Changes

During the twenties and thirties, Communist forces waged an insurrection of mass murder and terrorism in an effort to seize power in Vietnam. The communist Viet Minh collaborated with French colonial forces to massacre supporters of the Vietnamese nationalist movements in the forties. When the Viet Minh went to war against France they continued their campaign to wipe out the nationalist groups.  (America refused to back the French against the communists until 1950.)<ref>Robert F. Turner, Vietnamese Communism: Its Origins and Development (Hoover Institution Press, 1975), pp57-9, 67-9, 74 and “Myths of the Vietnam War,” Southeast Asian Perspectives, September 1972, pp14-8</ref>  The Japanese invasion of French Indochina proved to be a catalyst for Vietnamese independence, as it united the Vietnamese people behind the Communist resistance to imperial domination.  In 1953, Ho launched a "rent reduction" campaign in which communist planners decided to massacre 1 out of every 1,000 North Vietnamese.<ref>Alec Holcombe, [http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.1525/vs.2010.5.2.243?searchUrl=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3Ffilter%3Djid%253A10.2307%252Fj50000660%26Query%3Drent%2Breduction%26wc%3Don%26Search.x%3D0%26Search.y%3D0&Search=yes&uid=3739656&uid=367529381&uid=2134&uid=2&uid=70&uid=3&uid=3739256&uid=60&sid=21101672198221 Politburo's Directive Issued on May 4, 1953, on Some Special Issues regarding Mass Mobilization] ''Journal of Vietnamese Studies'', Vol. 5, No. 2 (Summer 2010), pp. 243-247, quoting a translated Politburo directive from May 4, 1953. This directive was published in Complete Collection of Party Documents (Van Kien Dang Toan Tap), a 54 volume work authorized by the Vietnamese Communist Party.</ref>  

During the twenties and thirties, Communist forces waged an insurrection of mass murder and terrorism in an effort to seize power in Vietnam. The communist Viet Minh collaborated with French colonial forces to massacre supporters of the Vietnamese nationalist movements in the forties. When the Viet Minh went to war against France they continued their campaign to wipe out the nationalist groups.  (America refused to back the French against the communists until 1950.)<ref>Robert F. Turner, Vietnamese Communism: Its Origins and Development (Hoover Institution Press, 1975), pp57-9, 67-9, 74 and “Myths of the Vietnam War,” Southeast Asian Perspectives, September 1972, pp14-8</ref>  The Japanese invasion of French Indochina proved to be a catalyst for Vietnamese independence, as it united the Vietnamese people behind the Communist resistance to imperial domination.  In 1953, Ho launched a "rent reduction" campaign in which communist planners decided to massacre 1 out of every 1,000 North Vietnamese.<ref>Alec Holcombe, [http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.1525/vs.2010.5.2.243?searchUrl=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3Ffilter%3Djid%253A10.2307%252Fj50000660%26Query%3Drent%2Breduction%26wc%3Don%26Search.x%3D0%26Search.y%3D0&Search=yes&uid=3739656&uid=367529381&uid=2134&uid=2&uid=70&uid=3&uid=3739256&uid=60&sid=21101672198221 Politburo's Directive Issued on May 4, 1953, on Some Special Issues regarding Mass Mobilization] ''Journal of Vietnamese Studies'', Vol. 5, No. 2 (Summer 2010), pp. 243-247, quoting a translated Politburo directive from May 4, 1953. This directive was published in Complete Collection of Party Documents (Van Kien Dang Toan Tap), a 54 volume work authorized by the Vietnamese Communist Party.</ref>  

From mid 1953 to early 1956, the North Vietnamese Communists embarked on a ruthless "land reform" in which landowners, dissidents, and French collaborators were slaughtered en masse in a "genocide triggered by class discrimination."<ref name="rfa.org">http://www.rfa.org/english/news/vietnam_landreform-20060608.html</ref> Declassified Politburo documents confirm that 1 in 1,000 North Vietnamese (i.e., about 14,000 people) were the minimum quota targeted for execution during the earlier "rent reduction" campaign; the number killed during the multiple stages of the considerably more radical "land reform" was probably many times greater.<ref>Alec Holcombe, [http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.1525/vs.2010.5.2.243?searchUrl=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3Ffilter%3Djid%253A10.2307%252Fj50000660%26Query%3Drent%2Breduction%26wc%3Don%26Search.x%3D0%26Search.y%3D0&Search=yes&uid=3739656&uid=367529381&uid=2134&uid=2&uid=70&uid=3&uid=3739256&uid=60&sid=21101672198221 Politburo's Directive Issued on May 4, 1953, on Some Special Issues regarding Mass Mobilization] ''Journal of Vietnamese Studies'', Vol. 5, No. 2 (Summer 2010), pp. 243-247, quoting a translated Politburo directive from May 4, 1953. This directive was published in [http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.1525/vs.2010.5.2.225?uid=3739656&uid=367529381&uid=2134&uid=2&uid=70&uid=3&uid=3739256&uid=60&sid=21101672298091 Complete Collection of Party Documents] (Van Kien Dang Toan Tap), a 54 volume work authorized by the Vietnamese Communist Party.</ref> In 1957, during its "Rectification of Errors" campaign, North Vietnam admitted that it had wrongly executed about 15,000 communist cadre during the "land reform", and that 30% of the "landlords" executed were party members; i.e., that about 50,000 people were executed in total.<ref>''Nhan Dan,'' August 13, 1957.</ref><ref>''Time,'' July 1, 1957, p. 13, says they were given a proper burial.</ref><ref>Gittinger, J. Price, [http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3024603?uid=3739656&uid=2134&uid=367529391&uid=2&uid=70&uid=3&uid=367529381&uid=3739256&uid=60&sid=21101618662091 "Communist Land Policy in Viet Nam"], ''Far Eastern Survey'', Vol. 29, No. 8, 1957, p. 118.</ref><ref>Lam Thanh Liem (1990), [http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/vietnam/landreform.html "Chinh sach cai cach ruong dat cua Ho Chi Minh: sai lam hay toi ac?"] in Jean-Francois Revel et al., ''Ho Chi Minh'', Nam A, pp. 179-214. "Vo Nhan Tri found and read a top-secret report on the number of communist cadres falsely accused and executed: 15,000."</ref>  Lam Thanh Liem, a major authority on land issues in Vietnam, conducted multiple interviews in which communist cadres independently confirmed that 20-30% of those executed were actually fellow communists, but gave higher estimates for executions ranging from 120,000 to 200,000.  Such figures match the "nearly 150,000 houses and huts which were allocated to new occupants".<ref>Lam Thanh Liem (1990), [http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/vietnam/landreform.html "Chinh sach cai cach ruong dat cua Ho Chi Minh: sai lam hay toi ac?"] in Jean-Francois Revel et al., ''Ho Chi Minh'', Nam A, pp. 179-214.</ref><ref>Dommen, Arthur J. (2001), [http://books.google.com/books?id=MauWlUjuWNsC&pg=PA340#v=onepage&q&f=false ''The Indochinese Experience of the French and the Americans''], Indiana University Press, p. 340, quotes comparable figures for communist cadre executed.</ref>  Official records from the time suggest that 172,008 "landlords" were killed during the "land reform", of whom 123,266 (71.66%) were later found to be wrongly classified.<ref>''The History of the Vietnamese Economy'' (2005), Vol. 2, edited by Dang Phong of the Institute of Economy, Vietnamese Institute of Social Sciences.  Landlords were classified as 5.68% of the population, but only a fraction of them were killed.  These figures are proportionally comparable to those for China's land reform, in which millions of "landlords" were slaughtered.</ref>  The full death toll was even greater because victims' families starved to death under the "policy of isolation."<ref>''Nhan Vhan,'' November 5, 1956:  "In the agrarian reform, illegal arrests, imprisonments, investigations (with barbarous torture), executions, requisitions of property, and '''the quarantining of landowners’ houses''' (or houses of peasants wrongly classified as landowners), which left innocent children to die of starvation, are not exclusively due to the shortcomings of the leadership, but also due to the lack of a complete legal code. If the cadres had felt that they were closely observed by the god of justice... calamities might have been avoided for the masses." Nhan Vhan was one of the best-known opposition periodicals that was allowed during the three-month period of relative intellectual freedom in the fall of 1956, modeled on Mao's "Hundred Flowers" campaign.</ref>  As communist defector Le Xuan Giao explained:  "There was nothing worse than the starvation of the children in a family whose parents were under the control of a land reform team.  They isolated the house, and the people who lived there would starve.  The children were all innocent.  There was nothing worse than that.  They wanted to see the whole family dead."<ref name="Turner">Turner, Robert F.  [http://www.paulbogdanor.com/deniers/vietnam/turner.pdf "Expert Punctures 'No Bloodbath' Myth"].  ''[[Human Events]],'' November 11, 1972.</ref>

From mid 1953 to early 1956, the North Vietnamese Communists embarked on a ruthless "land reform" in which landowners, dissidents, and French collaborators were slaughtered en masse in a "genocide triggered by class discrimination."<ref name="rfa.org">http://www.rfa.org/english/news/vietnam_landreform-20060608.html</ref> Declassified Politburo documents confirm that 1 in 1,000 North Vietnamese (i.e., about 14,000 people) were the minimum quota targeted for execution during the earlier "rent reduction" campaign; the number killed during the multiple stages of the considerably more radical "land reform" was probably many times greater.<ref>Alec Holcombe, [http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.1525/vs.2010.5.2.243?searchUrl=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3Ffilter%3Djid%253A10.2307%252Fj50000660%26Query%3Drent%2Breduction%26wc%3Don%26Search.x%3D0%26Search.y%3D0&Search=yes&uid=3739656&uid=367529381&uid=2134&uid=2&uid=70&uid=3&uid=3739256&uid=60&sid=21101672198221 Politburo's Directive Issued on May 4, 1953, on Some Special Issues regarding Mass Mobilization] ''Journal of Vietnamese Studies'', Vol. 5, No. 2 (Summer 2010), pp. 243-247, quoting a translated Politburo directive from May 4, 1953. This directive was published in [http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.1525/vs.2010.5.2.225?uid=3739656&uid=367529381&uid=2134&uid=2&uid=70&uid=3&uid=3739256&uid=60&sid=21101672298091 Complete Collection of Party Documents] (Van Kien Dang Toan Tap), a 54 volume work authorized by the Vietnamese Communist Party.</ref> In 1957, during its "Rectification of Errors" campaign, North Vietnam admitted that it had wrongly executed about 15,000 communist cadre during the "land reform", and that 30% of the "landlords" executed were party members; i.e., that about 50,000 people were executed in total.<ref>''Nhan Dan,'' August 13, 1957.</ref><ref>''Time,'' July 1, 1957, p. 13, says they were given a proper burial.</ref><ref>Gittinger, J. Price, [http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3024603?uid=3739656&uid=2134&uid=367529391&uid=2&uid=70&uid=3&uid=367529381&uid=3739256&uid=60&sid=21101618662091 "Communist Land Policy in Viet Nam"], ''Far Eastern Survey'', Vol. 29, No. 8, 1957, p. 118.</ref><ref>Lam Thanh Liem (1990), [http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/vietnam/landreform.html "Chinh sach cai cach ruong dat cua Ho Chi Minh: sai lam hay toi ac?"] in Jean-Francois Revel et al., ''Ho Chi Minh'', Nam A, pp. 179-214. "Vo Nhan Tri found and read a top-secret report on the number of communist cadres falsely accused and executed: 15,000."</ref>  Lam Thanh Liem, a major authority on land issues in Vietnam, conducted multiple interviews in which communist cadres independently confirmed that 20-30% of those executed were actually fellow communists, but gave higher estimates for executions ranging from 120,000 to 200,000.  Such figures match the "nearly 150,000 houses and huts which were allocated to new occupants".<ref>Lam Thanh Liem (1990), [http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/vietnam/landreform.html "Chinh sach cai cach ruong dat cua Ho Chi Minh: sai lam hay toi ac?"] in Jean-Francois Revel et al., ''Ho Chi Minh'', Nam A, pp. 179-214.</ref><ref>Dommen, Arthur J. (2001), [https://books.google.com/books?id=MauWlUjuWNsC&pg=PA340#v=onepage&q&f=false ''The Indochinese Experience of the French and the Americans''], Indiana University Press, p. 340, quotes comparable figures for communist cadre executed.</ref>  Official records from the time suggest that 172,008 "landlords" were killed during the "land reform", of whom 123,266 (71.66%) were later found to be wrongly classified.<ref>''The History of the Vietnamese Economy'' (2005), Vol. 2, edited by Dang Phong of the Institute of Economy, Vietnamese Institute of Social Sciences.  Landlords were classified as 5.68% of the population, but only a fraction of them were killed.  These figures are proportionally comparable to those for China's land reform, in which millions of "landlords" were slaughtered.</ref>  The full death toll was even greater because victims' families starved to death under the "policy of isolation."<ref>''Nhan Vhan,'' November 5, 1956:  "In the agrarian reform, illegal arrests, imprisonments, investigations (with barbarous torture), executions, requisitions of property, and '''the quarantining of landowners’ houses''' (or houses of peasants wrongly classified as landowners), which left innocent children to die of starvation, are not exclusively due to the shortcomings of the leadership, but also due to the lack of a complete legal code. If the cadres had felt that they were closely observed by the god of justice... calamities might have been avoided for the masses." Nhan Vhan was one of the best-known opposition periodicals that was allowed during the three-month period of relative intellectual freedom in the fall of 1956, modeled on Mao's "Hundred Flowers" campaign.</ref>  As communist defector Le Xuan Giao explained:  "There was nothing worse than the starvation of the children in a family whose parents were under the control of a land reform team.  They isolated the house, and the people who lived there would starve.  The children were all innocent.  There was nothing worse than that.  They wanted to see the whole family dead."<ref name="Turner">Turner, Robert F.  [http://www.paulbogdanor.com/deniers/vietnam/turner.pdf "Expert Punctures 'No Bloodbath' Myth"].  ''[[Human Events]],'' November 11, 1972.</ref>

In 1959, Hanoi's politburo received a series of reports indicating that even though the North had been directing a phase one guerrilla insurgency in the South for two years, the South was socially and economically out-pacing the North. "By Tet of 1959," [[William Colby]] writes in his book, ''Lost Victory'', "it was plain that a nationalist and non-Communist Vietnam was firmly established. It was also becoming apparent that its future was, if anything, more promising than the gray and regimented society in the North."<ref name="vietnam.ttu.edu">http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/events/1996_Symposium/96papers/story.htm</ref>  

In 1959, Hanoi's politburo received a series of reports indicating that even though the North had been directing a phase one guerrilla insurgency in the South for two years, the South was socially and economically out-pacing the North. "By Tet of 1959," [[William Colby]] writes in his book, ''Lost Victory'', "it was plain that a nationalist and non-Communist Vietnam was firmly established. It was also becoming apparent that its future was, if anything, more promising than the gray and regimented society in the North."<ref name="vietnam.ttu.edu">http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/events/1996_Symposium/96papers/story.htm</ref>  

Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, fell to followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, commonly known as the [[Khmer Rouge]], on April 17, 1975.  Over the next four years, the Khmer Rouge enacted a genocidal policy that would kill over one-fourth of all Cambodians, or more than 2 million people.  UN investigation reported 2–3 million dead, while UNICEF estimated 3 million had been killed.<ref>William Shawcross, ''The Quality of Mercy: Cambodia, Holocaust, and Modern Conscience'' (Touchstone, 1985), p115-6.</ref>  Demographic analysis by Patrick Heuveline suggests that between 1.17 and 3.42 million Cambodians were killed,<ref name="Heuveline, Patrick 2001">Heuveline, Patrick (2001). "The Demographic Analysis of Mortality in Cambodia." In Forced Migration and Mortality, eds. Holly E. Reed and Charles B. Keely. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.</ref> while Marek Sliwinski estimates that 1.8 million is a conservative figure.<ref name="Marek Sliwinski 1995">Marek Sliwinski, ''Le Génocide Khmer Rouge: Une Analyse Démographique'' (L'Harmattan, 1995).</ref>  Researcher Craig Etcheson of the Documentation Center of Cambodia suggests that the death toll was between 2 and 2.5 million, with a "most likely" figure of 2.2 million. After 5 years of researching grave sites, he concluded that "these mass graves contain the remains of 1,386,734 victims of execution".<ref name="Mekong.net_deaths">{{cite web|last=Sharp|first=Bruce|title=Counting Hell: The Death Toll of the Khmer Rouge Regime in Cambodia|date = April 1, 2005|url = http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/deaths.htm|accessdate =January 9, 2013}}</ref> Even the Khmer Rouge acknowledged that 2 million had been killed—though they attributed those deaths to a subsequent Vietnamese invasion.<ref>Khieu Samphan, Interview, Time, March 10, 1980</ref>  By late 1979, UN and Red Cross officials were warning that another 2.25 million Cambodians faced death by starvation due to "the near destruction of Cambodian society under the regime of ousted Prime Minister Pol Pot,"<ref>New York Times, August 8, 1979.</ref><ref name="time.com">http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,947511,00.html</ref><ref>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,912511,00.html</ref> who were saved by American and international aid.   

Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, fell to followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, commonly known as the [[Khmer Rouge]], on April 17, 1975.  Over the next four years, the Khmer Rouge enacted a genocidal policy that would kill over one-fourth of all Cambodians, or more than 2 million people.  UN investigation reported 2–3 million dead, while UNICEF estimated 3 million had been killed.<ref>William Shawcross, ''The Quality of Mercy: Cambodia, Holocaust, and Modern Conscience'' (Touchstone, 1985), p115-6.</ref>  Demographic analysis by Patrick Heuveline suggests that between 1.17 and 3.42 million Cambodians were killed,<ref name="Heuveline, Patrick 2001">Heuveline, Patrick (2001). "The Demographic Analysis of Mortality in Cambodia." In Forced Migration and Mortality, eds. Holly E. Reed and Charles B. Keely. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.</ref> while Marek Sliwinski estimates that 1.8 million is a conservative figure.<ref name="Marek Sliwinski 1995">Marek Sliwinski, ''Le Génocide Khmer Rouge: Une Analyse Démographique'' (L'Harmattan, 1995).</ref>  Researcher Craig Etcheson of the Documentation Center of Cambodia suggests that the death toll was between 2 and 2.5 million, with a "most likely" figure of 2.2 million. After 5 years of researching grave sites, he concluded that "these mass graves contain the remains of 1,386,734 victims of execution".<ref name="Mekong.net_deaths">{{cite web|last=Sharp|first=Bruce|title=Counting Hell: The Death Toll of the Khmer Rouge Regime in Cambodia|date = April 1, 2005|url = http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/deaths.htm|accessdate =January 9, 2013}}</ref> Even the Khmer Rouge acknowledged that 2 million had been killed—though they attributed those deaths to a subsequent Vietnamese invasion.<ref>Khieu Samphan, Interview, Time, March 10, 1980</ref>  By late 1979, UN and Red Cross officials were warning that another 2.25 million Cambodians faced death by starvation due to "the near destruction of Cambodian society under the regime of ousted Prime Minister Pol Pot,"<ref>New York Times, August 8, 1979.</ref><ref name="time.com">http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,947511,00.html</ref><ref>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,912511,00.html</ref> who were saved by American and international aid.   

The Vietnamese Communists, led by Le Duan, perpetrated a huge bloodbath in South Vietnam, murdering hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese men, women, and children in cold blood. Up to 155,000 refugees fleeing the final NVA [[1975 Spring Offensive|Spring Offensive]] were killed or abducted on the road to [[Tuy Hoa]] in 1975.<ref>Wiesner, Louis, ''Victims and Survivors: Displaced Persons and Other War Victims in Viet-Nam, 1954-1975'' (Greenwood Press, 1988), pp. 318-9.</ref> Sources have estimated that 165,000 South Vietnamese died in the re-education camps out of 2.5 million sent,<ref name="Desbarats">Desbarats, Jacqueline.  [http://jim.com/repression.htm "Repression in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam: Executions and Population Relocation"], from ''The Vietnam Debate'' (1990) by John Morton Moore.  "We know now from a 1985 statement by Nguyen Co Tach that two and a half million, rather than one million, people went through reeducation....in fact, possibly more than 100,000 Vietnamese people were victims of extrajudicial executions in the last ten years....it is likely that, overall, at least one million Vietnamese were the victims of forced population transfers."</ref><ref>Anh Do and Hieu Tran Phan, [http://dartcenter.org/content/camp-z30-d-survivors Camp Z30-D: The Survivors], ''Orange County Register'', April 29, 2001.</ref>  while the number executed could have been as high as 200,000<ref>Al Santoli, ed., ''To Bear Any Burden'' (Indiana University Press, 1999), pp272, 292-3.</ref> (Jacqueline Desbarats estimates an absolute minimum of 100,000 executions<ref name="Desbarats"/><ref>Morris, Stephen J. [http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/vietnam/morris.pdf Glastnost and the Gulag: The Numbers Game], ''Vietnam Commentary'', May–June 1988.</ref>).  Victims were beheaded, eviscerated or buried alive.<ref>Jacqueline Desbarats and Karl D. Jackson, "Research Among Vietnamese Refugees Reveals a Bloodbath," Wall Street Journal, April 22, 1985.</ref>  Rummel estimates that slave labor in the "New Economic Zones" caused 50,000 deaths (out of a total 1 million deported).<ref name="Desbarats"/><ref name="Statistics of Vietnamese Democide">Rummel, Rudolph, [http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP6.HTM Statistics of Vietnamese Democide], in his ''Statistics of Democide''.</ref>  The number of [[boat people]] who died is estimated between 200,000 and 400,000, out of the 2.5 million that fled (according to the UN).<ref>Associated Press, June 23, 1979; San Diego Union, July 20, 1986. See generally Nghia M. Vo (2006), ''The Vietnamese Boat People, 1954 and 1975-1992'', McFarland.</ref> There were also tens of thousands of suicides after the North Vietnamese take-over.<ref>Le Thi Anh, "The New Vietnam", ''[[National Review]]'', April 29, 1977, estimated some 20,000 post-war mass suicides.</ref>  In 1988, Vietnam suffered a famine that afflicted millions.<ref>Crossette, Barbara, [http://www.nytimes.com/1988/05/15/world/hanoi-citing-famine-fears-seeks-emergency-aid.html?src=pm Hanoi, Citing Famine Fears, Seeks Emergency Aid], ''[[The New York Times]],'' May 15, 1988.</ref>

The Vietnamese Communists, led by Le Duan, perpetrated a huge bloodbath in South Vietnam, murdering hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese men, women, and children in cold blood. Up to 155,000 refugees fleeing the final NVA [[1975 Spring Offensive|Spring Offensive]] were killed or abducted on the road to [[Tuy Hoa]] in 1975.<ref>Wiesner, Louis, ''Victims and Survivors: Displaced Persons and Other War Victims in Viet-Nam, 1954-1975'' (Greenwood Press, 1988), pp. 318-9.</ref> Sources have estimated that 165,000 South Vietnamese died in the re-education camps out of 2.5 million sent,<ref name="Desbarats">Desbarats, Jacqueline.  [http://jim.com/repression.htm "Repression in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam: Executions and Population Relocation"], from ''The Vietnam Debate'' (1990) by John Morton Moore.  "We know now from a 1985 statement by Nguyen Co Tach that two and a half million, rather than one million, people went through reeducation....in fact, possibly more than 100,000 Vietnamese people were victims of extrajudicial executions in the last ten years....it is likely that, overall, at least one million Vietnamese were the victims of forced population transfers."</ref><ref>Anh Do and Hieu Tran Phan, [http://dartcenter.org/content/camp-z30-d-survivors Camp Z30-D: The Survivors], ''Orange County Register'', April 29, 2001.</ref>  while the number executed could have been as high as 200,000<ref>Al Santoli, ed., ''To Bear Any Burden'' (Indiana University Press, 1999), pp272, 292-3.</ref> (Jacqueline Desbarats estimates an absolute minimum of 100,000 executions<ref name="Desbarats"/><ref>Morris, Stephen J. [http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/vietnam/morris.pdf Glastnost and the Gulag: The Numbers Game], ''Vietnam Commentary'', May–June 1988.</ref>).  Victims were beheaded, eviscerated or buried alive.<ref>Jacqueline Desbarats and Karl D. Jackson, "Research Among Vietnamese Refugees Reveals a Bloodbath," Wall Street Journal, April 22, 1985.</ref>  Rummel estimates that slave labor in the "New Economic Zones" caused 50,000 deaths (out of a total 1 million deported).<ref name="Desbarats"/><ref name="Statistics of Vietnamese Democide">Rummel, Rudolph, [http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP6.HTM Statistics of Vietnamese Democide], in his ''Statistics of Democide''.</ref>  The number of [[boat people]] who died is estimated between 200,000 and 400,000, out of the 2.5 million that fled (according to the UN).<ref>Associated Press, June 23, 1979; San Diego Union, July 20, 1986. See generally Nghia M. Vo (2006), ''The Vietnamese Boat People, 1954 and 1975-1992'', McFarland.</ref> There were also tens of thousands of suicides after the North Vietnamese take-over.<ref>Le Thi Anh, "The New Vietnam", ''[[National Review]]'', April 29, 1977, estimated some 20,000 post-war mass suicides.</ref>  In 1988, Vietnam suffered a famine that afflicted millions.<ref>Crossette, Barbara, [https://www.nytimes.com/1988/05/15/world/hanoi-citing-famine-fears-seeks-emergency-aid.html?src=pm Hanoi, Citing Famine Fears, Seeks Emergency Aid], ''[[The New York Times]],'' May 15, 1988.</ref>

The Pathet Lao overthrew the Royalist Government of Laos in December 1975.  They established a Communist dictatorship known as the Lao People’s Democratic Republic.  The Pathet Lao waged a campaign of genocide, exterminating an estimated over 100,000 Hmong tribespeople.  They inflicted massacres, terror bombing, concentration camps, and mass rape.<ref>Forced Back and Forgotten (Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights, 1989); and Jane Hamilton-Merrit, ''Tragic Mountains:  The Hmong, the Americans, and the Secret Wars for Laos'' (Indiana University Press, 1999)</ref>  The Communists killed over 184,000 people in Laos altogether.<ref>http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat5.htm#Lao75</ref>

The Pathet Lao overthrew the Royalist Government of Laos in December 1975.  They established a Communist dictatorship known as the Lao People’s Democratic Republic.  The Pathet Lao waged a campaign of genocide, exterminating an estimated over 100,000 Hmong tribespeople.  They inflicted massacres, terror bombing, concentration camps, and mass rape.<ref>Forced Back and Forgotten (Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights, 1989); and Jane Hamilton-Merrit, ''Tragic Mountains:  The Hmong, the Americans, and the Secret Wars for Laos'' (Indiana University Press, 1999)</ref>  The Communists killed over 184,000 people in Laos altogether.<ref>http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat5.htm#Lao75</ref>

*[http://www.viet-myths.net/Turner.htm Myths and Realities in the Vietnam Debate]

*[http://www.viet-myths.net/Turner.htm Myths and Realities in the Vietnam Debate]

*[http://www.rjsmith.com/war_myth.html Vietnam War Myths]

*[http://www.rjsmith.com/war_myth.html Vietnam War Myths]

*[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F67C8yzww_Y How the Vietnam War Was Won and Lost by Prager University]

*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F67C8yzww_Y How the Vietnam War Was Won and Lost by Prager University]

[[Category:Wars]]

[[Category:Wars]]