Statement from the League Against Imperialism on the failed Yên Bái mutiny on February 10, 1930 of Vietnamese soldiers in France’s colonial army with support from the Vietnamese Nationalist Party.

‘Long Live the Independence of Indo-China’ from the Daily Worker. Vol. 6 No. 317.  March 13, 1930.

A GREAT revolutionary wave is sweeping across the countries of the Pacific, where hundreds of millions of human beings are in revolt against the intolerable exploitation and oppression of which they have for centuries been the victims.

In China the workers and peasants are on the eve of a fresh advance for the final overthrow of foreign imperialism and its allies, the feudal elements and the national bourgeoisie. In India, the toiling masses are engaged in a revolutionary struggle for the overthrow of British imperialist exploitation and feudal despotism and for the attainment of full national and social liberty. In Korea, groaning under the iron heel of Japanese imperialism, the workers, peasants, the youth, the poorer intelligentsia are conducting an heroic struggle for freedom notwithstanding torture and persecution. In Indonesia Dutch imperialism is putting down with ruthless brutality the revolutionary organizations that are leading the masses in the fight for national liberty. In the Philippines the movement for emancipation from the yoke of American imperialism is becoming increasingly revolutionary. And now from Indo-China comes the news of revolts of the Indo-Chinese troops supported by revolutionary peasant organizations in Yen Bay and Huang Hoa, giving evidence of the growing united front of workers, peasants and soldiers in the struggle against their French exploiters.

This military revolt is but one of the signals of the coming storm in Indo-China. The widespread movement of national liberation is the natural result of the social, economic and political conditions that have prevailed in Indo-China (Annam, Cambodia, Cochinchina, Ton-king and Laos) during the last century, but more particularly since the French imperialists burst upon those territories and occupied them by brute force some fifty years ago. The situation that has thus been created under French exploitation is intolerable. The peasants are maintained in an indescribable state of pauperism. They are undernourished. The rice production of the country, which is the chief source of living of more than three-quarters of the population is quite inadequate to meet their needs. And even of this inadequate production the greater part is exported by the commercial companies while the people starve. The direct taxation by the imperialist government and the exactions imposed upon the peasantry by the feudal landlords, the planters, the missionaries and by government officials have reduced the peasants actually to the position of serfs.

The workers of Indo-China live and work under appalling conditions. They have to slave from 12 to 14 hours a day with hardly any interval. and it is officially admitted that the mortality among them is from 40 to 50 per cent. Under these terrible conditions 10 to 30 per cent of the workers run away yearly from their places of employment and are subjected to inhuman corporal punishment when recaptured. Forced labor is recruited for the mines and plantations in Indo-China and in the South Sea Islands, and the men thus forced are torn away from their wives and children. If they resist they are belabored with iron-loaded canes until they bleed to unconsciousness. Women and children under 12 years of age work under the same terrible conditions in the coal mines and rubber plantations. And the whole existing system of labor contracts and labor inspection is nothing but a cunning form of slavery organized for the benefit of the exploiters.

There is no freedom of speech, of the press or of assembly. The schools are totally inadequate in number and quality, and illiteracy is deliberately maintained as an institution. The workers have no right to organize themselves into unions, and strikes are illegal. Opium and alcohol are forced upon the people under state control in order to increase the revenues of the imperialist government. The dividends paid by the “Fontaine” Distilleries have risen steadily during the last ten years from 40 to 200 per cent. The shares in the industrial undertakings in which French capitalists have invested some three milliard Francs and which are exploited by means of cheap and forced labor, are now worth from 7 to 20 times their nominal value. The budget for naval and military purposes and for the imperialist secret service constitutes, as in India, more than 60 per cent of the total budget.

Against this abominable exploitation, this slow extermination of a whole population by imperialism, the masses of Indo-China are now in revolt. One strike has followed upon another in the course of the last year. Colleges and schools led by the students of the Petrusky College have organized imposing anti-imperialist demonstrations in Saigon and other towns. These were suppressed by the armed police forces and a large number of students were arrested. Hundreds of national revolutionaries and militant workers are in prison undergoing heavy and brutal sentences. “Conspiracies,” secret organizations and secret presses are being discovered almost daily.

The cowardly murder of the young revolutionary Nguyen Si Sach by a French agent in the prison of Lao-Bao–an unhealthy district to which political prisoners are deported and where Nguyen Si Sach was imprisoned after having been sentenced in the monster trial against the Revolutionary Annamite Youth–has just caused a revolt among the prisoners. All these strikes, demonstrations and revolts of the workers, peasants and the youth have now culminated in the revolutionary outbreak of the Indo-Chinese soldiers.

These events in Indo-China and the rapid development of the revolutionary movement are of great significance. Ton-king is on the border of China. With the help of Annamite and Indian regiments, France and Great Britain protected their concessions in China against the Chinese revolutionary movement. The revolutionary spirit which prevails among the Indo-Chinese troops will spread among the Annamite soldiers in China and thus facilitate the struggle of the militant Chinese workers and peasants.

The movement for national independence in the Asiatic countries has entered upon a new phase. The masses in Indo-China have awakened and are leading an uncompromising struggle for the overthrow of imperialism, while the bourgeoisie, frightened by the revolutionary enthusiasm of the masses who are threatening their very existence, is preparing to capitulate. And in this collaboration with the imperialists, the feudal and bourgeois elements in the oppressed countries are receiving the full support of the social democratic parties and the reformist trade unions. It is the social democrats who demand that their governments make concessions to the national bourgeoisie in order that their imperialist masters may continue to retain their hold on the colonies. It was Varenne, the social democrat governor general of Indo-China who advocated these concessions and at the same time used all his power to suppress the working masses of Indo-China.

The League Against Imperialism and for National Independence warns the masses in Indo-China against the feudal and bourgeois elements, who, under the pretext of a “national program,” are preparing to raise a joint French-Indo-Chinese capitalist regime on the backs of the workers and peasants. The League Against Imperialism calls upon all anti-imperialist organizations and elements in Indo-China to unite in conjunction with the movements in Indonesia, China, India and the Philippines to conduct an uncompromising struggle against the imperialists who, in spite of their mutual antagonisms, are united against the independence movement of the oppressed peoples. The League Against Imperialism calls upon all class conscious workers of the imperialist countries to expose the treacherous role of the social democrats and to collaborate with the National Sections of the League and, through their coordinated efforts, to support the struggle of the enslaved working masses of the Far East.

LEAGUE AGAINST IMPERIALISM. INTERNATIONAL SECRETARIAT.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1930/v06-n317-NY-mar-13-1930-DW-LOC.pdf