Hanoi indignant over article on Ho Chi Minh
HANOI - Communist-ruled Vietnam
expressed indignation on Wednesday over an article in an
international magazine that questioned Hanoi's official history of
late revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh.
Time magazine, in its August 23-30 issue, published the
two-page article as part of a series profiling influential Asians of
the 20th century.
``The article by Bui Tin, a traitor, is not worth comment,'' said
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Phan Thuy Thanh, in response
to questions from Reuters.
Bui Tin, a former deputy editor of the Communist Party
mouthpiece Nhan Dan (People) who now lives in exile in Paris,
wrote that Ho's official history was not entirely true.
Ho was disciplined in the former Soviet Union during the 1930s
for ``failing to display the proper class spirit,'' Tin wrote.
He also said Ho may have had reasons other than seeking
national salvation for the country when he left Vietnam in 1911
for three decades.
``This (article) has offended the sacred feeling of the
Vietnamese people toward their beloved leader. The people of
Vietnam are extremely indignant and strongly protest this deed,''
Thanh said.
Censors had torn out the offending two pages from subscriber
copies of the magazine delivered in Hanoi.
Tin, an ex-North Vietnamese colonel who also accepted the
surrender of the former U.S.-backed Saigon regime in 1975 to
end the Vietnam War, has been a thorn in Hanoi's side since he
took asylum in Paris in 1990 and issued calls for political
change.
Ho Chi Minh, who died in 1969, is widely revered in Vietnam
for his lifelong quest for national independence and any form of
criticism is generally taboo.
His embalmed body remains on public display in an imposing
granite Hanoi city centre mausoleum.
``(Ho) has left an invaluable ideological, cultural and moral
heritage for the generations of Vietnamese people today and
tomorrow,'' Thanh said.
Tin said the Communist Party used Ho's name to justify its own
policies as if he were still alive.
``The government should not use Uncle Ho, cold in his tomb, as
a defence against...opposition,'' Tin wrote.
Reuters - August 25, 1999.
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