[For the workers and peasants of Indochina the…]

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For the workers and peasants of Indochina the end is now in sight to almost seventy years of struggle against imperialist occupation and war.

Since 1961 they have faced the high explosive and napalm voted by US congressmen and senators who - to a man - have been prepared extreme of barbarism, provided l support any seemed to have a chance of success. Now, with the abandonment of Phnom Penh and the encirclement of Saigon, the spokesmen of capitalism from Los Angeles to Fleet Street grope around for 'angles' to disguise the fact that it is the defeat of imperialism and only that - which can bring peace to Vietnam and Cambodia.

First it was the plight of the refugees -until it became clear that the refugees were simply fleeing from the battle zones, and that -many them, including a number of South Vietnamese officers, were choosing to head for the liberated areas.

Then came the harvest of war sepuring the hospitals of Saison to orphans. with Daily Mail fly a plancload of sick and wounded children to Heathrow. But that campaign fell through when the Thieu regime - seriously concerned at the atmosphere of panic undermining their flimsy air of "calm" in Saigon - put a stop to the export of orphans.

"ATROCITIES"

Then the journalists switched to worrying about the 16,000 illegitimate children of US servicemen in South Vietnam. Starved of even the semblance of genuine atrocities the journalists are obliged to invent the prospect that the liberation forces will bayonet babies - because they happen to be the children of a demoralised imperialist army!

What all these half-naked horror stories are intended to disguise is the fact that the revolutionary advance of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and the NLF in South Vietnam is a massive blow against the whole of imperialism, not just the USA. So low is morale among Washington's parasites in Saigon that the government has put an official stop to all exit visas - for South Vietnamese citizens - though they are readily available on the black market for those with over a thousand dollars available.

The rout of the South Victnamese army - despite massive supplies of the most modern US equipment and ainmunition - is the result of demoralisation and indifference to the fate of Thieu, Thieu himself is only the latest in a long line of agepts for a series o imperialists, starting with the Frenc occupation of Saigon in the 1850's.

Japanese imperialism occupied Indochina during the Second World War. The fact that French imperialism was allowed to return is the responsibility of Stalinism, which put down the Trotskyist-led workers militias in South Vietnam after the Japanese surrender in 1945, and permitted the murder of Ta Thu Thao and other Trotskyist leaders. The last thirty years of war in Vietnam started when the French broke their 1946 agreement with the Vietminh and invaded North Yet when the French were routed in the Vietminh, under pressure Moscow and Peking, agreed to the partition of Vietnam on condition elections were held. They never were, and from that time on South Vietnam has been a puppet state of US imperialism pure and simple.

The bravery, tactical daring and determination the liberation forces now therefore promise victory which Stalinist diplomacy has served only to delay. Moscow's cynical refusal to give any effective support was underlined by the tact that they withdrew diplomatic DEAT Penh. recognition from Lon Nol in Cambodia only days before he abroad, to be tollowed within days by helicopter-loads of US diplomats and their hangers-on.

And, even with victory within their grasp as they control almost three quarters of South Vietnam. the Provisional Revolutionary Government continues to negotiate for a compromise, making the removal of Thieu the only condition of a new coalition in Saigon.

But a force thrusting forward behind their attempts to limit the war of liberation to "democratic objectives is the tact that many of the towns that have fallen during the past month have succumbed to popular insurrections as much as the forces of the NLF. The tasks of the social revolution - in particular the guaranteeing of the land to the peas ants and the expropriation of the bourgeoisie (almost to a man mort gaged to imperialism) - tread hard on the heels of the military advance.

It was Trotskyists who led the struggle against the French and Japanese in South Vietnam during the