Tragic Postscript'

To the Editors of the Crimson:

As a participant in the Vietnam panel held on 23 April. I wish to correct certain erroneous impressions your readers are certain to receive from the rather garbled account which appears in the Crimson (April 24, 1981).

First, as some participants observed, it was disappointing to see so few Americans in the audience. Where are the crowds which not so long ago chanted "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh"? The "hostile crowd of about 100" which you reported was composed almost exclusively of Vietnamese. Many of them are boat people and recently arrived, and their hostility was directed exclusively at Ngo Vinh Long for his attempt to whitewash a regime which they know from painful experience to be corrupt, incompetent, and repressive.

Despite "the economic advancements in northern Vietnam" cited by Ngo Vinh Long, there were food riots last fall in Nghe Tinh (the cradle of Vietnamese Communism and the birthplace of Ho Chi Minh) and in Haiphong, and open disaffection in Hanoi. All these are areas that have been under Communist rule since 1945. Most of the Vietnamese who have reached Hong Kong this year (572 to date) come from the North; many were born and raised under Communism. The economy of Vietnam is supported to the tune of $100 million annually from the hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese who have fled their country but send gifts of food, clothes, and medicines to relatives left behind.

I feel that the Crimson does a disservice to its readers when it repeats Long's argument that reeducation camps are "necessary" to avoid "unwarranted anarchy," without mentioning that their inmates were never tried to determine their guilt or innocence, that they have not received any form or reeducation, and that many, like my father, have died a slow and extremely painful death. He was arrested in November 1977 for advocating the observance of human rights in Vietnam. An example of "unwarranted anarchy"?

Six years after the fall of Saigen what are the prospects for Vietnam, a country once held up to the rest of the world as a model of socialist development? In the words of Vice-Premier To Huu, "We will be poor and we will be hungry" until the end of this century (Far Eastern Economic Review, 9 Jan. 1981). Ngo Vinh Long may wish to refrain from criticizing the regime. There is no need for such restraint on the part of others, as the regime is doing a fairly good job of crying mea culpa for its appalling economic performance (which, by the way, it is blaming on mismanagement rather than on American hostility and pressures). Meanwhile, the population of Vietnam, North and South, faces the prospect of oppression as well as hunger and poverty until the end of the century under a regime which puts its interests far above those of the people, judging by all available official pronouncements. A tragic postscript to a tragic war. Hue-Tam Ho Tai,   Assistant Professor   In Sino-Vietnamese History