Bui Tin

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is a Vietnamese name; the family name is Bùi, but is often simplified as Bui in English-language text. According to Vietnamese custom, this person properly should be referred to by the given name Tín.

Former People's Army of Vietnam Colonel Bùi Tín is a Vietnamese dissident. He was born near Hanoi in 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 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.

Bui Tin 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 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.

[edit] Quotes

• "There is an alarming deterioration of traditional ethical, moral and spiritual values (and) confusion among the youth on whom the country's future depends."
• "The roots of the Vietnam War — its all-encompassing and underlying nature — lie in a confrontation between two ideological worlds: socialism versus capitalism for some, totalitarianism versus democracy for others. It was a conflict born of the Cold War…"
• "[The American anti-war movement] was essential to our strategy. Support for the war from our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the war and that she would struggle along with us."
• "The conscience of America was part of its war-making capability, and we were turning that power in our favor. America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win."

[edit] External links

• A copyright photo taken by John Spragen in 1989[1]