Two different accusations are made against the historian: of having been a "traitor" to the "French nation" and of having administered a "death camp". The sentences that are being called for are very serious; loss of citizenship, expulsion from the university; condemnation on a charge designed to deal with the Nazi genocide of Jews and Gypsies. Nonetheless they are being demanded by "responsible" politicians and it is extremely rare to find the lack of proportion criticized in the media.
Support from university administration
In the face of these attacks, the university's administrative council expressed its unanimous support for Boudarel, a "researcher whose qualities have been recognized by his colleagues and appreciated by his students" and who had been amnestied in 1966 for acts connected to "political commitment" 6
Not all the 200 French soldiers who went over to the Viêtminh, the so-called "white soldiers of Hô Chí Minh", , did so for political reasons. Some were avoiding
were committed in the name of France in the Indochinese and Algerian wars: arbitrary repression, rapes, massacres, forced displacement of population, torture... The treatment of prisoners of war is a particularly damning file.
As an ex-French soldier, André Plancot recalled in relation to the present controversy: "I saw two officers interrogating fifteen "Niaks". One of them was shot on the spot to make the others talk. No result. The other 14 were then machine gunned". 8
This was not an isolated incident. Confidential letters from General Beaufort, representing France at the interational control commission set up as a part of the 1954 Geneva peace accords, show this: "official information leads me to think that the number of Indochinese prisoners of war who died or were executed in captivity was more than 9,000.
"They were not properly buried and only 2,080 graves can be identified. Finally, I have been informed that prison camp registers mention a great number of executions, above all in 1952 and 1953"9
General Beaufort judged that, if these facts were to come to light, they would place France in a "delicate if not difficult situation". He was thus opposed to an exchange of lists of those missing with Hô Chí Minh's government.
Torture as means of government
In the course of the years things got much worse. "The truth," writes Alain Ruscio, "is that during the Algerian war, torture had become, if not generalized, then at least sufficiently commonplace for it to be considered as a 'means of government'
"With the Battle of Algiers in 1957, a threshold was crossed in the use of terror. Torture, which was already widespread, became more or less commonplace and quite banal [ot 24,000 suspects who were "questioned" ', 3,024 disappeared]" 1°
There were also massacres in France itself, as on October 17, 1960, when tens of thousands of Algerians, peacefully demonstrating, in Paris against the imposition of a curfew, were attacked by the police. A hundred of them were killed by gunfire, or thrown into the Seine where they drowned. Some of the bodies were disfigured.
For the French government, denying national rights to the colonized, it was not only a question of re-establishing "the authority of the state". As Pierre VidalNaquet has written, Indochina at that time was the scene of "an atrocious war, all the more atrocious in that it is has never been recognized as such"
French soldiers who were taken prisoner were themselves victims of the official lies. To obtain their release or press for them to be better treated would have meant recognizing the Viêtminh as a belligerent, and this Paris and the high command refused to do.
General Carpentier wrote on February 2, 1950 that he was "formally opposed to any initiative on our part to obtain the liberation of the prisoners of war from the Viêtminh". This attitude continued almost up until Dien-Bien-Phu."
Paris also refused to send home prisoners released by the Viêtminh. The later was naturally reluctant to release men, in particular elite troops, who would be sent back into battle. From 1945 to 1954, the Viêtminh nonetheless unilaterally freed 4,744 prisoners.
Georges Boudarel has been more than once accused of physically torturing the French soldiers he was in charge of. However, Le Monde journalist Dominique Le Guilledoux has noted that: "none of the survivors questioned has imputed precise acts of physical violence to the Frenchman, nor, it seems, to the Viêtminh guards. "12
According to Vidal-Naquet: "it is not true that Boudrel was a torturer....Nobody died during his indoctrination sessions, even if he was wrong to have undertaken them at the expense of compatriots suffering physiological and moral misery."
High death rate in Viêtminh camps
In contrast to the detention centres of the French army, torture and executions were not a part of the daily life of the Viêtminh camps. It is nonetheless undeniable that mortality was high in these camps, even if the figure of a 40% survival rate is false.
Figures provided by General Salan show that some 55% of the members of the French expeditionary corp were freed This is an under-estimate however, since it is calculated as a percentage of the 15,590 "presumed prisoners or missing" It is obvious that not all those missing were prisoners.
The losses among the Indochinese soldiers in the French army were much higher — Salan gives a figure of 1,039 freed out of 13,959.13 But it seems impossible to establish how many of these died in captivity. In fact, the Viêtminh released many without returning them to the French authorities, considered incompetent in the matter.
Bernard Fall consecrates a chapter in successive editions of his book on the Viêtminh and the Indochina war to the "camps of the green hell." Despite his abilities as a journalist, he is remarkably uncritical of the French sources. He gives a certificate of good conduct to the colonial authorities, overlooks the thousands of victims mentioned by General Beaufort, and presents a table which implies that only 28.5% of prisoners were liberated.
VIETNAM-FRANCE However, he does not accuse the Viêtminh of having pursued an extermination policy. "There were not many deliberate massacres....From 1950 to 1953, lack of organization and means caused terrible losses among the prisoners.....t seems clear that a large part of these deaths were not due to some will to genocide on the part of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam but rather to a lack of interest in the fate of the captives and an incredible meanness of spirit on the part of the Vietnamese authorities".14
The detainees were subjected to a very harsh regime, but this was to a large extent due to the conditions in the country and the struggle, which were difficult for everyone, including the Vietnamese peasants and the liberation forces.
The zones under Viêtminh control were subjected to a very strict blockade; the tropical climate — sometimes the cold — were very testing; the lack of food and medicines favoured the development of diseases such as dysentery, paludism, beriberi and amoebic hepatitis; the labour involved in gathering food could be exhausting. The French prisoners were badly prepared for such a test
Some aspects of the Viêtminh's policies 8. Le Monde, March 11, 1991. "Niak" is an insulting term for Vietnamese. 9. From the study by Colonel Bonnafous Robert, "Les prisonniers de guerre du corps expéditionnaires français en Extrême-Orient dans les camps Viêtminh, 1945-1954". Doctoral thesis at Montpellier-III University, 1985. Quoted by Louis Couturier, Rouge, March 21, 1991. 10. Sce Alain Ruscio, "La décolonization tragique, 1945-1962", Messidor/ ed. sociales, Paris 1987, pp. 134-137. 11. Le Monde, March 23, 1991. All quotations from Vidal-Naquet are taken from this article. 12. Le Monde, March 14, 1991. 13. Raoul Salan: "Mémoires. Fin d'un empire: 'Le Vietminh, mon adversaire'", Presses de la Cité, Paris 1971, p. 433. 14. Bemard Fall, "Indochine 1946-1962. Chronique d'une guerre révolutionnaire", Laffont, Paris, 1962, PP. 302 and 306. Fall: "Le Viêtminh, La république démocratique du Viet-Nam, 1945-1960", Armand Col- 23 in, Paris 1960, p. 204. April 29, 1991 • #205 International Viewpoint
VIETNAM-FRANCE
A DEFENCE committee for
Boudarel has been set up in
France. Its address is Comité de défense de
Georges Boudarel, Université de Paris VII, 2 Place
Jussieu, 75005, Paris, France. needlessly made a very bad situation worse. French medical personnel were automatically placed in the no.1 camp, reserved for officers.
The Vietnamese on the other hand did not have the medical personnel to ensure treatment, and few people with serious wounds survived. What happened to the medical supplies dropped from the air by the French to assist the prisoners is a matter of controversy. Georges Boudarel notes that they were shared between the prison camps and the liberation forces.
No comparison with Nazis
Despite the prevailing misery, the Viêtminh camps cannot be compared with the Nazi concentration camps. The world of camps created by the Nazis in Germany on their coming to power in 1933 was aimed at physically crushing the organized workers' movement, the left and the liberals, then the resistance of the occupied countries in Europe and finally the genocide of entire Jewish and Gypsy peoples. Death was an industry, and terror a developed system. The objective was not to convert but to destroy.
The Viêtminh camps were places of indoctrination, not of mass liquidation; the aim was to use French prisoners to assist the victory of a difficult liberation struggle, not to make them disappear.
Having said this, this indoctrination policy raises some fundamental questions. Boudarel presents it in these terms: "The Viêtminh without doubt committed many mistakes, but they were not so stupid -and nor was I — to believe that it was possible to make communists out of soldiers who were fighting communism...
"The Viêtminh aimed to fight a psychological war. The idea was to demonstrate to the prisoners that they had no business in Vietnam, then to set them free to spread doubts among the rest of the expeditionary corps, and after their repatriation, among the French public". 'S
These were obviously legitimate objectives. But propaganda is a rigged game when it takes place under conditions Where staying in detention can mean death through exhaustion or disease, and when servility can lead to freedom.
In such a situation "self-organization" by the prisoners and "criticism/selfcriticism" could only mean intolerable 24 psychological pressure and the installa• T ton of a system based on informers. tion of a system based on informers. International Viewpoint #205 • April 29, 1991
Georges Boudarel notes that: "the criticism and self-criticism took place in the evening. It was about the day's activities, the participation of each in the good running of the camp. There was nothing like what was going on inside the Vietnamese Communist Party at the time, where Chinese methods were causing such devastation"
•
But he says: "That said, I have long since thought that what I took part in in Camp 113 was the embryo of what would later become the re-education camps"
Many prisoners broken by experience
Many prisoners seem to have been morally broken by the experience. For one of them, the success of the method "was not shown by ideological conversion, but by the establishment of a very efficient system of mutual incrimination and collaboration which shattered us. In the struggle with death there is no more solidarity. You best friend will betray you". 16
One can understand why Boudarel considers his period in camp 113 as "the blackest time of my life". Vidal-Nacquet notes that, owing to the very fact that he was French, he found himself in an "authentically infernal situation"
It was certainly easier for the soldiers of the expeditionary corps to respect a Vietnamese, whether nationalist or even Communist, than a compatriot who had gone over to the "enemy". It would also have been more difficult for Boudarel than for a VCP cadre to explain to the Vietnamese peasants, revolted by the atrocities of the colonial forces, that the crimes of the counter-revolution did not justify the injustices of the revolution.'?
Georges Boudarel had no military skills and it was normal that the Viêtminh employed him at tasks other than guerilla warfare, such as propaganda broadcasts or French language publishing. But not, as in 1953, in a job that gave him real power over his compatriot prisoners.
Boudarel did not wait for the present furore to draw the lessons of his experience. A young Communist, he was, in his own words, a Stalinist. He was happy in his life as a militant in the Saigon region, and unhappy during his time in camp 113.
It seems that 1956 represented a turning point. This was the year of Khrushchev's report on Stalin's crimes and the uprisings in Eastern Europe. In Vietnam there was an abortive ideological thaw, the crisis of the land reform and violent conflicts in the VCP.
Boudarel reduced his responsibilities and gave French lessons, then in 1964, left the country for Czechoslovakia. He worked there for the World Federation of Trade Unions and met the widow of Arthur London, the author of The Trial, who taught him many things about Stalinism. ism
Foundation of Indochina Solidarity Front
Amnestied in 1967, he returned to France. He sympathized with May 1968 and in 1969 he took part in the foundation of the Indochina Solidarity Front, a non-sectarian organization disowned by the French Communist Party, which brought together independent communist intellectuals, anti-imperialist figures and a range of far left organizations.
A historian, he published a series of studies, which remain of great interest, on Vietnamese Communism. He has centred his criticism on the functioning of the reeducation camps established in Vietnam after the 1975 victory affirming that: "it is necessary to ceaselessly denounce a system... in which the psychological torment of the re-education process destroys individuals, and hounds dissenting thought....making everybody a suspect."18
In 1980 he published a very rich study of the Vietnamese "ideocracy" and "rectification campaigns", , the chinh huân 19 , in which he tries to identify the similarities and differences between the VCP and its Soviet counterpart, the influence of Maoism, the degree to which the concepts of the latter represented a break with Hô Chí Minh's original ideas, and why they have been a success in the army but a disaster for the rest of society.
Most of his friends who still remain in Vietnam are now "dissidents" and severe critics of the regime. As Daniel Hémery and Pierre Brocheux have written: "at the very moment when Boudarel has become one of the most serious experts on Vietnamese dissidence, his former Stalinism is being demonized. Unlike his accusers 15. Libération, March 25, 1991. Unless otherwise indicated, the other quotes from Boudarel are taken from this article. The argument is convincing, even though sometimes Hanoi's propaganda seems so stupid that it tends to make you think that the aim must have been "conversion". One example is a brochure from 1985, which reproduces the "testimonies" of French soldiers, declaring before being set free that "sons of a people blinded by lying propaganda, we are susceptible to being re-educated, set on the right road and becoming a part of the cause of peace". française à Dien-Bien-Phu (témoignages et récits)", quoted by Couturier, Rouge, March 21, 1991. 17. Boudarel has been frequently reproached - and has reproached himself - for, under pressure from a village, having sent a French soldier back to detention and possibly therefore to his death. The soldier had stolen an egg from a peasant during a "long march" southwards, where he was to be freed. 18. Le Monde, November 15, 1980. 19. "Rectification campaigns" take place inside the CP, the army and the mass organizations. They are not the same as the "re-education" of counter-revolutionaries. 20. Le Monde, March 14, 1980. On some questions, Georges Boudarel's ideas have developed in a direction which would be better described as social demo cratic than communist. It is also worth pointing out that he was one of the first signatories on the petition demanding the rehabilitation of Tha Thu Tau, the Vietnamese Trotskyist leader assassinated by CP militants in Vietnam in 1945. 21. Gabriel-Xavier Culioli, Rouge, March 21, 1991. 22. Intervention at the Club de la Presse d'Europe, March 17, 1991. Quoted in Le Monde on March 19, 1991.
Boudarel has never stopped questioning and reviewing his former commitments". 20
So what is behind the anti-Boudarel campaign? At its origin there is clearly the desire of former soldiers detained by the Viêtminh for vengeance and the efforts of the proto-fascist National Front (NF) to regain the political initiative. The NF has got itself into hot water with its own electorate over its opposition to French involvement in the Gulf war and its "understanding" attitude to Saddam Hussein's demands. By mobilizing today against this historian, it dreams of once again appearing as the best defender of the army and the "honour of the nation".
Other interests at work
But other interests are also at work, which give this "affair" its resonance in the media and the political world. A part of the "respectable" right is bidding for te respectable tige olding tor the NF's electorate.
Others want to put pressure on the universities to speed up their "normalization". Others are developing the enterprise of "historical revisionism", yesterday with regard to the genocide of Jews during the second world war, today with regard to colonialism. This enterprise wants to banalize the notions of Nazism and crimes against humanity, and to efface the memory of atrocities committed by French armies in the name of the French who died in the Viêtminh camps." All agree, in the post-Gulf war ideological atmosphere, that revolutionary commitment should be made a crime. The governmental left has been keeping quiet, or has been playing the hypocrite, like Lionel Jospin, the education minister. He recognizes that Boudarel's status as a university teacher is a matter for his colleagues, but at the same time he characterizes him, in passing, as a "kapo" , and the Viêtminh camps as "concentration camps", thus summoning up the vision of Nazism.
He affirms that "the anti-colonialist choice was justified" but that nonetheless the Vietnamese were the "adversary of our country". Make of that what you can! He suggest that Boudarel should be left "to face his own conscience". But he omits to suggest that his own Socialist Party examine its own conscience insofar as its pursuit of colonial wars and its multiple uses and abuses of state terrorism are concerned.2
In his letter to his colleagues of February 25, Georges Boudarel noted that the campaign against him was intended to discredit him and "all those who, out of political conviction, have taken a radical stance for the independence of the colonies, notably in Indochina and Algeria. And indeed the issue here is the right to oppose criminal actions undertaken in the name of one's own country, a vital right in the present climate". *