nguyen_viet_2000@yahoo.com (EL CHINO BOATMEN'S CONSCIENCE) wrote in message news:<6ea9eed5.0311060618.907fc09@posting.google.com>...
> WHY THE MURDERS:
>
> The rationale of the Communists for the execution was to create a
> psychological shock to cure the peasants of their fear and respect for
> the Landlord. Some peasants worked for generation for a landlord
> family for whom they showed loyalty.
> The Communists wanted to demonstrate to their base, i.e., the
> landless peasants which formed about 90% of the Vietnamese population
> in the 1950s that they are the bosses now. The land belong to them
> and the Party will help them to keep it
>

NO peasant in any communist country was allowed to *keep* the land.
It's no different in Vietnam. The VCP only took the land from the
landlords *AND* the peasants and turned it into state asset to support
the war.

> Only then that the landless peasants who lived in fear of the
> Landlords for tens of centuries believed that the Vietkong meant
> business in their land redistribution promise. They enrolled in drove
> in the Liberation Army and paid with their blood the Independence of
> Vietnam. .(Note: some detractors accused the Communists of betraying
> this promise but this will be object of another debate)
>
> I strongly believed that without the agrarian reforms, without the
> execution of a few thousands landlord, the Viet Minh program could not
> gain the grass root support of the peasants to win against the French.

Mr. Zeller was correct to point out that the mass execution of the
landlords during '55-'57 had nothing to do with the "patriotic" war
against the French. Ho only did what Mao ordered to create the
communist's paradise.

But El's argument is not totally chicken shit (El's favorite
expression). El probably tried to defend Ho for the executions that
had occurred BEFORE the French was defeated during '45-'54. The
VietMinh did not have full control over the country pre-54, so I would
imagine less landlords were executed then.

I hate to be unfair to Uncle Ho. How about calling Ho
half-mass-murderer for the pre-54 period and full-mass-murderer for
from '54 on?

-- HPN

> The Vietminh limited the execution to a minimum they deemed necessary
> for the shock therapy.
> No execution of landlords occurred in the South and none during the
> US involvement (1957-1975) in the whole country because the Vietkong
> was strongly supported by the peasants who doesn't need any more
> proof to follow the Communists.
>
> [Note:A similar situation emerged recently in Iraq where in spite of
> the destruction of the Iraqi Army, the capture of 80 % of the Baathist
> leadership but not of Saddam, the Iraqi people are still not
> collaborating with us and giving us vital information to fight Saddam
> Loyalists. Pentagon psychologists theorized these folks are afraid
> that Saddam might come back.
> A Vietkong-like solution would be to put victims of Saddam Hussein
> in one of his numerous palaces and said to them: You are now the new
> owners of the Palaces. We will help you to keep them and to show you
> we mean business, we will execute a few Baathist members at the gate
> of the palaces and expose their corpses on Palace ground then on TV
> like the US did with Uday and Utsay Hussein's corpse. This might be a
> shock therapy for these stupid Iraqi who did not know that they
> already won]
>
>
> I do not condone these execution by the Vietminh even if it affected
> "only" a few thousands. I do not condone execution of Baathist
> recalcitrants as part of shock therapy But then we have to be
> careful when we talk about moral compass, Mr. Zeller.