Mastodawn

#Revolutionaries behind the 1908 Hanoi Poison Plot detained at the Hoa Lo Prison by the French colonists in 1941.

13 of them had their heads chopped off instantly and displayed in public. The French later used the photo for an #Indochina #propaganda postcard.

Whilst the second world war was raging across the world, in Vietnam the #VietMinh #Liberation Movement, led by famed revolutionary Ho Chi Minh, was taking birth. #HoChiMinh had one dream. An independent Vietnam free of foreign rule.

The first year after the war had Japan, and then Britain keen to get their hands on Vietnam. But they were soon replaced by Vietnam’s old colonial rulers: the French.

For nine long years, thereafter, from 1946 to 1954 the First Indochina War ripped across the country. Spilling blood, lives, and peace. On one side were the French. More adamant to stay. More aggressive in their rule. They were helped by the US who provided advisers, funding, and weapons from behind the scenes.
Anti-communist Vietnamese loyalists aided the French rulers’ legitimacy. On the other side was Ho Chi Minh and his revolutionaries.

Things eventually came to a head in 1954 with the Geneva Conference and creation of the 17th Parallel, a Demilitarized Zone [DMZ] on 17 degrees latitude north.

#AsianMastodon #Vietnam #VietnameseSovereignty #VietnamRevolutionaries #LongLiveVietnam #WarSurvivorsForPeace #VietnamHistory #ForeignInvaders #VietnamRevolution #geopolitics #WWII #GlobalSouth #SouthEastAsia #ASEAN #WorldHistory #LearnHistory #Courage #ResistanceFighters #historicalPhotos

Show thread

Ms. Que Banh Mar 8

The #UN failed our peoples in Vietnam - just like they've failed everywhere else because the UN protects capitalist imperial interests over #sovereignty of nations & it's never really had much enforcement teeth.

One of the outcomes of the DMZ was Ngo Dinh Diem’s regime in South Vietnam. Prime Minister of South Vietnam when the DMZ was drawn, in 1955 he proclaimed the country Republic of Vietnam and made himself its President. All with the help of the USA.

The latter’s intelligence had revealed 80 percent of Vietnamese were in favour of Ho Chi Minh. Which translated to a communist regime should General Elections take place. Pro-US, autocratic, Catholic, and anti-Buddhist, Diem ensured the UN-mandated elections never happened.

He also liked the good life. His Independence Palace in #Saigon came with a night-club and private helipad on the top floor, and bunkers deep in the bowels of the earth under the building.

Meanwhile, a stratum of Vietnamese society who were unhappy with Diem’s rule, and were pro-Ho Chi Minh, decided to go underground in 1961. Literally. Known as the #NationalLiberationFront, the guerilla force functioned from subterranean tunnels and jungle cover. They were determined to overthrow South Vietnam’s Diem government and unify Vietnam under #communism. The US called them #VietCong.

#AsianMastodon #Vietnam #GenevaAccords #VietnameseSovereignty #VietnamRevolutionaries #LongLiveVietnam #WarSurvivorsForPeace #VietnamHistory #ForeignInvaders #VietnamRevolution #geopolitics #WWII #GlobalSouth #SouthEastAsia #ASEAN #WorldHistory #LearnHistory #Courage #ResistanceFighters #Guerillas #VietnamLiberation #USpol

Show thread

Ms. Que Banh Mar 8

Xa Loi Pagoda in #Saigon was a hub of opposition to the Diem #USPuppet government. In 1963, Diem had his domestic terrorists attack the monastery. They arrested 1,400 monks, nuns & patriarch.

In 1963, faced with a coup, Diem tried to escape from the tunnels under one of his houses [now the Ho Chi Minh City Museum] to the perceived safety of Cha Tam Church in Cholon. Here he was captured and assassinated.

The #coup was staged by the #USA, the same USA who had brought him to power.

Show thread

Ms. Que Banh Mar 8

#USInvaders were guided by the #DominoTheory - if Vietnam fell to communism, so would Laos, Cambodia & all of southeast Asia. The Gulf of #Tonkin changed things a lot.

According to the USA, Vietnamese patrol boats attacked the USS Maddox moored in the Gulf. Immediately, a resolution was passed to officially engage in war. President LB Johnson, the ‘heart of the war,’ sent 500,000 US troops to South Vietnam in 1965 to fight against North Vietnam in the north and the Viet Cong in the south. He called it Operation Rolling Thunder. The campaign would rain 864,000 tons of bombs on North Vietnam over the next three-and-a-half years, killing 52,000 North Vietnamese.

In the 2003 #documentary - #TheFogOfWar - the #USgovernment admitted that they had fabricated the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

Show thread

Ms. Que Banh Mar 8

My big Auntie lived/worked in the tunnels for years, after quitting her nursing job & leaving our family for a decade. She worked mainly in the resistance army comms & also on their medical team. She was part of the organizational team that planned the #TetOffensive

North Vietnam & Viet Cong’s Tet Offensive in 1968 took South Vietnamese & #USATerrorists by surprise. Launched on Vietnam’s lunar new year holiday, it was one of the biggest military campaigns in the war.

Cu Chi Tunnels near Saigon was integral. The 121-kilometre-long network of subterranean tunnels, a larger network that cut across most of Vietnam, were Viet Cong’s lifeline.

Hidden under camouflaged booby traps, the tunnels provided our resistance fighters with supply/comms routes, living quarters & storage for food/weapons. Air and water were scarce, insects, scorpions, and rodents aplenty, it didn't deter them.

Show thread

mike805 Mar 8

@PhoenixSerenity When and how were the tunnels built? That looks like solid rock in the photo? How did people find their way through them? How were they kept drained of water?

I know the Americans had "tunnel rat" units in an effort to clear the tunnels but I don't think they got too far.

Show thread

Ms. Que Banh 3d ago

@mike805 They were hand-dug by shovels, hands & pure determination. The full system took over a decade to build. They had water systems with hoses & filtration units inside. The tunnels systems infrastructure alone would fill up more documentary films - many other resistance forces ended up learned from Vietnamese resistance army tunnel systems.

Show thread

mike805 3d ago

@PhoenixSerenity Including Hamas apparently. They have extensive tunnels which the Israelis have had great difficulty dealing with. They also run phone wires through the tunnels, and such communications cannot be intercepted from above due to the shielding effect of the ground.

Show thread

Ms. Que Banh 3d ago

@mike805 My big Auntie was in charge of a lot of VC comms. They used stolen wires from captured US terrorists after taking over their temporary bases. They got more wires from Russian allies at the time. My big Auntie learned to train some rats to carry wires through tightest areas by food enticement. It was the first time that rats were used in tactical defense work & to this day, no one has ever documented that portion of the war years.

Show thread

mike805 3d ago

@PhoenixSerenity Sounds like there is a movie to be made about that. There was a network wiring crew that had a trained rat to pull string through walls so they could pull wire. Neat idea.

You ought to record or write down her memoirs if she is alive.

The colonial apparatus built up by the British moved to the USA after WW1. It's the same beast, and the financial headquarters is still in London.

Nobody has figured out how to slay that monster yet.

Show thread

mike805

@PhoenixSerenity There has been great progress in the 20th and 21st century in defeating colonialism and foreign occupation.

There has not been similar progress in defeating internal repression. Freedom-loving people do not have a repeatable process to remove a bad domestic government, so a lot of countries that successfully threw out colonizers are stuck with repressive domestic governments.

That part needs to be figured out.