How to Make a Martyr

Though South Viet Nam's National Assembly has occupied Saigon's neo-Romanesque Opera House for more than two years, the old building has not suffered from a dearth of drama. Most recently it has been the principal site of President Nguyen Van Thieu's bareknuckle campaign to silence his opposition in the Assembly. Last week the performance reached a climax.

Forged or Forced. Thieu's ire was directed particularly at two Deputies, Hoang Ho and Tran Ngoc Chau. Both were accused of having had "contact with the Communists." Chau admitted to having been in touch with his elder brother, a North Vietnamese intelligence officer, but said that he was trying to persuade him to "renounce Communism." U.S. sources, including John Paul Vann, chief of the U.S. pacification effort in the Mekong Delta region, and retired Major General Edward G. Lansdale, a counterinsurgency expert with long service in South Viet Nam, have stated that Chau reported his meetings not only to other Vietnamese officials but also to the CIA. Chau, said Lansdale, is "a very loyal, patriotic Vietnamese."

According to one U.S. source, Thieu was well aware that Chau had been briefing the CIA on his meetings. Thus there is little likelihood that he really believed Chau was in league with the enemy. Evidently, what the South Vietnamese President really feared was Chau's potential strength as an opposition leader. In recent months, Thieu has relentlessly maneuvered to undercut Chau. He has publicly denounced the presence of "Communist elements" in the 137-member lower house; government-paid demonstrators have been sent storming into the Assembly to break windows and furniture. Finally, last month, Thieu rammed through a petition stripping Ho and Chau of their legislative immunity. Though several Deputies said their signatures had been forged or forced out of them, the petition enabled Thieu to bring the two men to trial.

Last week a five-man military court was convened for that purpose in Saigon. Neither of the accused turned up; Ho had fled the country and Chau had retreated to the National Assembly building. The kangaroo court got under way an hour before schedule, and by the time Chau's lawyer turned up at 9 a.m. it was all over; he was even denied the right to speak because he was late. Ho was sentenced to death, and Chau to 20 years' imprisonment.

Even before the verdict was announced, Chau was arguing his case in the supposed sanctuary of the National Assembly, which was in recess. For 80 hours, he held forth in the old Opera House, entertaining newsmen with Vietnamese beer, fruit and copies of his biography, and maintaining a steady anti-Thieu patter. "Did you hear?" Chau jeered at one point. "President Nixon has sent a dossier to the Senate asking for the lifting of Senator [George] McGovern's parliamentary immunity because he was in contact with the Communists in Paris." What did Chau think of his sentence? Thieu, he replied, "won't last 20 years--he's likely to last less than two."

As a final dramatic gesture, Chau pinned on the green and gold National Order medal he had won for his service as a former Mekong Delta province chief. The decoration, South Viet Nam's highest, bears the inscription: "The nation is grateful to you." Wearers of the medal are supposed to be saluted by soldiers and police, and to be treated with particular courtesy. But when the cops burst in, they unceremoniously ripped his medal off, beat him to the floor, handcuffed him. dragged him down a flight of stairs by his feet, bumping his head on each step, and tossed him into a waiting Jeep.

Less Than Deft. The chief effect of the Chau fiasco was to show that Thieu is less than deft in handling opposition. In recent years, he has turned relatively ineffectual opponents like Truong Dinh Dzu, the runner-up in the 1967 presidential election, and Thich Thien Minh, a leading Buddhist, into near martyrs by arresting and imprisoning them. Now, as a U.S. official in Saigon notes, "he has changed Chau overnight from a political nonentity into an international figure." When Chau gets a new trial to appeal his conviction, probably this week, he can be expected to make the most of his day in court.

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