The First Step on Vietnam’s Long Walk to Freedom
Seventy-five years ago today, Vietnam launched a bid for national freedom with its Declaration of Independence. The French colonial regime answered with brutal repression, kick-starting thirty years of destructive conflict.
Soldiers assembled on September 2, 1945, at Ba Dinh Square in Hanoi for the Independence Day pageant. Photo: Ho Chi Minh Museum
On September 2, 1945, the Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was proclaimed in Hanoi. It was a sign that the world emerging from the Second World War would be very different from that which had existed previously.
Instead of acceding to the desire for national freedom, the French government tried to restore its colonial regime. That refusal to grant self-determination to the people of Indochina set the scene for thirty years of immensely destructive conflict, during which the United States picked up the baton from France in the name of anti-communism.
The scars of that long struggle, both physical and psychological, are still very much in evidence today. It could all have been avoided if the authorities in Paris had responded to Vietnam’s Declaration of Independence in the spirit of democracy and not colonial domination.
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