Ho Chi Minh
By Syed Akbar Ali
This is a short story. It has significance to what is going on in our country.
Ho Chi Minh was the great Vietnamese freedom fighter, liberator, statesman and hero of the oppressed peoples. Ho Chi Minh died in 1969, when I was nine years old. Also known as ‘Uncle Ho’, his birth name was Nguyen Sinh Cung. Ho Chi Minh who was of Chinese ancestry translates to ‘He Who Enlightens’.
At that time the US was bombing Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia back to the Stone Age. It was called the Vietnam War. I clearly remember watching the ‘Dunia Di Sana Sini’ program on Television Malaysia (no RTM yet at that time) which would show black and white footage of American GIs using flamethrowers to burn attap huts belonging to Vietnamese villagers.
Till today I cannot figure out how attap huts in Vietnam were a threat to the security and vital interests of the ‘Yewnited States of Americky’ That is one evil and adulterous generation (Matthew 14:6-8) which is still dancing around the fire in the Yewnited States.
At that time the Americans successfully brainwashed all of us into believing that the Vietnamese were bad people led by an ugly monster called Ho Chi Minh. So like the simple, Third World, Mat Salleh wannabe bumpkins that we were (and many many still are) we all chorused the American line that our own neighbors were monsters.
The French colonials started taking control of Vietnam in the 1860s. By 1883 the entire country was a full fledged French colony.
Under French colonial rule Vietnamese were prohibited from travelling outside their districts without identity papers. Freedom of expression and organisation were restricted. Land was alienated to French companies and the number of landless peasants grew. So people like Ho Chi Minh started fighting back.
Fastforward (because this is a short story), Ho Chi Minh kicked the butt of the French in Dien Bien Phu in 1952 and sent them home in crates.
Way before that on 2 September 1945, half a million Vietnamese people gathered in Hanoi to hear Ho Chi Minh read the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence. The Vietnamese had thrown off the foreign invader.
One of the first things that Ho Chi Minh did as the leader of a free and independent Vietnam was to REPUDIATE ALL TREATIES AND AGREEMENTS which had been entered into by Vietnam under French Colonial Rule.
Not only Ho Chi Minh but in many newly independent countries (usually non British Commonwealth) an independent people refused to recognize treaties and agreements which the colonials had forced them to sign at the point of a gun or without the consent of the people. So whatever the French colonial power had signed on behalf of Vietnam was not recognized by the Vietnamese people.
Why? Apa pasal? Because those treaties were NOT signed by a free and independent people.
I wanted to Blog about this because just a few days ago I was having breakfast with some friends who started quoting the terms of the Pangkor Treaty (! ! !) to support their side of the argument about the Perak issues.
At the time of our Independence, we should have taken a leaf out of Ho’s book (it is really not too late) and repudiated all the treaties and agreements which were signed under the British.
For example, Stamford Raffles found disgruntled seafarers from the Riau Islands, played politics with the Dutch and got “a” Sultan to rent space on Temasek Island to the British East India Company (NOT TO THE BRITISH SOVEREIGN GOVERNMENT OK).
Raffles did not work for the British Government but he worked for the British East India Company, a company listed on the London Stock Exchange.
Stamford Raffles was just like an earlier version of a Somali pirate. And at the time of our “Independence” in 1957, all this had happened just over 100 years before. (Much less time than Nga and Ngeh’s 999 year leasehold titles granted recently in Perak).
Then later this slick little piece of piracy by Raffles was ‘formalised’ by the British Sovereign through the Colonial Office.
And many people think that Stamford Raffles braved the seas, sailed out here from England and claimed an uncivilized, uninhabited island for the British Government. Wrong.
First of all Raffles was already chilling his heels in Penang. Long before he “founded” Singapore in 1819, Raffles was assistant secretary at the British East India company’s “administration” in Penang in 1805.
Then in 1818 Raffles became “lieutenant governor of Bencoolen” fighting the Dutch who were trying to grab the whole of South East Asia. Before that Raffles was appointed “governor general” for the British India Company in Java (1811-16).
In 1818 Raffles sailed hurriedly from Bencoolen to India, and convinced Lord Hastings of the need for the British to open a port on Temasek Island. He had already identified Temasek Island. (It was NOT some unknown, uninhabited, alien island that fell out of the Matrix movie).
But more importantly why did Raffles suddenly panic in 1818? He was the East India Company’s “secretary” in Penang in 1805, made it to Company “governor” in Java in 1811, became Company “lieutenant governor” for Bencoolen in 1816-1818. Why panic in 1818 to open another port?
