The New Economic Zones program ( vi, Xây dựng các vùng kinh tế mới) was implemented by the Vietnamese communist government after the
Fall of Saigon
The Fall of Saigon, also known as the Liberation of Saigon by North Vietnamese or Liberation of the South by the Vietnamese government, and known as Black April by anti-communist overseas Vietnamese was the capture of Saigon, the capital of ...
. Between 1975 and 1980, more than 1 million northerners migrated to the south and central regions formerly under the
Republic of Vietnam
South Vietnam, officially the Republic of Vietnam ( vi, Việt Nam Cộng hòa), was a state in Southeast Asia that existed from 1955 to 1975, the period when the southern portion of Vietnam was a member of the Western Bloc during part of th ...
. This program, in turn, displaced around 750,000 to over 1 million Southerners from their homes and forcibly relocated them to uninhabited mountainous forested areas. Properties of evicted southern Vietnamese were confiscated, collectivized, and then redistributed by the communist authorities, and the recipients of these confiscated properties were often former
Viet Cong
,
, war = the Vietnam War
, image = FNL Flag.svg
, caption = The flag of the Viet Cong, adopted in 1960, is a variation on the flag of North Vietnam. Sometimes the lower stripe was green.
, active ...
, and members or affiliates of the
North Vietnamese communist party or
People's Army of Vietnam
The People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN; vi, Quân đội nhân dân Việt Nam, QĐNDVN), also recognized as the Vietnam People's Army (VPA) or the Vietnamese Army (), is the military force of the Vietnam, Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the ...
.
Conditions in the "New Economic Zones" were poor. After a 1976 visit to a new economic zone for former Saigon, French journalist
Jean Lacouture
Jean Lacouture (9 June 1921 – 16 July 2015) was a journalist, historian and author. He was particularly famous for his biographies.
Career
Jean Lacouture was born in Bordeaux, France. He began his career in journalism in 1950 in ''Combat'' ...
wrote that it was "a prefabricated hell and a place one comes to only if the alternative to it would be death."
R.J. Rummel
Rudolph Joseph Rummel (October 21, 1932 – March 2, 2014) was an American political scientist and professor at the Indiana University, Yale University, and University of Hawaiʻi. He spent his career studying data on collective violence and war w ...
, an analyst of political killings, estimated that between 20,000 and 155,000 Vietnamese died performing hard labor in New Economic Zones
Since 1975, Southern Vietnamese use the term "
Bắc 54" ("Tonkin 54") to refer to Northern Vietnamese who migrated to the South in 1954 (as part of
Operation Passage to Freedom
Operation Passage to Freedom was a term used by the United States Navy to describe the propaganda effort and the assistance in transporting in 310,000 Vietnamese civilians, soldiers and non-Vietnamese members of the French Army from communist ...
, who were mainly political and religious refugees fleeing impending communist rule), and "Bắc 75" ("Tonkin 75") to refer to Northerners who migrated to the South in 1975 onward, many under this economic program.
This program, combined with various other factors like
government persecutions, grave
human rights
Human rights are Morality, moral principles or Social norm, normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for ce ...
violations and lack of civilian freedoms, oppression, lack of economic freedom, poverty and starvation resulting from governmental mismanagement of the
centrally planned economy
A planned economy is a type of economic system where investment, production and the allocation of capital goods takes place according to economy-wide economic plans and production plans. A planned economy may use centralized, decentralized, part ...
caused a
mass exodus of 1-3 million Vietnamese fleeing communist rule, the majority of whom were from
South Vietnam
South Vietnam, officially the Republic of Vietnam ( vi, Việt Nam Cộng hòa), was a state in Southeast Asia that existed from 1955 to 1975, the period when the southern portion of Vietnam was a member of the Western Bloc during part of th ...
.
References
{{reflist
See also
*
Re-education camp (Vietnam)
Re-education camps ( vi, Trại cải tạo) were prison camps operated by the Communist government of Vietnam following the end of the Vietnam War. In these camps, the government imprisoned at least 200,000-300,000 former military officers, gover ...
South Vietnam
Social history of Vietnam
Aftermath of the Vietnam War
Communism in Vietnam