Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
evidence that the entire population of Nghe An.had r~lained ignorant of its right to move to the South in 1954-1955) and called upon the ICC to reinstate Article 14(d). 39/ Vietnam Press) Diem's official press agency, on 9 November 1956, quoted Cong Nhan, a Saigon daily as follows:
"In the North, the fall of the illegitimate regime is near .... As soon as the people's hatred of the Communist dictatorship is sufficiently mature for it to succeed in overthrowing it, then general elections which are really free will take place in the whole of Vietnam, and will peacefully bring about the reunification of the country.
"If he refuses to haye recourse to force in order to liberate the North, while yet realizing the dearest aspirations of the people) the supreme head of the Republic of Vietnam does so solely in order to avoid bloodshed and undesirable fratricidal strife." 40/
c. Reconciliation and Repression, 1957-1959
From the DRV viewpoint the Nghe-An uprising) whatever its dimensions, coincided fortuitously with the Suez and Hungarian crises. The GVN simply could not muster sufficient evidence to compete for headlines, and U.S. attention was on Europe. In any event) Ho and his regime undertook a series of conciliatory gestures vhich sapped popular resentment, and occluded the situation abroad. Conciliatory gestures were quickly extended to Catholics. Radio Hanoi, which in July 1955, had broadcast a Lao Dong proclamation rejecting the existence of deities consistent with the "scientific principles of the doctrine of Marx and Lenin," on 22 November 1956 announced that:
" ... in the agrarian reform, we have committed errors, including errors in the observance of freedom of religion. The people in general, and the Catholic citizens in particular, want these errors corrected. These are legitimate demands." 41/
At the same time the government allocated about 48 million dong (about $15,000) for repair of Catholic churches and a seminary. 42/ On 15-16 December 1956, the DRV convened the National Committee of the Catholic Union, which issued a declaration criticizing the government for having violated the laws on religious freedom, pointing out that:
" ... the errors committed during the agrarian reform have violated the policy of religious liberty of the Lao Dong Party and of the Government and have infringed on the religious rights of the faithful.... " 43/
Ho Chi Minh personally received a delegation from the Committee of the Catholic Union to express his regret over the "errors" that had been committed, and Nhan Dan, the Lao Dong paper, published a series of articles on the same subject.
