From Ho Chi Minh
Le Paria, July 1, 1922
Under the title ‘Colonial Bandits’ our comrade Victor Meric has told us of the incredible cruelty of a French administrator in the colonies who poured molten rubber into the genitals of an unfortunate Negress. After which, he made her carry a huge stone on her head in the blazing sun, until she died.
This sadistic official is now continuing his exploits in another district, still with the same rank.
Unfortunately, such odious deeds are not rare in what the good press calls ‘overseas France’.
The best of it is that this woman was threatened with the sack from the construction yard she was working on if she lodged a complaint.
In April, another customs-house officer who took the place of the above-mentioned official, proved to be worthy of his predecessor for his brutalities.
An old Annamese woman, also a salt carrier, had an argument with a woman overseer regarding the stoppage of part of her wages. On hearing the overseer’s complaint, the officer, without more ado, took it upon himself to give the carrier two stinging slaps in the face. While the poor woman was stooping to pick up her hat, the civilizer, not satisfied with the slaps he had just given her, furiously kicked her in the lower abdomen, immediately provoking a great flow of blood.
When the unfortunate Annamese fell to the ground M. Sarraut’s collaborator, instead of succouring her, called for the village mayor to carry her away. This worthy refused. Then the officer called in the victim’s husband, who was blind, and ordered him to take his wife away. The poor old woman is now in hospital.
It’s odds on that, like their colleague the administrator in Africa, our two customs-house officers were not worried. They might even have received promotion.
Racial Hatred
Le Paria, July 1, 1922
For having spoken of the class struggle and of equality among men, and on the charge of having preached racial hatred, our comrade Louzon has been sentenced.
Let us see how the love between peoples has been understood and applied in Indo-China of late. We will not speak for the time being of the poisoning and degradation of the masses by alcohol and opium of which the colonial government is guilty; our comrades in the parliamentary group will have to deal with this matter one day.
Everybody knows the deeds of derring-do of the assassin-administrator Darles. However, he is far from having the monopoly of savagery against the natives.
A certain Pourcignon furiously rushed upon an Annamese who was so curious and bold as to look at this European’s house for a few seconds. He beat him and finally shot him down with a bullet in the head.
A railway official beat a Tonkinese village mayor with a cane.
M. Beck broke his car driver’s skull with a blow from his fist.
M. Bres, building contractor, kicked an Annamese to death after binding his arms and letting him be bitten by his dog.
M. Deffis, receiver, killed his Annamese servant with a powerful kick in the kidneys.
M. Henry, a mechanic at Haiphong, heard a noise in the street; the door of his house opened, an Annamese woman came in, pursued by a man. Henry, thinking that it was a native chasing after a ‘con-gai’ snatched up his hunting rifle and shot him. The man fell, stone dead: it was a European. Questioned, Henry replied, ‘I thought it was a native.’
A Frenchman lodged his horse in a stable in which there was a mare belonging to a native. The horse pranced, throwing the Frenchman into a furious rage. He beat the native, who began to bleed from the mouth and ears; after which he bound his hands and hung him from them under his staircase.
A missionary (oh yes, a gentle apostle!), suspecting a native seminarist of having stolen 1,000 piastres from him,, suspended him from a beam and beat him. The poor fellow lost consciousness. He was taken down. When he came to it began again. He was dying, and is perhaps dead already... etc.
Has justice punished these individuals, these civilizers? Some have been acquitted and others were not troubled by the law at all. That’s that. And now.
Accused Louzon, it’s your turn to speak!
Annamese Women and French Domination
La Paria, August 1, 1922
Colonization is in itself an act of violence of the stronger against the weaker. This violence becomes still more odious when it is exercised upon women and children.
It is bitterly ironic to find that civilization — symbolized in its various forms, viz. liberty. justice, etc., by the gentle image of woman, and run by a category of men well known to be champions of gallantry — inflicts on its living emblem the most ignoble treatment and afflicts her shamefully in her manners, her modesty and even her life.
Colonial sadism is unbelievably widespread and cruel, but we shall confine ourselves here to recalling a few instances seen and described by witnesses unsuspected of partiality. These facts will allow our Western sisters to realize both the nature of the ‘civilizing mission’ of capitalism, and the sufferings of their sisters in the colonies.
“On the arrival of the soldiers,” relates a colonial, “the population fled; there only remained two old men and two women: one maiden, and a mother suckling her baby and holding an eight year old girl by the hand. The soldiers asked for money, spirits and opium.”
“As they could not make themselves understood, they became furious and knocked down one of the old men with their rifle butts. Later, two of them, already drunk when they arrived, amused themselves for many hours by roasting the other old man at a wood fire. Meanwhile, the others raped the two women and the eight year old girl. Then, weary, they murdered the girl. The mother was then able to escape with her infant and, from a hundred yards off, hidden in a bush, she saw her companion tortured. She did not know why the murder was perpetrated, but she saw the young girl lying on her back, bound and gagged, and one of the men, many times, slowly thrust his bayonet into her stomach and, very slowly, draw it out again. Then he cut off the dead girl’s finger to take a ring, and her head to steal a necklace. ”
“The three corpses lay on the flat ground of a former salt-marsh: the eight year old girl naked, the young woman disembowelled, her stiffened left forearm raising a clenched fist to the indifferent sky, and the old man, horrible, naked like the others, disfigured by the roasting with his fat which had run, melted and congealed with the skin of his belly, which was bloated, grilled and golden, like the skin of a roast pig.”
Murderous Civilization!
Le Paria, August 1, 1922
We have of late pointed out from this platform a series of assassinations perpetrated by our ‘civilizers’ which remain unpunished. Alas! The gloomy black list lengthens every day.
Quite recently, a fifty year old Annamese employed for 35 years in the Railways Department of Cochin-China was murdered by a white official. Here are the facts.
Le Van Tai had in his charge four other Annamese employed in preventing trains from crossing a bridge while it was opened to let navigation pass. The order was to close the bridge to navigation ten minutes before the trains were due to cross the bridge.
On April 2, at 4.30 p.m., one of these Annamese came to close the bridge and lower the signal. Just then a government launch appeared with a naval dockyard official on board returning from a hunt. The launch whistled. The native employee went to the middle of the bridge and waved a red flag as a sign to the boat that a train was going to pass and that navigation was accordingly suspended. Here is what happened: The launch came alongside a pillar of the bridge. The official Jumped out and made furiously for the Annamese employee. Prudently, the latter fled in the direction of Tai’s house. The Frenchman pursued him, throwing stones at him. When he heard the noise, Tai came out to meet the representative of civilization who addressed him thus, “You stupid brute, why don’t you raise the bridge?” In reply, Tai, who could not speak French, pointed to the red signal. This simple gesture exasperated M. Long’s collaborator who, without more ado, fell upon Tai and, after giving him a thorough drubbing, pushed him into a brazier nearby.
Horribly burnt, the Anamese crossing-keeper was carried to hospital where he died after six days of atrocious suffering. The French official was not charged.
In Marseilles, the official prosperity of Indo-China is on display; in Annam, people are dying of starvation. Here loyalism is praised, there assassination is perpetrated! What do you say to this, oh thousands of times over Majesty Khai Dinh and Excellentissimo Sarraut?
P.S. - While the life of an Annamese is not worth a cent, for a scratch on the arm, M. Inspector General Reinhardt receives 120,000 francs compensation. Equality! Beloved equality!
The Colonial Abyss
L'Humanite, January 19, 1923
France possesses a colonial empire of ten million square kilometres, inhabited by 56 million people of yellow and black races. To turn all this to advantage, M. Albert Sarraut, Minister of Colonies, wants to find three or four thousand million francs. To this end, he has ‘organized’ a big press campaign and made countless speeches. The worthy Minister has also written a book of 656 pages (price 20 francs per volume). Pending the arrival of these thousands of millions, we beg His Excellency to allow us to fill out his arguments a little.
The budget for Cochin-China, for example, which amounted to 5,561,680 piastres (or 12,791,000 francs) for 1911, rose to 7,321,817 piastres (or 16,840,000 francs) for 1912. In 1922, it went up to 12,821,325 piastres (or 96,169,000 francs). A simple subtraction shows us that between 1911 and 1922 there was a difference of 83,369,000 francs (the rates for the piastre being 2.25 and 7.50 francs) in the budget of this colony. Where did that money go? Simply on expenses for personnel which in effect swallowed 100 per cent of total receipts.
Other examples of mad extravagance combine to throw away money that the poor Annamese have sweated for. We do not yet know the exact figure in piastres spent for the Emperor of Annam’s trip to France, but we do know that to await the day of good augury, the only one on which the Bamboo Dragon could embark, the vessel Porthos was paid compensation for four days at the rate of 100,000 francs per day (400,000 francs). So: Travelling expenses 400,000 francs. Reception expenses 240,000 francs (not including the pay of policemen charged with the extraordinary supervision of the Annamese in France); cost of lodging in Marseilles the Annamese militiamen for ‘presenting arms’ to His Excellency and His Majesty: 77,600 francs.
As we are in Marseilles, let us avail ourselves of the opportunity to see what its Colonial Exhibition has cost us. First of all, in addition to catering for highly-placed metropolitan personnel, they sent for about thirty high functionaries from the colonies who, while taking their aperitifs somewhere along the Cannebiere, were paid expenses both at the Exhibition and in the colonies. Indo-China alone had to pay 12 million for this Exhibition. And do you know how this money was spent? Here is an example: the famous reproduction of the Angkor Wat palaces required 8,000 cubic metres of timber at 400 or 500 francs a metre. Total: 1,200,000 to 1,500,000 francs!
Other examples of waste. To carry M. le Gouverneur Geniralf luxury automobiles and cars were not enough, there had to be a special railway carriage for him. The fitting- up of this carriage cost the Treasury 145,250 francs.
In eleven months of activity, the Economic Agency burdened the economy of Indo-China with a sum of 464,000 francs.
At the Colonial School, where future civllizers are turned out, 41 professors of all types are maintained to teach 30 or 35 students. Again several thousand francs.
The permanent survey of defence works for the colonies costs the budget 758,168 francs annually.
Now, Messrs the Inspectors have never left Paris and do not know the colonies any better than they know the age-old moon.
If we go to other colonies, we everywhere find the same corruption. For the reception of a semi-official ‘economic’ mission, the budget of Martinique was relieved of 40,000 francs. Within a period of ten years the budget of Morocco has gone up from 17 to 200 million francs, although they have cut down by 33 per cent expenditures of local interest, that is to say, expenses likely to benefit the natives.
There are millions and even thousands of millions that could be found easily if they knew how to look for them. But the Minister prefers to try to get them out of the natives!
A question
Is it true that, through excess of the humanitarian feelings so many times proclaimed by M. Albert Sarraut, in the jail at Nha Trang (central Viet Nam) detainees have been put on dry rations, that is to say that they are deprived of water at their meals? Is it true that the detainees have had their noses coated with tincture of iodine to be more easily recognized in case of escape?
Oppression Hits All Races
Le Paria, August 17, 1923
Vorovsky, delegate of the workers' and peasants' Russia, was murdered in Switzerland by fascism. There was not one of the delegates of the very civilized and very Christian powers gathered at Lausanne who deigned to attend his funeral. Only the Turkish delegation, headed by Ismet Pasha, came to pay tribute to the mortal remains of the murdered man.
Ben Radia, a worker of Tunisian origin, was murdered on May Day by the police. The Parisian workers' organizations gave him a big funeral. Thousands of workers stopped work on that day to follow their native comrade to his last resting place.
All the martyrs of the working class, those in Lausanne like those in Paris, those in Le Havre like those in Martinique, are victims of the same murderer: international capitalism. And it is always in belief in the liberation of their oppressed brothers, without discrimination as to race or country, that the souls of these martyrs will find supreme consolation.
After experiencing these painful lessons, the oppressed people of all countries ought to know on which side their true brothers are, and on which side their enemy.
The Counter-Revolutionary Army
La Vie Ouvriere, September 7, 1923
We are aware that colonial rivalry was one of the main causes of the 1914-1918 imperialist war.
What all Frenchmen should realize, is that colonial expeditions are largely responsible for aggravating the depopulation from which their country is now suffering. If one looks at the statistics of military losses in killed and wounded sustained in-the colonies, one is frightened by the gap they have caused in an ever decreasing population such as that of France. From January to June, 1923, in Morocco alone, 840 soldiers were killed or wounded for the greater glory of Marshal Lyautey!
What the French working class must realize, is that colonialism relies on the colonies to defeat all attempts at emancipation on the part of the working class. No longer having absolute confidence in the white soldiers, who are more or less contaminated by the idea of classes, French militarism uses African and Asian natives in their stead. Out of 159 regiments in the French Army, 10 are composed of colonial whites, i.e., semi-natives, 30 of Africans and 39 of natives from other colonies. One half of the French army is thus recruited in the colonies.
Now, an Annamese soldier is in service for four years and an Algerian for three years. Thus, according to the reckoning of French militarism, two native soldiers are worth almost five French.
Moreover, being ignorant of the language and politics of the country, thinking that all whites belong to the race of his exploiters, and finally spurred on by his white superiors, the native soldier will march forward submissively and blindly, where the French soldier, more conscious, might refuse to go. Therein lies the danger.
One wonders for what reason 31 of the native regiments will be stationed on French territory? For what purpose are they intended? Are the French going to be civilized by these natives? The intention of French capitalism is thus clear. It is up to the French workers to act. They should fraternize with the native soldiers. They should make them understand that the workers of the mother country and the soldiers from the colonies are equally oppressed and exploited by the same masters, that they are all brothers of the same class, and that when the hour of struggle strikes, they will have, one and the other, to struggle against their common masters, and not between brothers.
English ‘Colonization’
La Vie Ouvriere, November 9, 1923
English capitalism, while coveting the immense wealth of China, has contented itself so far with colonizing Hong Kong and inside China practising the policy of the open door, a policy which has allowed it to exploit the country without arousing the people. To-day it is no longer satisfied with this policy. It wants to go further: it wants to colonize the whole of China.
Taking advantage of the Lingchen incident and on the pretext of ensuring the security of his compatriots, the British Ambassador in Peking has just carried out the first stage of this colonization. He has begun with the railways. Here are the proposals he has made to China:
1 — All lines built with British capital, or with materials bought from England and which are not yet entirely paid for, will be put under British control;
2 — The land situated along the lines in question will also be put under this control;
3 — Besides the railways policy, England will have the right to intervene in China's home affairs;
4 — In case of armed conflicts between Chinese political factions, the British will have the right to grant or refuse the use of these lines to whichever faction it chooses;
5 — Priority of amortization of the loans advanced by the British in the use of the income derived from the railways.
Moreover, he demanded:
a) the setting up, within the Ministry of Communications in Peking, of an office of Railways Control, presided over by a foreign official (read: British official), having full powers over the working of all China's railways;
b) that the management of the railways also be entrusted to foreign representatives;
c) the organization of a railway militia under the command of foreign officers;
d) that the posts of book-keepers and railway managers be filled by foreigners.
The British have already taken in hand the salt tax and customs in China. Now they want to seize the railways. When one realizes that except for the lines in southern Manchuria, the Peking-Hankow and Lunghai lines, all others are built either with British capital or with materials bought on credit from British firms, it can be seen what this plan, if realized, will cost China.
All the Chinese, without distinction as to political trend, oppose this disguised colonization. The Peking Students' Union has launched an appeal to the working class of the world, asking it to use its influence to check this attempt against the independence of the Chinese people.
Let us hope that faced with this threat from British capitalism, the sons and daughters of China will unite in victorious resistance.
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