Comrades,
In a national and international context that demands an intense and diversified intervention by our Party, it is with great joy that, with this simple but genuine initiative, we commemorate the 50th. anniversary of Vietnam's victory over US imperialism’s aggression, warmly greeting here from our country the Vietnamese people and communists.
At the end of a long and heroic struggle, on April 30,1975, the forces of the People's Liberation Army liberated Saigon, determining the victory of the Vietnamese people over the United States of America and its puppet regime and achieving the reunification of their homeland.
An event which, due to its profound significance and importance, had repercussions not only for Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, but also for the broader struggle of the peoples in favour of their social and national emancipation, including in Portugal of the April Revolution.
The struggle of the Vietnamese people had the solidarity of the communists, the working class, the youth and the Portuguese people still under the repression of the fascist dictatorship in Portugal.
The pages of the underground Avante! revealed the resistance in Vietnam, denounced the crimes of US imperialism and launched an appeal for solidarity with the Vietnamese people. In 1972, a special envoy from Rádio Portugal Livre travelled to Vietnam. In a series of reports, which began with the statement that “no one can set foot on the land of Vietnam without emotion”, he disclosed to the Portuguese people the courage, determination and confidence of the Vietnamese people in their legitimate struggle and the call for further action against US aggression, for an end to the war and for peace. In 1973, a delegation from the PCP visited Vietnam to express the solidarity of the Portuguese communists and people. Among many other initiatives, the PCP also took part in international conferences of solidarity with Vietnam.
Taking on underground and semi-underground forms of intervention, the Party, the workers, the unitary organisations of the youth, women and peace carried out a wide range of actions, holding meetings, disseminating declarations, motions and manifestos, distributing bulletins, leaflets and flyers, making collages, sending messages of solidarity to the Vietnam Workers' Party and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, sending letters of protest and publishing postcards to be delivered to the US Embassy, screening films, holding exhibitions, promoting petitions or collecting funds for the construction of the Nguyẽn Văn Trõi Hospital.
After the defeat of fascism and with the April Revolution, solidarity with the Vietnamese people continued to be carried out, now in freedom, including the visit of Vietnamese delegations to Portugal.
The conquest by the Vietnamese people of their sovereignty and national independence, including the reunification of their country, was the result of decades of a persistent national liberation struggle, having had to confront French colonialism, Japanese militarism and US imperialism.
The patriotic Vietnamese forces resisted French colonialism from the outset. This struggle would gain momentum and consistency with the founding of the Communist Party of Vietnam in 1930, which later that year would be renamed the Communist Party of Indochina, led by Ho Chi Minh - and which included not only Vietnam, but also Laos and Cambodia - and whose programme included liberation from the yoke of French colonialism, as well as from feudalism and the reactionary Vietnamese bourgeoisie, and the independence of Indochina.
With the Japanese occupation of Indochina between 1940 and 1945, while the pro-Vichy French colonial administration capitulated and collaborated with Japanese militarism, the communists and other Vietnamese patriotic forces, united in a national liberation front created in 1941 under the name of the National Front for the Independence of Vietnam (Viet Minh Front), resisted and fought against the new occupier and, with Japan's capitulation, proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam on September 2, 1945 in Hanoi, whose Declaration of Independence was read out by Ho Chi Minh, leader of the provisional government and later elected President of the new country.
The newly created Democratic Republic of Vietnam immediately set about the gigantic task of overcoming the backwardness, including obscurantism, bequeathed to it by feudalism and colonialism. However, it had to face the manoeuvres of the French colonialists, the US imperialists and their allies. To the north, the manoeuvres of the US using Chiang Kai-Shek's military forces, and to the south, the manoeuvres of French colonialism, which was trying to recover the positions it had lost in the meantime by immediately sending troops, with the support of the United Kingdom, to impose once again its colonial regime in Indochina by force.
As a result, the Vietnamese people once again had to confront French colonialist attempts, but now and as a result of the outcome of World War II, in an international situation much more favourable to the cause of liberating peoples from colonial oppression, with the growing role and prestige of the Soviet Union and the huge advance of the forces of socialism, social progress and national liberation that took place at that time.
Faced with the attack of the French colonialist troops - who now had the support of US imperialism - the armed struggle restarted at the end of 1946. After setbacks and advances, at the cost of huge sacrifices and as a result of extraordinary achievements in terms of the masses, having liberated the territory along the border with the newly created People's Republic of China in 1950, the struggle ended in 1954, nine years after it began, with the defeat of the French colonialist troops in the historic battle of Dien Bien Phu, at the hands of the Vietnam People's Army, led by Võ Nguyên Giáp, and the liberation of the whole of North of Vietnam.
With the military defeat of French colonialism in 1954, negotiations took place in Geneva, which led to the end of 83 years of French rule in Indochina and its colonial administration. Negotiations in which Vietnam's independence, sovereignty and unity were recognised, and its reunification agreed after holding elections in 1956.
However, replacing France as the occupying power and disregarding the agreements reached in Geneva, the United States of America began its direct involvement in Vietnam in 1954-55, imposing its division along the 17th. parallel and the occupation of the south of the country, where they not only dictated a neo-colonial relationship, with the installation of a fascist puppet government responsible for a brutal repression, but also triggered the war.
The US wanted to replicate the criminal and barbaric aggression against Korea in 1950, which forced its division and led to the establishment of an armistice agreement in 1953, which is still in force 72 years later
Following the creation of the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam in 1960 and the setbacks suffered by the puppet government in the face of resistance from the People's Liberation Army, the massive escalation of US interference and aggression against Vietnam led, after the provocation orchestrated by US imperialism in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964, to its large-scale intervention in the war and aggression against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam from 1965 onwards.
The United States deploy more than half a million soldiers and colossal military resources in South Vietnam, unleashing a war against the Vietnamese people in which they sow death, suffering and destruction.
A genocidal war in which US imperialism was responsible for the most heinous crimes, in which it massacred, murdered, tortured and oppressed millions of Vietnamese, in which it bombed indiscriminately, dropping millions of tonnes of bombs on the people, in which it used banned weapons such as napalm and phosphorus bombs, as well as various chemical weapons, including “Agent Orange”, the terrible consequences of which persist to this day.
As a result of the heroic resistance of the Vietnamese people and the enormous impact of the so-called “Tet Offensive” by the National Liberation Army in 1968, the US was forced to start talks, which took place at the Paris Conference.
After its attempt to impose the terms of an agreement failed, including the most violent and massive bombing of Hanoi and other Vietnamese cities in December 1972, the US was forced to accept a “correct and realistic” negotiation and sign the “Agreement on the End of the War and the Restoration of Peace in Vietnam” with the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam on January 27, 1973, almost five years after the negotiations began.
The Paris agreement enshrined an end to US bombing of North Vietnam, the withdrawal of US troops from South Vietnam and the recognition of the rights of the Vietnamese people, yet the US continued its efforts to try to keep in power its brutal puppet regime in Saigon.
The struggle against the US imperialism’s aggression and the puppet regime it installed and sustained in South Vietnam would end, twenty years after it began, with the liberation of Saigon on April 30, 1975.
Facing tremendous hardships and enormous sacrifices, and showing great determination and courage, the Vietnamese people inflicted on US imperialism its heaviest defeat, the marks of which persist today.
In its war of aggression, the US disrespected the independence and neutrality of Laos and threatened and provoked Cambodia, intervening militarily in both countries, hence the victory of the Vietnamese people also represented the victory of the peoples of Laos and Cambodia.
The achievement of national liberation and the unification of Vietnam under the banner of socialism is a landmark event in the peoples' struggle for social emancipation and has had an enormous impact on the world stage.
Achieved under the leadership of the Communist Party of Vietnam and the unity of Vietnamese patriotic forces in the National Liberation Front, and to which Ho Chi Minh made an invaluable contribution, the victory of the Vietnamese people showed that the main imperialist power and its powerful army can be defeated by the unwavering will of a people united and determined to win their liberation and who count on strong and broad international solidarity.
The importance of the unity of the Vietnamese people to ensure victory over the aggressor was emphasised by Ho Chi Minh, a prominent figure in the international communist movement and the national liberation movement, a great revolutionary, patriot and internationalist, who said that “the creation of the Alliance of National, Democratic and Peace Forces was a great success in the policy of unifying the entire people against the US aggressors and for national salvation. It has helped to unmask the true face of the US aggressors and traitors, and to isolate them even more.”
The armed struggle for national liberation was collectively taken up and led by the Vietnamese people, who became an immense force organised and led by their party, aware of the rightness of their cause and determined to fight and win.
The victory achieved is also the result of permanent objective consideration of the concrete conditions, great tactical flexibility, defining the forms of struggle best suited to each situation, and full dedication to the people.
The patriotic and revolutionary struggle of the Vietnamese people has won the recognition and admiration of revolutionary, progressive, democratic and anti-imperialist forces around the world, sparking a vast international solidarity movement.
While emphasising the great and significant support of the Soviet Union and the socialist countries for the liberation of Vietnam, we should also value the action of the non-aligned countries, as well as the world peace movement.
We should also value the action of the American peace movement and progressive organisations, which campaigned strongly for an end to the war, with the media's denunciation of its reality and consequences, in particular the massacres and other crimes perpetrated by US troops and their collaborators in Vietnam.
The victory of the Vietnamese people was shared and celebrated by the communists, the forces of national liberation and anti-imperialism, and the supporters of peace.
It should be emphasised that, as was the case with other processes that marked the national liberation movement, the Vietnamese revolutionary process dialectically combined the national and class components, with the process of national emancipation being linked to the process of social emancipation, pointing the way to the construction of socialism.
The heroic struggle of the Vietnamese people was at the forefront of the fight against imperialism, forming part of and contributing to the broad and impetuous liberationist, revolutionary and progressive advance that followed World War II and also marked the seventies of the past century.
With advances and setbacks in the process of social and national emancipation of workers and peoples, it is worth remembering that it was in this decade that the Portuguese Revolution takes place, that fascism comes to an end in Spain and Greece, that peoples in Asia and Africa win national independence and opt to build new societies pointed towards socialism, the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua triumphs and the popular guerrilla movement in El Salvador advances, the revolution in Iran takes place, or the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe is held and its Final Act is signed in Helsinki, which reaffirms important principles for international relations, many of which are also enshrined in the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic adopted on April 2, 1976.
After the victory and reunification of Vietnam, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam was proclaimed on July 2, 1976. Under the leadership of the Communist Party of Vietnam, the Vietnamese people undertook the gigantic task of rebuilding a country destroyed and martyred by decades of war.
Over the last 50 years, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam has faced, among other adversities and setbacks, more than 20 years of a cruel economic blockade imposed by the US; various threats to its territorial integrity; the end of the Soviet Union and the camp of socialist countries in Europe, with its profound and tragic consequences; the repercussions of imperialism's exploitative and aggressive offensive; or the effects on the international stage of the deepening structural crisis of capitalism.
However, overcoming hurdles and difficulties, correcting mistakes, finding solutions and the right path for its specific situation, and having begun a profound process of renewal in 1986, Vietnam has achieved historic conquests, guaranteed its food sovereignty, ensured the basic needs of the population, eradicated illiteracy, fought and significantly reduced poverty, deciding to continue on the path of building a new society.
Today, Vietnam faces great and complex challenges in creating the conditions to ensure further progress in economic development and improving the living conditions of the people, safeguarding national sovereignty and independence, within a framework of deepening its relations of cooperation with other countries.
As the Vietnamese comrades emphasise, Vietnam's economic development must ensure and be accompanied by the social and cultural progress of the Vietnamese people, the eradication of poverty and the fight against social inequalities.
To achieve this, the comrades place as a central task the strengthening of the Communist Party of Vietnam and its links with the people, ensuring its capacity to respond to the problems that arise, to intervene on an ideological level or to combat negative phenomena.
Comrades,
50 years later, at a time of resistance and gathering of forces at world level and in the context of the structural crisis of capitalism, imperialism is increasing its exploitative, predatory and aggressive character, seeking to counter the relative decline of the US, as well as of the other capitalist powers of the G7, to hold back the struggle of the workers and the peoples and to halt the process of reorganisation of forces at international level, where the role of the People's Republic of China stands out.
Imperialism's warmongering action, which represents a serious threat to peace, is accompanied by an attack on workers' rights and living conditions, as well as the promotion of reactionary, far-right and fascist conceptions and forces, showing that the promotion of war is intrinsically linked to the attack on rights and the promotion of fascism, racism and xenophobia. The genocide of the Palestinian people by the Zionist regime in Israel, with the support of the US and the other NATO and EU powers, shows just how far imperialism is prepared to go to impose its interests.
Although imperialism boasts that it calls the shots, the example of the Vietnamese people's struggle, as well as that of other peoples around the world, particularly the Palestinian people, is showing us that, no matter how difficult the conditions, it is possible to resist and win and that the will of a people united and determined to fight for a just cause and counting on internationalist solidarity is unwavering.
In the past, as today, the role of communist parties and their internationalist co-operation is fundamental, being at the forefront of the struggle against imperialism and its wars, standing in solidarity with the peoples in struggle, helping to promote a broad anti-imperialist front that can halt and reverse imperialism's intentions and pave the way for peace and social progress in the world.
50 years after their victory, the Vietnamese people's example of will and determination continues to inspire communists and anti-imperialist forces around the world and to give confidence to the struggle of workers and peoples for peace, freedom, national sovereignty and independence, democracy and socialism.
I would like to end by recalling the words of Ho Chi Minh: “Our people are extremely heroic. Our guideline is very correct. We have reason on our side. We are inspired by an unwavering will and determination to fight and win. We have the invincible strength of the unity of all the people, and we count on the friendliness and support of all progressive humanity.” - reality has shown how just and universal his statement was and is.
Long live the heroic struggle of the Vietnamese people!
Long live internationalist solidarity!
Long live proletarian internationalism!
The struggle goes on!
