Not all Northerners are the Same...
Major, M. D. Tran Xuan Dung
Vietnam has three main regions which are distinct, regardless of the Goverment in power: the North, the Centre and the South. Each region has its own dialects and accents, thus one can always pinpoint a person's origin by his accent. But though Northerners may originate from the same region, not all share the same beliefs, and not all speak with the same tone and diction.
After the French conquered Vietnam, they systematically set about exploiting the new colony. The fertile land in the South was turned into rubber plantations, and the locals were harnessed into cheap labour. Many of the coolies came from the North, or the northern areas of Central Vietnam. Most had been vagrants, ex-convicts, illiterates, or those down on their luck. Among them was Ho Chi Minh. The job-rush filled the plantations with workers, and the French reaped the benefits of having their dirty-work and heavy jobs done by the native coolies. Later, many of the coolies become pro-Communist, and from the labourforce, the Communist Party recruited men to swell their ranks.
In 1954, the Geneva Pact was signed. In a period of three months, the Vietnamese people were given the opportunity of re-settling in areas in accordance to their political leanings. One million Northerners moved south as refugees. Most of them were:
1. Part of the Intelligentsia
2. Vietnamese Catholics
3. Civilians who had experienced torture or whose relatives had been killed between 1945-1954 when the Communists took control of several regions in the North.
4. People who saw through the lies of the Communists
5. Army officers and soldiers who had fought against the Communists during 1945-54. Many Commandos later became Marines, to continue their fight for freedom and democracy.
Once in the South, the refugees tried to tell the Southerners about Communism and the reasons why they had fled the North. They wrote books, plays, and songs - and Vietnamese Culture blossomed during the “literature boom”. The refugees from the North were cultured - their education was the fruit of 4,000 years of Vietnamese Culture.
After the take-over of the South in 1975, the Communist Northerners swarmed down like locuses to pillage the South. Many unfortunate Northerners who had remained in the North, had also become greedy, envious, and cruel after twenty years of listening to the indoctrinations of Ho Chi Minh and his clique. They grew up with such indoctrinations as “Anyone south of the 17th Parallel was worth killing” ringing in their ears. Their leaders encouraged them to rob the South, and to strip the Anti-Revolutionaries in South Vietnam of everything. And this they did, when they invaded in 1975.
The Southerners found the Northerners who arrived after 1975 illiterate, and poorly educated. The cultured and exacting diction of the North, was reduced by the Communist to a hard, bitter, uncouth language. The tone of the invaders were full of cunning.
An elderly Southerner who had came into contact with all three types of Northerners once said: “The first group, the “coolies”, spoke in their uneducated ways. The second group, the refugees of 1954, were an educated and cultured lot who spoke beautifully. The 3rd group, the invaders of 1975, were a misguided rabble, who were misinformed by their leaders, and who spoke and behaved in the most vulgar and brutal fashion.”
Though the the same land gave birth to them, Enlightenment, Education, Culture, Politics, Ethics, Behaviour, and Fortune, ensured that “not all Northerners are the same.”
Major, M.C. Tran Xuan Dung
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