[Vietnamization: PRK, occupation] Bùi Tín

 Re:

អតីត​ នាយក​រដ្ឋមន្ត្រី​ លោក ប៉ែន សុវណ្ណ ជាប់​គុក​ ១០​ឆ្នាំ​ ព្រោះ ចង់​បាន​ ឯករាជ្យ​ ពី​វៀតណាម | Former PM Pen Sovann in prison for 10 yrs for wanting independence from Vietnam [RFA re-broadcast interview with Pen Sovann from 2007, including interview with Bùi Tín from Paris]

Ex-Prime Minister Pen Sovann dies at 80

Phnom Penh Post | 31 October 2016

With a new revolutionary party in Cambodia from 1979, Sovann was named to the powerful role of general secretary, and when a new government was formally created in June 1981, he was named prime minister and defence minister – only to be stripped of all positions six months later.

The decision was made by Lê Đức Thọ, the top Vietnamese general who famously turned down a Nobel Prize in 1973, and then led the December 1978 invasion of Cambodia, according to Bùi Tín in his 1995 Following Ho Chi Minh: The Memoirs of a North Vietnamese Colonel.

“The removal of Pen Sovann from his positions . . . was also the work of Le Duc Tho acting together with general Le Duc Anh,” Bùi wrote. “On their recommendation, the Politburo in Hanoi accepted an ‘appeal’ from several members of the Cambodian Communist Party.”

Bùi, who was one of the first Vietnamese in Phnom Penh after the 1979 fall of the Khmer Rouge, wrote that Vietnamese officials were in those early days very much still in control of the regime they installed and were wary of any of the historical anti-Vietnamese sentiment re-emerging.

“The Cambodian people had nothing to do with the rise and fall of Pen Sovann,” Bùi wrote. “So what was his mistake? According to a Vietnamese adviser in charge of training Cambodian cadres, Pen Sovann sometimes opposed Vietnam and sometimes his own Party.

“He also expressed dissatisfaction with . . . the way his military authority was ignored by General Le Duc Anh. Such an attitude was intolerable in the eyes of leadership, so Pen Sovann was taken back to Vietnam to spend the next 10 years under house arrest near Hanoi.”

Bùi Tín

Bùi Tín was born near Hanoi on December 29, 1927, and was educated in Huế. During the August Revolution in 1945, he became an active supporter to politically pressure the government of France to cede Vietnam its independence. He later joined the Việt Minh along with Hồ Chí Minh and General Võ Nguyên Giáp. He would fight on two sides of the line, using both weapons and his skills as a journalist for the Vietnam People's Army newspaper. He enlisted in the Vietnamese People's Army at age 18. He was wounded during the 1954 Battle of Dien Bien Phu.^[1]

He would serve on the general staff of the North Vietnamese army. During the Vietnam War, he had authority from Defense Minister Võ Nguyên Giáp to visit any of the camps where American POWs were held, meet with the camp officers, look at the POW files, and interview the POWs.^[2] During at least one such occasion, he was involved in an interrogation of John McCain.^[2][3]

During the April 30, 1975 fall of Saigon, he was with the first tank unit to smash through the gates of the Presidential Palace. He accepted the surrender from the last South Vietnamese leader, Dương Văn Minh, thus marking the end of the war.^[1] When Duong told him that he had been waiting to transfer power to the People's Revolutionary Government, Bui curtly replied, "There is no question of your transferring power. Your power has crumbled. You cannot give up what you do not have."^[4]

After the war ended, he went on to serve as the Vice Chief Editor of the People's Daily (Nhân Dân, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Vietnam), responsible for the Sunday People's (Nhân Dân Chủ Nhật). He became disillusioned in the mid-1980s with postwar corruption and the continuing isolation of Vietnam. In 1990, Bùi Tín decided to leave Vietnam and live in exile in Paris to express his growing dissatisfaction with Vietnam's Communist leadership and their political system.

In November 1991, became involved in the Vietnam War POW/MIA issue when he appeared before hearings of the United States Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs in Washington DC.^[2] He stated that, "I can say that I know as well as any top leader in Vietnam and, in my opinion, I state categorically that there is not any American prisoner alive in Vietnam."^[2] After his testimony, he and former POW John McCain embraced, which produced a flurry of "Former Enemies Embrace"-style headlines.^[3] Tin's testimony was the subject of anticipation: when he had arrived at Dulles International Airport three weeks earlier, former U.S. Congressman Bill Hendon and a staff assistant to committee vice-chair Bob Smith confronted Tin and tried to convince him that there were live prisoners in Vietnam; Tin felt it was an intimidation attempt.^[5]

Tin subsequently published two books, Following Ho Chi Minh: The Memoirs of a North Vietnamese Colonel (University of Hawaii Press, 1995)^[6] and From Enemy To Friend: A North Vietnamese Perspective on the War (U.S. Naval Institute Press, 2002).^[7]

In a 2000 PBS American Experience forum, he maintained that no captured American soldiers had been tortured during their captivity in North Vietnam during the war. He conceded the same might not be true of captured American pilots, going so far as calling some of their alleged treatment "a violation of [sic] the International Agreement on Prisoner of War".^[8]