{ ICL Document Status: 2 Sep
1945 } { Official Title: Declaration of Independence of the
Democratic Republic of Vietnam } { Adopted on: 2 Sep 1945 }
{ Editor's note: The
ICL edition has been edited by Frank Castenholz. It is based on
a translation provided to the public on the homepage of the
Vietnam Embassy in
the United States of America. The original is published in
Ho Chi Minh, Selected Works (Hanoi, 1960-1962), Vol. 3, pp.
17-21. }
"All
men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with
certain inalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty, and
the pursuit of Happiness." This immortal statement was
made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of
America m 1776. In a broader sense, this means: All the peoples
on the earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right
to live, to be happy and free. The Declaration of the French
Revolution made in 1791 on the Rights of Man and the Citizen also
states: "All men are born free and with equal rights, and
must always remain free and have equal rights." Those are
undeniable truths. Nevertheless, for more than eighty years,
the French imperialists, abusing the standard of Liberty,
Equality, and Fraternity, have violated our Fatherland and
oppressed our fellow-citizens. They have acted contrary to the
ideals of humanity and justice. In the field of politics, they
have deprived our people of every democratic liberty. They
have enforced inhuman laws; they have set up three distinct
political regimes in the North, the Center and the South of
Vietnam in order to wreck our national unity and prevent our
people from being united. They have built more prisons than
schools. They have mercilessly slain our patriots- they have
drowned our uprisings in rivers of blood. They have fettered
public opinion; they have practised obscurantism against our
people. To weaken our race they have forced us to use opium and
alcohol. In the fields of economics, they have fleeced us to
the backbone, impoverished our people, and devastated our
land. They have robbed us of our rice fields, our mines, our
forests, and our raw materials. They have monopolised the issuing
of bank-notes and the export trade. They have invented
numerous unjustifiable taxes and reduced our people, especially
our peasantry, to a state of extreme poverty. They have
hampered the prospering of our national bourgeoisie; they have
mercilessly exploited our workers. In the autumn of 1940, when
the Japanese Fascists violated Indochina's territory to establish
new bases in their fight against the Allies, the French
imperialists went down on their bended knees and handed over our
country to them. Thus, from that date, our people were
subjected to the double yoke of the French and the Japanese.
Their sufferings and miseries increased. The result was that from
the end of last year to the beginning of this year, from Quang
Tri province to the North of Vietnam, more than two million of
our fellow-citizens died from starvation. On March 9, the French
troops were disarmed by the Japanese. The French colonialists
either fled or surrendered, showing that not only were they
incapable of "protecting" us, but that, in the span of
five years, they had twice sold our country to the Japanese. On
several occasions before March 9, the Vietminh League urged the
French to ally themselves with it against the Japanese. Instead
of agreeing to this proposal, the French colonialists so
intensified their terrorist activities against the Vietminh
members that before fleeing they massacred a great number of our
political prisoners detained at Yen Bay and Cao Bang. Not
withstanding all this, our fellow-citizens have always manifested
toward the French a tolerant and humane attitude. Even after the
Japanese putsch of March 1945, the Vietminh League helped many
Frenchmen to cross the frontier, rescued some of them from
Japanese jails, and protected French lives and property. From
the autumn of 1940, our country had in fact ceased to be a French
colony and had become a Japanese possession. After the
Japanese had surrendered to the Allies, our whole people rose to
regain our national sovereignty and to found the Democratic
Republic of Vietnam. The truth is that we have wrested our
independence from the Japanese and not from the French. The
French have fled, the Japanese have capitulated, Emperor Bao Dai
has abdicated. Our people have broken the chains which for nearly
a century have fettered them and have won independence for the
Fatherland. Our people at the same time have overthrown the
monarchic regime that has reigned supreme for dozens of
centuries. In its place has been established the present
Democratic Republic. For these reasons, we, members of the
Provisional Government, representing the whole Vietnamese people,
declare that from now on we break off all relations of a colonial
character with France; we repeal all the international obligation
that France has so far subscribed to on behalf of Vietnam and we
abolish all the special rights the French have unlawfully
acquired in our Fatherland. The whole Vietnamese people,
animated by a common purpose, are determined to fight to the
bitter end against any attempt by the French colonialists to
reconquer their country. We are convinced that the Allied
nations which at Tehran and San Francisco have acknowledged the
principles of self-determination and equality of nations, will
not refuse to acknowledge the independence of Vietnam. A
people who have courageously opposed French domination for more
than eighty years, a people who have fought side by side with the
Allies against the Fascists during these last years, such a
people must be free and independent. For these reasons, we,
members of the Provisional Government of the Democratic Republic
of Vietnam, solemnly declare to the world that Vietnam has the
right to be a free and independent country and in fact it is so
already. The entire Vietnamese people are determined to mobilise
all their physical and mental strength, to sacrifice their lives
and property in order to safeguard their independence and
liberty.
