W.Minh Tuan

In the People’s Army newspaper, there is journalist Tran Dinh Ba, a colonel, very famous for his series of investigative reports on corruption cases in Vietnam. During the Vietnam War, journalist Tran Dinh Ba was also a war correspondent like journalist Thai Duy at Dai Doan Ket newspaper.

During the war, journalist Tran Dinh Bao wrote famous war reports such as reports on the special commando unit Rung Sac,,,

In 1986-1987, journalist Tran Dinh Ba wrote a series of articles criticizing the appropriation of many houses and being corrupt by Mr. To Duy, Chairman of the Vietnam Economic Arbitration, holding the position of Chief Justice of the Economic Court of Justice equivalent to the position of a Minister.

This can be said to be the first series of articles in the Vietnamese press criticizing a ministerial cadre.

After a series of articles by journalist Tran Dinh Ba criticizing the occupation of many houses by Mr. To Duy, grandson of the predecessor revolutionary To Hieu, within the leadership of our Party, there are many different opinions on the handling of this case.

A meeting to deal with this case was held in July 1987 in Saigon.

Journalist Tran Dinh Ba and leaders of Military newspaper were invited to Saigon to present their opinions on the case of Mr. To Duy’s family.

At the above meeting, journalist Tran Dinh Ba bravely and resolutely broke all of To Duy’s justifications. The victory seemed to have gone to the Army newspaper.

After attending a tense meeting for a whole day with the Central Secretariat about the incident, in the evening, journalist Tran Dinh Ba and the leaders of the Military newspaper returned to the headquarters of the Military newspaper in Saigon to have dinner.

At that time, journalist Tran Dinh Ba was only a captain, while the leaders of the Military newspaper were more senior.

I would like to use the verbatim account of journalist Tran Dinh Ba about the dinner after the tense meeting to solve that Mr. To Duy case:

“–The cafeteria was cleaned up a few hours ago, only my dinner rice was left on the table, so the door to the cafeteria was still ajar.

A large, musty rat was squatting on the bottom of the table cage. Seeing me, he opened his eyes provocatively. It was only when I got close to his desk that he jumped to the tiled floor.

I opened the table cage and carefully brushed away the top layer of rice with a ladle, in case any of the rat’s feathers still carrying the plague germs fell on it.

The red rice is dry. A bowl of cold and sour soup. I tried to swallow a few pieces. Something in my heart kept rising, something indescribable, I just knew it kept rising, rising, and then pressing down on my throat.

At the same time, from the kitchen came the clatter of dishes. Ms. Ly, who was in charge of the cooking, walked up to me, and she cried out:

– Wow.

– Haven’t you taken a break yet?

-No. The chiefs still eat upstairs. I have to wait.

I absentmindedly looked around the dining room trying to find familiar comrades. Memories of the battlefield came to life in my mind. In those days, during the war, at the Liberation Army newspaper, our comrades lived together like one family. A bowl of sour soup with some shrimps just caught in the shallow stream. The cheetah, the weasel that was shot in the forest at night, or the meat can of spoils that the soldiers brought back from the battle still smelled like guns,,,.

All, all the sweet, all the bitter we share with each other.

“During the war, in the battlefield, how beautiful is the comradeship, the human love?” – I blurted out in a low voice, just enough for myself to hear. In order for me to wake up and live with today’s reality. And give me more energy, the will to continue the road ahead.”

After that meeting “eating rice with rats”, what was the result of solving Mr. To Duy’s “excess house” case?

It’s a “frightening silence,” meaning it doesn’t solve anything. No one touched journalist Tran Dinh Ba. But no one touched Mr. To Duy. After that, Mr. To Duy retired safely.

In 1998, journalist Tran Dinh Ba wrote an article about “Le Thi Rieng Special Forces Battalion”. Ms. Le Hong Quan, former battalion commander of the Le Thi Rieng commando battalion, and her mother, Mrs. Le Thi Xuan, a Communist Party member operating undercover. During the Tet Offensive in 1968, both mother and daughter were arrested and brutally tortured by the old Saigon army. But the mother and daughter firmly refused to identify themselves as mother and daughter, to keep the secret for the communist army.

In 1974, journalist Tran Dinh Ba was a reporter attending the prisoner handover ceremony between the old Saigon army and the South Vietnamese Liberation Army, he happened to witness the scene where mother and daughter Xuan and Quan met because they were returned in the same period.

Only then will they be able to call each other “mama-daughter”.

In 1998, 23 years after the end of the war, journalist Tran Dinh Ba reunited with these mother and daughter. At that time, Xuan’s mother was 82 years old, and she was on the way of fighting to be awarded The title “Vietnamese Heroic Mother”.

Because if she is awarded this title, Mother Xuan can improve the current extremely squalid housing conditions.

Ms. Le Hong Quan, with one arm amputated, tortured to the point of being disabled by the enemy, unable to give birth, ranked as the heaviest wounded soldier, grade 1/4, is also on her way to fight to be recognized her unit as a battalion Le Thi Rieng, commander of the detachment battalion. During the Tet Offensive, this battalion was almost wiped out, leaving only Ms. Quan.

However, although there have been enough confirmations from the people involved, there is no agency in Vietnam that officially recognizes the existence of the Le Thi Rieng battalion, and that is, the absence of a battalion commander Le Hong Quan, but only one soldier Le Hong Quan of a certain unit.

Although Ms. Quan’s house is now very poor, only 14 m2 wide, in the suburbs of Saigon, but Ms. Quan said that she does not want to fight for her own rights. She just wanted to prove the existence of a commando battalion of which she was the battalion commander, so that there would be a legal basis to recognize martyrs for the soldiers of the battalion who died, and confirm the help of many Saigon people to the unit in the year of Mau Than 1968,,,.

But no agency responded.

In 1998, journalist Tran Dinh Ba wrote this article, published in the Military newspaper, to appeal to Ms. Quan, Mother Xuan.

According to a report by the Ministry of Labor of Vietnam, in July 2004, there were about 150,000 families in Vietnam with policies such as Xuan’s mother and daughter’s mother, and Quan’s still living in a bamboo cottage, living in poverty.

Now, I don’t know if Quan and Xuan’s parents have been recognized according to their wishes, and if Xuan’s mother is still alive.

I really do not know.

Hopefully now, in 2023, the situation is better than before.///