Colonel Bui Tin was born near Hanoi in 1927, and was educated in Hue. During the August Revolution in 1945, he became a active supporter to politically pressure the government of France to cede Vietnam its independence.
He later joined the Viet Minh along with General Vo Nguyen Giap and Ho Chi Minh. He would fight on two sides of the line, using weapons and also using his pen and paper as journalist for the Vietnam People’s Army newspaper.
He enlisted in the Vietnamese Peoples Army at the age of eighteen. He served on the general staff of the North Vietnamese army. He accepted the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975, from President Duong Van Minh.
He called the US antiwar movement "essential to our strategy," saying that visits from prominent American activists Jane Fonda, and Ramsey Clark and various church ministers "gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses." He concluded that South Vietnam could have maintained its independence from the North if not for America's sudden decision to withdraw its support:
- "Through dissent and protest, it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win." [1]
Bui Tin went on to serve as the editor of the People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. He became disillusioned in the mid-1980s with postwar corruption and the continuing isolation of socialist Vietnam.
In 1990, Bui decided to leave Vietnam and live in exile in Paris, France, in order to express his growing dissatisfaction with Vietnam’s Communist leadership and their political system.
Quotes
- "Through dissent and protest, it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win."
- "There is an alarming deterioration of traditional ethical, moral and spiritual values (and) confusion among the youth on whom the country's future depends."
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