FW: Hanoi indignant over article on Ho Chi Minh

[Hai-Tri Le <haitril@microsoft.com>]

Hanoi indignant over article on Ho Chi Minh 

HANOI, Aug 25 (Reuters) - Communist-ruled Vietnam expressed indignation on
Wednesday over an article in an international magazine that questioned
Hanoi's official history of late revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh. 

Time magazine, in its August 23-30 issue, published the two-page article as
part of a series profiling influential Asians of the 20th century. 

``The article by Bui Tin, a traitor, is not worth comment,'' said Foreign
Ministry spokeswoman Phan Thuy Thanh, in response to questions from Reuters.


Bui Tin, a former deputy editor of the Communist Party mouthpiece Nhan Dan
(People) who now lives in exile in Paris, wrote that Ho's official history
was not entirely true. 

Ho was disciplined in the former Soviet Union during the 1930s for ``failing
to display the proper class spirit,'' Tin wrote. 

He also said Ho may have had reasons other than seeking national salvation
for the country when he left Vietnam in 1911 for three decades. 

``This (article) has offended the sacred feeling of the Vietnamese people
toward their beloved leader. The people of Vietnam are extremely indignant
and strongly protest this deed,'' Thanh said. 

Censors had torn out the offending two pages from subscriber copies of the
magazine delivered in Hanoi. 

Tin, an ex-North Vietnamese colonel who also accepted the surrender of the
former U.S.-backed Saigon regime in 1975 to end the Vietnam War, has been a
thorn in Hanoi's side since he took asylum in Paris in 1990 and issued calls
for political change. 

Ho Chi Minh, who died in 1969, is widely revered in Vietnam for his lifelong
quest for national independence and any form of criticism is generally
taboo. 

His embalmed body remains on public display in an imposing granite Hanoi
city centre mausoleum. 

``(Ho) has left an invaluable ideological, cultural and moral heritage for
the generations of Vietnamese people today and tomorrow,'' Thanh said. 

Tin said the Communist Party used Ho's name to justify its own policies as
if he were still alive. 

``The government should not use Uncle Ho, cold in his tomb, as a defence
against...opposition,'' Tin wrote.