|
HỒ
CHÍ MINH'S GLORIFICATION REJECTED
BY UNESCO Trần Gia Phụng Translated by Ton Dzien The Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) recently invented a myth called “Hồ Chí Minh thoughts” to subtitute the Marxist-Leninist ideology that was discarded after the collapse of the Eastern European nations and the USSR at the beginning of the 90s. To increase the value of its “Hồ Chí Minh thoughts”, the VCP propaganda system shamelessly praised Hồ Chí Minh (HCM) as a “world cultural personality” glorified by UNESCO.(1)
In its English news article on 5-12-2005, the VCP's Vietnam News announced that, to celebrate HCM's 115th birthday, a seminar on “Ho Chi Minh's ideas” (sic) had been held in Hanoi on Monday 5-9-2005 by the Faculty of Letters and the Ministry of Culture and Information. According to the news agency, the participants included professors and researchers who “concurred that Ho Chi Minh, a world cultural personality as recognised by UNESCO...” (2)
The truth is HCM has never been recognized by UNESCO as such. Let's start the story from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The UNESCO, located in Paris, used to commemorate the 100th birthday of the United Nations world celebrities. In 1987 an attempt was started by a delegation of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV), on the occasion of its admission to the Excutive Board of the UNESCO Cultural Committee, to nominate Hồ Chí Minh (1890?-1969), founding leader of the VCP, to be on the list of “culture celebrities of the world”, on this politician's centennial birthday (1990).(3) According to the Records of the General Conference regarding the UNESCO's Twenty-fourth Session in Paris, from 20 October to 20 November 1987, volume 1 in English [215 pages], under the title “Resolutions”, section B on “General programme activities”, article 18 on “External relations and public information” and item 18.65 on the issue of HCM glorification in 1990 (pp. 134-135), the conclusion reads: “Requests the Director-General of UNESCO to take appropriate steps to celebrate the centenary of the birth of President Ho Chi Minh and to lend his support to commemorative activities organized on that occasion, in particular those taking place in Viet Nam.”(4) Beside HCM, the 1990 list also included Phya Anuaman Rajadhon of Thailand, Thomas Munzer of Germany, Anton Semionovitch Makarenko of the Soviet Union, Jawaharlal Nerhu of India, and Sinan of Turkey.(5) The commendation for each nominee was prepared by his government and approved without discussion by the UNESCO General Assembly upon the recommendation of the UNESCO Cultural Committee. The Director General of UNESCO then was Mr. M'Bow from Africa who had consecutively held his position two times as a result of the support from the Soviet Union and other communist as well as anti-American Asian-African countries. The decision to nominate HCM was overwhemingly opposed by overseas Vietnamese communities everywhere. In Paris, in particular, where the UNESCO Office is located, the “Committee to Denounce HCM's crimes” (CDHC) was formed, with Mr. Nguyễn Văn Trần as its Secretary General, to carry out such urgent activities as: 1) Urging overseas Vietnamese and Vietnamese mass media (in North America, Australia, Europe, and Japan) to mail letters to UNESCO to denounce crimes committed by HCM and his VCP)in Vietnam, and protest the attempted nomination of HCM (as one of the world's famous figures of culture.) Up to 20,000 letters of protest were received and handed over by the UNESCO Director in charge of Southeast Asia himself to Hanoi representative in UNESCO. In addition, a book was published to expose HCM's dishonesty of using other people's poems as his own in his Diary in Prison. (Lê Hữu Mục, Hồ Chí Minh was not the author of'Diary in Prison, published by Overseas Vietnamese Pen Club, Canada, 1990.) At that time, Jean-François Revel, a famous French scholar and author of Ni Marx ni Jesus [Neither Marx nor Jesus] (1970), La tentation totalitaire [The totalitarian temptation] (1976), and Comment les democracies finissent (How democracies finish) (1983), after learning of the planned glorification of HCM by UNESCO, wrote an article at the beginning of 1990 denouncing HCM to have taken advantage of the people's aspiration for freedom to enslave them, and accusing him of having been a critical criminal, a thief, and a true deceiver.(6)
2) Getting in touch with and calling on the Vietnamese-Lao-Cambodian Mutual Assistance Association and the National Association of French in Indochina, including French families and veterans who had served in three Indochinese states, to denounce HCM and his VCP for their human rights violations against French prisoners of the Indochina War; and 3) Meeting with Paris officials and French elected members to ask them to take the issue to the National Assembly and to urge the French government to pressure UNESCO to reconsider its plan ned glorification of HCM, since UNESCO was located in Paris. During the progress of the protests, three important events took place at the end of the 1980s: a) UNESCO replaced its Secretary General, M'Bow, with Mr. Frederic Mayer, a Spanish notable, who supported neither the leftists nor HCM's nomination. He stated that the 1987 decision by the UNESCO General Assembly could only be modified by itself, but UNESCO would not celebrate the glorification of HCM. In reality, there was no fund for this activity in his budget. Besides, the archives of UNESCO activities in 1990 and 1991 contain nothing about the glorification of HCM.(7) b) More and more Vietnamese escaped the country from 1975 to 1989 (prior to UNHCR's order to discontinue to accept more escapees to refugee camps), up to about 900,000 people, excluding those who lost their lives during the escapes.(8) c) East European communist countries began to shake and crumble as of late 1989 and early 1990. The activities of the CDHC, the reaction of Vietnamese communities all over the world, and the three events mentioned above had so deeply influenced UNESCO that it eventually had to decide to postpone its nomination of HCM scheme and notify Hanoi authorities of its unfavorable decision, namely to: - refuse to celebrate HCM centennial birthday in both Paris and Hanoi; - agree to let the SRV Embassy in Paris lease a room in the UNESCO Office to carry out its own celebration without the attendance of any UNESCO official; - prohibit the event organizing committee from implying in its propaganda that UNESCO had glorified HCM as a culture celebrity of the world, and from hanging HCM's portrait in the auditorium; and - allow only “Invitation to an entertainment” cards to be used. Despite UNESCO's restrictions, the SRV Embassy, following its communist mentality and attempting to avoid being reprimanded by UNESCO, sent official cards to foreigners to invite them to attend “an entertaining performance” while covertly mailing to Vietnamese cards inviting them to attend HCM glorification. In his talk to the Vietnamese community in Montreal on Sunday 4-25-2004, Dr. Nguyễn Ngọc Qùy, a veteran political activist from Paris, disclosed that following UNESCO decision, the SRV Embassy in Paris, to save face, rented a room in the UNESCO Office in Paris to be used for a musical performance on 5-12-1989, exactly one week ahead of HCM's birthday.(9) The show was attended by about 70 people, including members of the organizing committee and the VCP-led “Overseas Vietnamese Patriots” group. No UNESCO and French officials were seen next to a few communist guests from Cuba, North Korea, People's Republic of China, Cambodia and Laos. The event started, not with a speech from the SRV Ambassador to France as usual, but a short introductory explanation of the ceremony and praise of HCM's works by the SRV representative at UNESCO, Mr. Nguyễn Kinh Tài, nothing about the issue of culture celebrities of the world in compliance with UNESCO decision. The SRV representative intended to hold the show as a commemoration of his leader right at noon of 9-12, exactly one week before HCM's birthday to avoid demonstrations. However, the Trần Văn Bá International Committee (TVBIC, newly formed, not a member of the CDHC) had timely gathered over 100 people to protest at the Pontenoy Place, near UNESCO Office. The demonstration representatives were Mr. Trần Văn Tòng, Chairman of the TIC, scholar Oliver Todd, founding member of TVBIC, and Ms. Anne Marie Gossard, Secretary General of the International Human Rights Association paid a visit to UNESCO Board of Directors for information about the objective and significance of the performance in the UNESCO room. The UNESCO representative confirmed with the TIC delegation that the event was organized by the SRV Embassy as a musical show, not UNESCO's glorification of HCM. Mr. Oliver Todd reported the confirmation in a TIC meeting at the Maubert Mutualite in Paris (5th district) at 6 p.m. the same day of 5-12-1989, and repeated at least twice the assertion by UNESCO that no glorification of HCM had ever been held by the organization. He also said the entertainment event was merely an initiative of the SRV Embassy. It is worthy to note that Mr. Bùi Tín, a former Colonel of North Vietnam Army who was present at the celebration of HCM's birthday organized by the VCP at the Ba Đình Auditorium in Hanoi on 5-19-1990, disclosed that no representative from UNESCO was among the participants,(10) meaning that the VCP had received no support whatsoever from UNESCO for the event in Vietnam. UNESCO's refusal to hold the glorification for HCM as one of the world's culture celebrities was the result of efforts made by the Vietnamese overseas communities, especially the CDHC in Paris. The Vietnamese overseas communities have proved to be an important political force against the communist regime in Vietnam. The only regret was, following the successes obtained from the UNESCO rejection of the glorification of HCM, the overseas Vietnamese communities and the CDHC failed to report the whole story and achievements clearly and widely around the world to counter the VCP's deceitful and misleading propaganda. UNESCO, therefore, has never glorified HCM as a famous figure of the world. That's the truth as it was personally told by involved people who are still alive in Paris, and confirmed by UNESCO documents. Those who are still doubtful may contact them for more information. Besides, UNESCO still maintains its file about the event, available to all researchers, including those from the SRV. Ours is a technological era of advancement, therefore, all data are truthfully recorded and well kept in archives easily accessible to everyone, especially those types of no-national-secret information about the glorification of a political activist that needs to be made public promptly. More obviously, had UNESCO glorified HCM, there would have to be an official copy of the glorification certificate, not just an oral statement. In that case, the SRV government should certainly have held an unusually noisy and pompous ceremony to receive the document, not just keeping totally quiet so far. Photocopies of this document would certainly have been made by the SRV for exhibition everywhere in Vietnam, including their forced display beside HCM portrait in every home. For the Vietnamese people, they remember well each time a historical site is recognized by UNESCO as a world cultural legacy, such as Mỹ Sơn (province of Quảng Nam), the old imperial city of Huế, Hạ Long Bay, etc..., the SRV government always organizes pompous and noisy reception ceremonies for the UNESCO certificates that often last up to a month and are widely publicized around the world, let alone the glorification of HCM. TRẦN GIA PHỤNG Translated by Ton Dzien NOTES
|