rarely met each other.
Denied any form of employment, I made both ends meet with difficulty. People under the Communist regime always had very little food because of the policy of exporting rice grown in the conquered South Vietnam provinces to other Communist regimes instead of feeding our own people. I often went to bed with an empty stomach even when not in prison. My mother, before she died in 1970, had bought me clothes to wear when I should be released from prison. I had to sell these clothes to buy 8 kilograms (about 19 pounds) of rice to survive.
When Red China invaded the six border provinces, security forces tormented me ceaselessly. Afraid of being unable to survive if jailed a third time, I made up my mind to send my poems abroad. These poems were the first twenty years of my work. It was impossible to let them be buried with me! I went to Hanoi, deciding to run into the French or British Embassy. It took me three days to write four hundred poems from my memory on papers. So, on July 16th, 1979, I put my manuscript under my shirt and went to the British Embassy on Ly-Thuong-Kiet Street.
I found my way into the Embassy, passing the guard. One Vietnamese woman and three Vietnamese men were sitting around a table in a large room. They were civil servants hired by the British to be a local reception office for the Embassy. I told them that I came to see the Ambassador.
“Where are you from?” one of them asked. “From the foreign office,” I answered. They demanded the required paper. I told them I had forgotten to carry it. With that, I rushed to the door at the other side of the room. The woman stood up and grasped me. I pushed her down. Two men barred my way into the room. The third Vietnamese man went out to warn the police.
There was a young English girl combing her hair in a boudoir without a door on my right side. I said to her quickly in English: “I need to meet the Ambassador. Don’t fear, I am an honest man.” But she was so frightened that she dropped her comb. The two men chased me. I ran to the table and lifted it up, making everything on the table fall to the floor. Hearing the noise, three English diplomats came out. One Vietnamese man said that I was a madman. I said to the three Englishmen that I was not crazy, and I had important documents to give them. I immediately ran in the back door. The Englishmen followed me, closing the door.
I handed them my manuscript and told them about my prison life and the sufferings of my oppressed people under the communist totalitarian yoke. I begged them to have my poems published in their free country. Finally, I asked whether I could stay in the Embassy. They replied that I could not because the police were waiting for me outside. They promised solemnly that they would arrange for my poems to be published.
Satisfied, I gave them three photos. One was taken in 1958 with my parents and my niece and nephew; one was taken in the same year when I was nineteen years old, and the third one was taken in 1978, when I was thirty-nine. I shook hands with them, said good-bye, and left the Embassy. The Security Forces of the Socialist government of Vietnam arrested me in front of the British Embassy, and drove me to Hoa-Lo prison, which had been ironically called the “Hanoi Hilton” by U.S. pilots who had been shot down by Russian SAM missiles when bombing or flying reconnaissance over North Vietnam from 1967 until 1973. The original handwritten manuscripts are in the protective custody of the British government in London. They will be returned when Vietnam is free.
The Hoa Lo prison is the setting of my short stories which are based on real situations and people I knew when I was there for six years. The first three years I was in a solitary cell, in darkness. The second three years I was with common criminals. Sometimes women were in cells nearby, but mostly prisoners were gender-separated in large rooms containing about 200 people each. I was able to communicate with women when in cells, and especially enjoyed hearing them sing folk songs that I remembered from my youth. I was in cell #14. We would communicate with each other when the jailers were not there by yelling back and forth and by a system of “driving” items such as toothbrushes and other goods for trade by strings thrown to the next cell. Each person was honor-bound to deliver the item to the cell of its intended recipient and not break the chain.
I survived the terrible ordeal of prison conditions because my companions in the Hoa Lo prison, even common criminals, admired my resistance to the communist authority. They protected me as much as they could by giving up some of their small space to lie down so that I did not have to always sleep on my side.
In 1985 I was transferred from Hoa-Lo prison to B14, in Thanh-Liet village, eight miles from Hanoi. I was living there in cells where Mr. Vo Dai Ton, a fighter for democracy, was living. Other political prisoners at B14 included Hoang-Minh Chinh, Duong-Thu-Huong, Ha-Si-Phu, and Nguyen-Thanh-Giang. My health deteriorated badly due to more solitary confinement and malnutrition. The interior fire of creation went out, and after 1988 I composed no more poems because I could not concentrate.
In the ten-year period between 1977 and 1988 I created 400 poems. However, I forgot 100 of them when I was reciting them to myself after my release in 1991. I spent one year after my release to call back to my memory the 300 poems that I would write down on paper on a single day after I came to the United States, November 1, 1995.
In 1988 I was transferred to Z10 in Ninh Binh Province, seventy miles from Hanoi, where a communist general named Chu-Van Tan’s several relatives were also jailed. This was a segregated prison for Chinese supporters suspected to be spies.
Although isolated from society, I always found ways to communicate and get news from the newly arrested prisoners. That is how I learned the events of the war as they unfolded. Sometimes new prisoners were Communist Party members who had the courage to criticize their superiors.
Thanks to the collapse of the socialist regimes in Eastern Europe and the pressure of the Vietnamese Diaspora to call my situation to the attention of international opinion, I was released in October, 1991, after more than twelve years of imprisonment in my third period of being jailed without trial. Eight of those years were in solitary confinement, and in very dim light. When I was released I weighed only eighty pounds; today I weigh 139 pounds.
After my release from the third period of imprisonment, which I did not expect to survive, I knew that my poems had been published as promised by the Englishmen, first in October, 1980. I learned this in prison when angry officials showed me a book and asked if they were mine. I said that I was the author. I was very happy because I had attained my goal. They were submitted to an international poetry competition and awarded the International Poetry Award in Rotterdam in the year 1985.
All unknown to me, they were translated into several languages: English, French, German, Dutch, Chinese, Spanish, Czech, and Korean. The English translation by Huynh Sanh Thong was published as the first volume in the Lac Viet Series by the Council on Southeast Asia Studies at Yale University in that same year as Flowers From Hell. In 1988 they were translated into German by Dr. Bui Hanh Nghi and published as Echo Aus Dem Abgrund, Tieng Vong Tu Day Vuc by R.G. Fischer Verlag with an introduction by the musician Peter Gabriel. The Vietnamese musician Pham Duy who had found refuge in America set many to music as “Prison Songs” and performed them around the world.
All of this was unknown to me while I was in solitary confinement in my homeland for creating these verses with the rhymes and rhythms of freedom and resistance to tyranny. My whereabouts and my condition, whether alive or dead, was unknown to the translators and publishers. However, people all over the world were watching and I was given the “Freedom to Write” award in 1988. Perhaps it was for this reason they did not kill me.
The last three years of my imprisonment, 1988 to 1991, saw annual changes in my location. In my struggle for survival, it no longer mattered to me where I was. The numbered camps, B14 and Z10, were for people considered dangerous. In 1990 I was transferred to Ba Sao camp, in Ha Nam Province, very near to my natal village. This was a transition for my return to the outside world in 1991.
From 1991 to 1995 I was living in Hanoi with my second sister’s Hao’s family at 65 Nguyen-Cong-Tru Street, under strict surveillance. Everyone who came to see me was later threatened by the police. After diplomatic normalization between the U.S.A. and Viet-Nam I was allowed asylum in the U.S.A. under the Humanitarian Operation program. This was due to the efforts of humanitarian organizations and especially efforts of a retired U.S. Air Force colonel who lives in California, Noboru Masuoka.
The story of Col. Masuoka’s concern is an interesting one. He was the admissions officer of the Air Force Academy in Colorado. His own history includes incarceration at Heart Mountain, Wyoming, concentration camp in the United States during World War II. All persons of Japanese descent, citizens or not, were moved from their homes and their land confiscated. When “Nobby” met young Vietnamese students who had qualified for admission to the Air Force Academy, they told him of their South Vietnamese Army officer fathers who were still imprisoned in Vietnam. He was able to arrange the release of two officers and their emigration to America.
When asked by a television reporter in San Jose if he could aid a poet to leave the country who had never been a military or civilian official it was a challenge. But he worked with humanitarian organizations and government officials in Washington D.C. to get my release to improve my health. This release finally came on November 1, 1995. Upon my arrival I was asked to address the Congress of the United States, which I did in English, from my speech translated by Nguyen Ngoc Bich. It has since been translated into French. I also addressed the Parliament and the President of France, Jacques Chirac, in the year 2000.
During the last twelve-year period of detention I created about 300 poems. I had to keep them in my head. When arriving in the U.S.A. I hurried to write them on paper, fearing that the poems would leave my mind. The new poems were translated by Nguyen Ngoc Bich, a scholar who has written and published extensively on Vietnamese history and culture. He has been overseas for nearly forty years and his English is very good. I had the poems published in 1996.
I lived with my brother Gian’s family in Herndon, Virginia, until 1998, when I went to France at the invitation of the International Parliament of Writers. During three years in France (1998 – 2001) I wrote six stories of life in Hoa-Lo prison, where I had been incarcerated following my arrest outside the British Embassy in Hanoi from 1979 until 1985. These stories were not fiction; they were based on real experiences. Many incidents are of my own life in prison.
They were published in Vietnamese by Canh Nam publishers in Arlington, Virginia, in 2001. They have been translated into English by several friends who volunteered their energy and skills and I am seeking their publication in America.
In 2001 I moved to southern California, to live in the warm weather and the largest population of Vietnamese Diaspora in America. California’s climate and associations with friends has improved my health. I live as a lodger in a Vietnamese family home. I learned English and became a citizen of the U.S.A. on October 20, 2004. I give lectures and readings especially to remember the people imprisoned with me and those who are still imprisoned. I intend to write a very thorough and lengthy memoir in my original language, Vietnamese.
During my twenty-seven years of imprisonment, with no books or magazines to read, I devoted all my spare time (especially at night) to create my poems, learning them by heart. It would have been too risky, too dangerous to write them on paper. For me poetry was no luxury, it was the cruel realities of life of war and prison, the sound of sobbing of my oppressed and mercilessly tortured compatriots. It was the memory of my parents, who are always in my mind, and their love and sacrifice for their children, especially their youngest who was born to them so late in their lives and caused them such tribulation. It was not hate, but hope that kept me alive. It was the remembered sights and sounds of the street vendors and lovely girls, the coffee shop of my youthful friends wasting time in a careless way that became the hope of my miserable life. It was the remembered sights of sunset and dawn and the landscape of my homeland, sometimes only seen while laboring in the dreary concentration camps but always beautiful in the darkness of my solitary cell and unshackled imagination.
Yet the solitude continues as I am away from so many friends in my homeland, and grows deeper as they grow old and pass away. Since living in the United States, I often make telephone calls to inquire about my family, my friends. In January, 1997, on a Saturday evening, my friends gathered at the home of Captain Kieu Duy Vinh waiting for my phone call. Right at the beginning of our conversation, Le Quang Dung, the poet, told me that the poet Phung Cung, who had lived with me in prison where we had made life bearable for each other had just passed away on Friday at his home, after two weeks of severe illness. My friends were about to go to his funeral. I was thunderstruck and heartbroken. So he had gone forever and I would never have the chance of seeing him again, of watching his pensive look, of drinking a cup of tea with him and listening to his poetry.
Death is inevitable, but still I could not help feeling an excruciating sense of loss and I wept! That night, I lay down, my face against the wall. I remembered the months and years we were together. I recalled the day we met for the first time at Phong Quang, on a sombre winter day when he was standing before a red pepper plant, gazing at the leaden grey sky with an equally leaden look on his face. Then, on the day when I said good-bye to him to leave for Saigon on my way to the United States, he had held my hands not wanting to let go, his eyes brimming with tears. Very early in the morning, drifting into a doze, I dreamed of the stars, the azure blue sails flying with the wind on the Milky Way, taking his soul to the Merciful Almighty! One day, when returning to Vietnam, there will be nothing I can do but to stand in silence before a cattle-trodden mound at the end of a hamlet, where his body has been laid to rest.
I have always thought it was a miracle and destiny that I could survive. Many friends of mine, much healthier and stronger than I, died from hunger, cold, and hard labor. Graves are everywhere on the hills around the camps. Over one million people have left our homeland for Europe, Australia, and America. At least half that number additionally have died in the attempt to escape from the communist regime.
My dearest wish was, is, and will be to see everyone wake up to the fact that Communism is a great catastrophe of mankind, as people have awakened to the Nazi scourge.
Jean Libby prepared the Autobiography with Nguyen Chi Thien. She is a social activist from the 1960s civil rights movement, when she edited periodicals for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE, 1963 – 1965), and the Palo Alto-Stanford NAACP (1966 – 1969). Jean later graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a degree in Social Science (1986). She also holds an A.A. degree in Professional Photography, and an M.A. in Ethnic Studies from San Francisco State University (1991). She went on to teach courses on U.S. History and Ethnic Studies at community colleges in northern California. She retired from active teaching in early 2005, and now works with textbook publishers on curriculum materials and VietCommunications, Inc. to examine reconnection between the generations of Vietnamese Americans.
In 2003 a statewide petitioners group organized a protest of the firing of the only Vietnamese American staff member at the Oakland Museum of California, which was preparing an exhibit “California and the Vietnam Era.” Jean Libby became one of the Southeast Asian Community Advisory Committee to the Oakland Museum. Jean Libby organized a seminar, “Vietnamese American Achievement in California Textbooks” at the request of community groups in October 2004, inviting the dissident poet Nguyen Chi Thien to be the keynote speaker. Since then Jean has worked with Thien on his Autobiography and to arrange lecture/readings around the country.
[ndlr] Article de Doan Cam Thi sur l’écriture de l’écrivain vietnamien Bao Ninh autour de son ouvrage qui fit grand bruit dans le Viêt Nam du début des années 1990. Elle interroge l’écriture de la guerre dans le Viêt Nam communiste et analyse la “confession” de Bao Ninh. Cet article a été publié initialement dans la revue en ligne La Revue des Ressources. Il est extrait de Doan Cam Thi, Écrire le Vietnam contemporain (Presses universitaires Paris Sorbonne, 2010).
