WK

By SEAN GRIFFIN

ight years ago, in August, 1966,
several crated parcels stamped
vith a Canadian flag and marked
\ g up off
e dock in the port of Montreal
d down again onto the deck of the
M.V. Alexander Pushkin.

Destined for the Democratic
public of Vietnam on the other
ide of the world, it was the first of
ore than 40 such shipments
follected and sent by the Canadian
id for Vietnam Civilians com-
ittee, founded only six months

Supplies and clothing followed,
Carried without charge in the holds
Of Soviet ships that threaded their
Way through the mine-strewn
Waters of Haiphong harbor.

" And this November, after eight
Years, each one of them filled with
the thousand activities involved in
the organization of Canadian Aid
for Vietnam Civilians, Alan and
Kay Inglis saw for the first time
the tiny country whose scars of war
they had helped to heal.

| While they covered all the travel
€xpenses themselves, the tour was
Planned to consolidate the eight

Years of work and included a stop
in Moscow where they met the Red

Cross to express their appreciation
for the free transport of shipments
to Vietnam.

The trip itself closely retraced —

reverse — the circuitous route
faken by that first shipment of
Medical aid which had gone first to
Leningrad, then Moscow and all
across the Trans-Siberian Railway
to Vladivostok where it was
‘Shipped to Vietnam.

The Inglises travelled first to
Tokyo, then to a port city near
Vladivostok then to Irkutsk in
Central Siberia, across to
Novosibirsk and Moscow, down
through Central Asia to Rangoon,
)over to Vientiane, near the border
MOf Laos and Thailand, and finally
0 to Hanoi and Haiphong.

The waters of Haiphong, and
Halong Bay to the north, are placid
Now, as Alan Inglis’ many color
transparencies can attest, dotted
€verywhere with scores of craggy
islands. But the safety of those
Waters, threatened even after the
Signing of the Paris Peace Ac-
Cords, is a tribute to the continuing
"heroism of the people of Vietnam.

Pledged to deactivate the 10,000
Mines which they had seeded in the
'*ntrance to the harbor, the U.S.
Military halfheartedly set about
the job. Before they had deac-

they had lost two helicopters and
ne naval officer — apparently
ugh their own incompetence.

They abandoned the operation
t the mines are now deactivated,
Nevertheless — the fishermen
along the coast of Vietnam finished
© job themselves.

“The people are unbeatable,”
ncommented after relating the
€vents, ‘they resisted the
Japanese, the French, and even
Ough the U.S. war was far more

“ould not be defeated.’’

Haiphong itself is a symbol of the
roic resistance of the Viet-
'Namese people. Celebrated as a
ro city, it was the first site of
U.S. bombing on the fifth day of
August, 1964, following the Gulf of
Onkin incident, contrived by the
€ntagon under the Johnson ad-
Ministration as a pretext for
€scalating the war. It was also the

tivated more than three, however, :

terrible than anything before, they

last centre to suffer the
devastation of bombing on the eve
of the new year in 1974.

But the new peace in Vietnam,
precious and precarious as it is,
was also made possible through the
sustained efforts of the world
peace movement in which the
Canadian Aid for Vietnam
Civilians has played a vital role
over the past eight years. And in
those eight years, the Inglises
formed a close bond of friendship
with the people of Vietnam through
hundreds of letters, shipments of
aid and cash donations. That
friendship was sealed in the week
they were in Vietnam as guests of
the Vietnam Committee for the
Defence of World Peace as they
met and talked with many of the
people with whom they had
corresponded since 1966.

One of those people was Dr.
Nguyen Van Tin, vice-president of
the Red Cross of the Democratic
Republic of Vietnam. The ship-
ments had passed through his
organization on its way to the DRV,
the Red Cross of the Provisional
Revolutionary Government and
the Red Cross in South Vietnam. Of
central importance to him, as to
others in Vietnam, Alan pointed
out, was the moral support — the
solidarity — expressed by the
people throughout the world with
the resistance struggle of the
Vietnamese against U.S.
aggression. “Thank you,” he said
simply, “for the moral support.
The material support was also
very important.”

The simplicity of Nguyen Van
Tin’s statement underscored the
gratitude the Inglises found
everywhere they travelled in the
DRV. ‘‘We were overwhelmed by
the gratitude of the people,” Kay
told me, with a characteristic en-
thusiasm that has never waned
over the eight years. On a visit toa
Hanoi carpet factory, she suddenly
found herself surrounded by an
audience of workers all calling on
her to speak. They were all
familiar with the Canadian Aid for
Vietnam Civilians through
frequent reports in the Nhan Dan
daily, organ of the Workers Party
of the DRV.

The CAVC has also made a
unique contribution to the support
actions for Vietnam. Unlike the
British medical aid committee, for
example, which was restricted by
the economic policies of its

> yeep 7 Me

Dr. Alan Inglis
whom he had ear
frequently in Vietnam as

watches as Dr. Ton That Tung examines a patient on
lier operated for cancer of the liver. The disease occurs
a result of extensive U.S. use of defoliants.

The Inglises in Hanoi. L_to r, Xuan Canh, secretary of the Vietnam Committee for the Defence of World
Peace, Nguyen Van Tien, head of the special mission from the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the
Republic of South Vietnam, Alan and Kay Inglis, Nguyen Trung Hieu, a member of the Vietnam peace
committee.

government, the CAVC has been
able to send cash payments to
Vietnam — particularly valuable
since they enable the Vietnamese
to purchase what is needed most
urgently:

In the eight years, the committee
has sent some $171,000 in cash
donations which, coupled with
shipments of goods valued at
$252,000, bring the total aid to
$423,000. The Inglises took with
them the latest shipment of funds
— totalling $11,000 with $4,400
destined for the DRV, $4,400 for the
Provisional Revolutionary
Government and $2,200 for the
Patriotic Women’s Organization in
Laos. Of the $11,000, $4,400 is to be
used for artificial limbs.

While noting the restrictions
preventing the British committee
from sending cash, the Inglises
pointed out a signal contribution
made by that committee. It was
the “dermojet,” an innovative
inoculation instrument pioneered
by the British which, instead of
inoculating patients by injecting a
needle beneath the skin, utilizes a
high-velocity jet of vaccine which
itself penetrates the skin. It
facilitated swift inoculation of

thousands of people at a time and
proved

indispensable when

massive U.S. bombing of dykes
and subsequent flooding and
contamination of water threatened
a widespread outbreak of disease.

The work of the CAVC and other
pioneering aid committees, has
also prompted others to join the
campaign. Following the almost
complete destruction of the Bach
Mai hospital in 1972 which evoked a
world ery of protest, several people
in Boston, among them leading
medical figures, organized the
Medical Aid to Indochina which is
now working to equip the ear, nose
and throat department in the
hospital. Reconstruction of the rest
of the hospital structures is also
now nearing completion.

~~ e

Though epic feats have been
accomplished in the DRV in
rebuilding a devastated country,
the war has left its legacy of
disease. Malaria, while a familiar
problem in Vietnam, was
aggravated by U.S. bombing which
left huge craters which in turn
filled with water to become
breeding grounds for the anopheles
mosquito, carrier of the disease.

Another bequest of U.S.
aggression is cancer of.the liver.
“This is not a very common form
of cancer,’’ Dr. Inglis emphasized.
“But yet it has a very high in-
cidence rate in Vietnam.” Dr. Ton
That Tung, a leading authority on
the subject and one of several
medical people whom the Inglises
met in Hanoi, has attributed the
frequent occurrence of the disease
to the extensive use of highly-toxic
defoliants by the U.S. in their at-
tempts to strip the countryside.

Dr. Ton That Tung has achieved
some success in treating the
cancer, however and has evolved
innovative surgical procedures
which have been detailed in
several leading medical journals
including Chirurgie, journal of the
French Medical Academy, of
which he is a member.

The DRV has also surged ahead
in training medical personnel.
With only one doctor for every
180,000 people following the defeat
of the French colonialists in 1954,
the DRV has slashed that ratio to
one doctor for every 4,750 people.
Physicians are all trained inside

the country, Alan explained, while
specialists are frequently trained
abroad — a common practice in
many countries.

The Canadian Aid for Vietnam
Civilians will continue to collect
funds for Vietnam, but the Inglises
emphasized that the greatest need
in Vietnam now is not medical aid
but for full implementation of the
Paris Peace Accords and for
compliance with those accords by
the U.S. and South Vietnam.

Since their return, Alan and Kay
have launched a campaign to
pressure the federal government
into granting recognition to the
Provisional Revolutionary
Government of South Vietnam.
Alan pointed out that Canada, by
her participation in the in-
ternational conference which
followed the Paris peace
agreement and by her agreement
to police the peace agreement, is
legally bound to recognize the
PRG. But Canada still recognizes
only the Thieu regime in. South
Vietnam.

“Canada’s aim should be to
strengthen our relations with the
legitimate representatives of
North and South Vietnam and
render material aid to help rebuild
the lives of the people in that war-
decimated country,’ the com-
mittee stated in a letter to external’
affairs minister Allen McEachen.

Alan also noted the provocations
by the Thieu regime aimed at
blocking the implementation of the
Paris agreements and told me:
“As long as the Thieu regime
remains, there will be no peace and
no end to the killing.”’

After eight years, the Inglises’
work goes on.

Slide showing

The Canadian Aid for Vietnam
Civilians committee has scheduled
a slide showing with commentary
of the Inglis’ trip to the Democratic
Republic of Vietnam, November
13-20.

The showing will be held in the
Unitarian Church, 49th and Oak in
Vancouver, January 15, 1975 at 8
p.m.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1974—Page 3

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