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Cold-blooded plan

Vietnam ‘resettlement

(The Tribune has alread

ih ly car-
ried information about the U.S.-
one paid plan to move
een two and three million
efugee peasants from I Corps

_ i the northern most section of

South Vietnam to “more spar-
Sely populated” areas 500 miles
Pe oot. Here we reprint a
oe ation News Service inter-
Pea poms Hostettea, an
religious pacifist, who

ee as CO for several years
wh the Vietnam Christian

ervice organization.)

What is the general situation

in I 2
ae Stalag How many refugees

I worked for thr
ee years —
eee 1966 to the summer of
ae ee Quang Tin province.
Se ad Over 100,000 refugees
Ording to the then current
Statistics, which
ae that there were probably
in + that many in all, includ-
oe who went to the towns
ae being registered by the
sau Ss hasn’t been able to
for th I Corps militarily except
€ major cities and Route I,

which stret
al tities ches along the coast-

ener do the refugees come

eae Tefugees have come in a
a e of ways. For one, there
tes een Major sweeps where
pau and ARVN (the Saigon
— me ainy) have just gone in
village nded up everyone in the
ene and brought them in as
oe = People that ran away
4a Shot as VC (Viet Cong)

pbeeple who wouldn’t come
ae urse were also VC, and

an he areas where they could
ven muster enough force

to get j :
* = an there with helicopters

€ the peopl
oi Z ple out, the
Culd just totally destroy the

are;
a sy would defoliate the
pane PS. When the situation

d enough
e gh that you can’t
at, then you'll move or starve.

Doe
cofing anyone keep from be-

live? 8 a refugee? How do they

pele Who live in the west-
to Tne of these provinces have
All the tnderground — literally.
in aaa They live in caves
nes ‘ers, and come up dur
in’ the see to grow vegetables
oa sae craters. They’ve
feck at certain sorts of
pion ce. very well in phos-
e S bomb craters; and the
rogen Eye homb. has a lot of nit-
it, which is very good

Dane ns other types of

SA ‘
This is how they survive.

The New York Times says
the refugees live in “nonviable”

conditions. What does _ this
mean?
People have to sell their

daughters into prostitution and
their sons to work for Ameri-
cans. There is simply no way to
get enough food because of the
corruption in the system. The
refugee chiefs sell a lot of the
food to the pig farmers because
they like the American food for
their pigs. The people don’t like
it—the rolled wheat, the corn
meal, bulgar—what America has
in surplus—is what we send.
We don’t send rice, which is
what Vietnamese people eat.

Why do the U.S. and the Sai-
gon. governments want to move
the refugees?

The people in the refugee
camps are all very anti-govern-
ment. So the refugee camps are
a potentially very dangerous Sl-
tuation. In 1968 when Ky came
to visit the village I lived in,
they had all the officials out
greeting him and waving flags,
but the people were under 24-
hour curfew—you could be shot
just for stepping out on the
street.

The Saigon government is go-
ing to be in trouble all over, be-
cause even in Saigon—the city

which has always been consid-:

ered to have been totally bought
off—even Saigon has a strong
resistance movement. Not only
among the NLF, but among the
people who are non-communist
put very anti-government and
anti-American, and who are
looking for a coalition govern-
ment.

This may be an effort to try
and see that the two troubles
don’t come at once — as Saigon
blows up, they don’t want Cen-

Rifles are taken to field work . .

tral Vietnam declaring its inde-
pendence from Saigon — which
is what the people of I Corps
tried to do in 1966.

If the refugees are moved
south, it will take them a long
time to build up a new relation-
ship with people who they know
they can trust and support. But
I think the U.S. and the Saigon
government will find that it’s a
very short term type of thing. If
they move all of these people
out of I Corps they may be able
to hold I Corps for another cou-
ple of months or maybe another
year. But think of what’s going
to happen when these people
finally get situated in the south.
Sure, it’ll take them a while to
get used to it, and dig in roots,
to find out who are the real peo-
ple and who are the informers,
but when these people take in
roots, things are going to hap-
pen very fast. Not only that, but
there’s going to be this added
hostility of having been forcibly
moved.

The Times said that the place
the refugees were going to be
moved to was “sparsely popu-
lated.” I always heard that the
land in the south was much bet-
ter than the land in central Viet-
nam—so why is it so sparsely
populated?

We have a way of using the
English language — it’s the way
we “pacify” villages and the
way people “volunteer” to go
places. It’s very easy to make a
place sparsely populated—it can
be done editorially. In our area
when they were trying to make
it “80% secure,” all of a sud-
den at military press confer-
ences this village would become
a village of 200 people who were
pro-government. The other 800
just kind of disappeared.

This is the way they “‘sparse-
ly populated” the Delta. Actu-
ally, the Delta has the highest
concentration of people any-
where. There are large land
holdings there, but even the
large landholdings have lots of
people on them. The only really
sparsely populated areas in
Vietnam are the areas which are
completely deserts.

I really believe that we will
be moving the refugees to a lot
of deserts—like some of the
other “lands” given to I Corps
refugees. Some parts of Central
Vietnam are very sandy, and its
impossible to grow anything
there. The land is used for grave-
yards. This is where some I
Corps refugees have been sent,
because these are the only areas,
that aren’t being used by the
wealthy landowners, and that
are sparsely populated—by liv-
ing people.

By SPARTAK BEGLOV

The U.S.-Saigon invasion of a
third country in Indochina —
Laos — is confirming the worst
fears ‘regarding the real inten-
tions of the American politicians
in Southeast Asia, which is by
no means a question of a “‘local-
scale operation.” ‘“Vietnamiza-
tion” is the clue not only to the
“local warfare” tactics against
the national liberation forces,
directed against the indepen-
dence and neutrality of Indo-
china. It is the central element
of the strategy which stems
from the “Nixon doctrine” and
applies for the whole of South-
east Asia.

The Pentagon’s present opera-
tions in Indochina are part of
the overall plan to make “se-
cure” the American empire in
Asia. Its perimeter encloses a
vast area — from South Korea
and Japan in the north to the
southern Indian Ocean and
Oceania. The “Nixon doctrine”
implies not only the continued
U.S. military presence through
“advisers” and committing of
maximum U.S. air and naval
forces. The main hopes in pro-
tecting the frontiers of the
American empire are pinned on
involvement of more and more
countries in the war.

The invasion of Laos is part
of the operation to safeguard the
northern borders of that empire.

Laos is a neutral country. The
1962 Geneva agreement on the
neutralization of Laos obligated
the other states, and above all
the USA, as one of the main
parties, to-respect the neutral-
ity of that country, and not to
introduce troops and weapons
there...

The U.S. Saigon invasion of
Laos is not only a glaring viola-
tion of the country’s neutrality
and of the commitments made
by the Americans in Geneva in
1962, but also an attempt to
push Laos backwards, from the
coalition government to a pup-
pet “government” and to re-cast
the Laotion situation fully along
the lines of South Vietnam.

Washington’s present opera-
tions in Indochina are directly
linked with all schemes and ac-
tions of the military and politi-
cal circles of the USA, and also
of Britain, in Southeast and
South Asia. In reply to the in-
vasion of Laos, the British For-
eign Office stated that Her Ma-
jesty’s Government supports the
policy of Vietnamization. In
light of the Tory doctrine of
“Great Britain’s return” to the
east of Suez, everything falls
into place. London has pledged
itself to be a U.S. partner in the
implementation of the “Nixon
doctrine” to ensure the West-
ern and southern boundaries of
the U.S. empire in Southeast
Asia. .

It is not a selfless kind of
partnership. The Tories have
set themselves the task of pre-
serving the remnants of Great
Britain’s imperial positions and
sources of profits in Southeast
Africa, the Persian Gulf area,
and the zone of the Malay Pen-
insula with all the wealth of
the adjoining island states. Stak-
ing on American military cover,
London is at the same time
seeking to draw in countries
and regimes that are in its or-
bit. :

The British rulers, anxious to
apply U.S. experience to other
areas, realize that in Africa, for
example, not a single indepen-

dent state will assume the role
of a support base or a supplier
of cannon fodder for neo-colon-
ialist ventures. Hence the stake
on the South African racist re-
gime which is readily offering
its offices. London candidly said
that it needs the Simonstown
base in South Africa because it
is strategically located half-way
between Britain and Singapore.
The African representatives just-
ly replied.that “by arming South
Africa you are arming the rac-
ists against us,” and that this is
“Vietnamization” on the Lon-
don pattern, plus a haughty and
racist attitude to Africa’s inter-
ests.

Nor is it difficult to see that
some countries of south Asia,
particularly Ceylon and India,
feel anxiety over plans to set
up an Anglo-American naval
base on Diego Garcia in the In-
dian Ocean. Their apprehen-
sions were openly voiced by rep-
resentatives of Asian countries
at the British Commonwealth
conference. The “Soviet pres-
ence” myth was crudely con-
cocted as an excuse to militar-
ize the Indian Ocean. Actually,
these British-American plans
are designed to link the rem-
nants of Britain’s racist empire
with the U.S. empire in South-
east Asia.

The neo-colonialist line of
London and Washington enjoys
full support from Australia,
which fully backed Britain’s pro-
racist line. The Australian dele-
gation resisted especially bitter-
ly the draft declaration where
it contained an appeal to end
all aid to racist regimes, and
also rejected Ceylon’s proposal
to set up a non-nuclear zone in
the Indian Ocean. Australia is
serving the United States in the
implemention of the “Nixon
doctrine’. Several months ago
Parsons, the Australian repre-
sentative, stressed that Austra-
lia attaches particular signifi-
cance to the development of re-
gional defence alliances, includ-
ing Anzus, Seato and a defense
agreement in relation to Malay-
sia and Singapore. The latter
reference is to the so-called
“five-sided pact” (Britain, Aus-
tralia, New Zealand, Singapore
and Malaysia) which is planned
fot the spring of this year.

It should be noted that Aus-
tralian and British politicians
talk of the ‘“five-sided pact”
alongside Seato and Anzus.
Seato is the main “regional sup-
port” of the U.S. intervention
in Indochina. It has now cracked
up. The policy of “Vietnamiza-

tion” demands the consolidation °
of the entire system of alliances .

to protect the American empire.
The recruiting of mercenaries
is continuing. —APN

OUTNOW DELEGATION

A delegation of the Canada
Outnow Committee will go to
Ottawa on Monday, March 1.
It will seek the support of the
federal government and op-
position parties for the OUT-
NOW appeal to President
Nixon to stop now the mili-
tary aggression against the
peoples of Indochina and to
withdraw all U.S. armed for-
ces and weapons immedia-
tely.

The OUTNOW campaign
has been successful, the
Commitee announced, in ob-
taining over 85,000 signatures.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 1971—PAGE 7

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