From: nyt%nyxfer%igc.apc.org@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu (NY Transfer News)
Subject: Tribute to Vietnam's General Dinh /ww
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: The NY Transfer News Service
Resent-From: "Rich Winkel" <MATHRICH@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu>
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1992 19:20:00 GMT

   Via The N.Y. Transfer News Service 718-448-2358, 718-448-2683

 Tribute to Vietnam's General Dinh
 By Sharon Ayling

Nguyen Thi Dinh, one of the foremost women revolutionary leaders
of this century, died Aug. 26 in Ho Chi Minh City at the age of
72. At the time of her death, she was a vice president of
Vietnam's Council of State, the socialist government's highest
authority. Until recently, she was also a member of the Central
Committee of Vietnam's Communist Party and the head of the
Vietnamese Women's Union.

In announcing her death, Vietnamese officials described Dinh as
the outstanding woman in Vietnamese modern history.

For over five decades, Dinh fought first against French
colonialism and then against the genocidal U.S. war of
occupation, rising to be the highest ranking woman in Vietnam's
liberation struggle.

She became a deputy commander-in-chief of South Vietnam's
Liberation Armed Forces, earning the rank of general, at a time
of large-scale U.S. entry into the war. That war was ultimately
responsible for the deaths of 2 million Vietnamese and such
appalling economic and environmental destruction that its impact
is still felt today, 17 years after victory.

Dinh was born into a peasant family in 1920 in southern Vietnam,
which was then part of French Indochina. During her childhood,
she became attracted to the revolutionary movement then starting
against the French colonial administration. She joined the
clandestine Vietnamese Communist Party at the age of 18. In 1940,
at 20, she was sent to prison for three years for her leading
role in the resistance.

In January 1960, Dinh led the insurrection of Ben Tre Province,
in South Vietnam, in which the people seized power from then
South Vietnamese President Nyo Dinh Diem's tyrannical officials.
All the insurgents were women. The uprising became the model for
the general uprising against Diem later that year.

Dinh admitted that even she had to contend with age-old disdain
for women: "When I was appointed Vice-Commander in Chief of the
People's Liberation Armed Forces, some people thought it was only
for propaganda. But when I succeeded, they realized the
appointment was correct."

Gen. Dinh was arrested several times during the U.S. occupation
of Vietnam. Once, some time after 1965, Thieu's soldiers arrested
her without knowing her identity. Many villagers--aware of her
real identity--went to the jail, insisting that she was their
relative. When they had convinced her captors of her loyalty to
the Saigon regime, she was released.

The Vietnamese showed how a small, poor country can defeat a
large, technologically advanced country if it educates, mobilizes
and arms the whole population to resist. The Vietnamese called
their resistance `people's war.'

In the early 1970s, Dinh headed the so-called Long-Haired
Army--the women's insurrection in the south of the country. In
the cities, these women members of the PLAF served as secretaries
and servants of top officers in Thieu's army. They relayed
valuable information to the liberation forces and planted
explosives in the meeting rooms of top brass in Saigon. Dinh
pointed out how their upper-class lifestyle made Saigon officers
vulnerable: "They know we did this, but they have to hire
servants."

These PLAF women also served GIs, doing laundry, shining their
boots, selling them fruit or soft drinks. During the daytime,
they routinely gained entry to U.S. bases and measured the exact
location of targets to be shelled the coming night. The following
day, they returned to the base to assess the results. Even Dinh
gained access to U.S. bases disguised as a peasant woman.

After liberation, Dinh devoted much of her time to the struggle
for women's equality. For example, in April 1976, She wrote an
article in Saigon's daily newspaper, Saigon Giai Phong, that
underlined the importance of electing women to leadership
positions in the government.

This remarkable woman found time in 1968--the year of the Tet
Offensive that was the turning point in the war--to write a
moving account of her life. It is available in English from the
Department of Asian Studies at Cornell University. Much can be
learned from studying this revolutionary woman's life.

<MDBR>Most of the information for this article, including the
quotes from Gen. Dinh, came from "Women and Revolution in
Vietnam" by Arlene Eisen.

(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted
if source is cited. For more info contact Workers World,46 W. 21
St., New York, NY 10010; "workers@mcimail.com".)

     The N.Y. Transfer News Service 718-448-2358, 718-448-2683
 nyxfer@panix.com * All the news that doesn't fit * nytransfer@igc.org
Xref: sparky misc.activism.progressive:6893 alt.activism:16771 alt.politics.elections:14307 bit.listserv.politics:14937