Bui Tin
From Free net encyclopedia
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 Viet Minh along with General Võ Nguyên Giáp and Hồ Chí 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 Dương Văn Minh.
Bùi Tín 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, Bùi 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
- "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…"