Speech #900221557

The nonCommunist South Vietnamese. an overwhelming majority of the population of South Vietnam. have a recent 28year history of internal bickering. divisive and strengthsapping disputes. failure until recently to generate a constitutional system and a unifying elected spokesman and leader. corruption through the attractions of materialism in high places. and being misunderstood and mistreated by allies and by world opinion. Nevertheless. the typical South Vietnamese has continued steadfast in his anticommunism and in his defense of his institutions against armed usurpation. Experts estimate that 1 million North Vietnamese refugees and South Vietnamese have been killed. wounded or kidnaped in their fight against the Vietnamese Communists since 1945. Very. very few indeed have willingly or voluntarily gone over to the Communist side in all these years. In the months following the Geneva Accords of 1954. just short of 1 million North Vietnamese refugees left their homes and the bones of their ancestors in North Vietnam and fled to the south. The fear that motivated this exodus was that of the expected Communist purge and repression so necessary to the consolidation of any Communist police state. These fears were well justified. it seems. because even after the exodus of onesixteenth of its population. the reign of terror among those who remained was so fearsome that even Communist voices were heard to cry for a halt to the slaughter which had put several hundred thousand North Vietnamese to death by the end of 1956. Now these 1954 refugees from the north and their descendants. and the entire military and civilian governmental structure of South Vietnam. as well as the entire nongovernmental antiCommunist nationalist community of religious leaders. scholars. intellectuals. businessmen. and plain people really deserve our consideration. If the events of the Communist Tet offensive in early February proved anything. they proved that the vast majority of South Vietnamese people still refuse to accept the political. social. and economic solution that Hanoi and its agents in the south are trying to impose by force. While there is still a certain amount of division. confusion. and disagreement among the various elements that make up nonCommunist South Vietnamese nationalists. there is clearly agreement on this one point. That the Communist elements have a certain measure of popular support in the South cannot be doubted. but that this support is a distinct minority is also beyond doubt. It is very easy for us to become frustrated when. in the midst of the life and death conflict. in Vietnam we find Buddhists alined against Catholics. Central Vietnamese and northern refugees disputing with southerners. rural folk being misunderstood and ignored by urban folk. Cao Dai. Hoa Hao.