In July the French command demanded that we allow them to organize a march through the main streets of Hanoi to celebrate July 14.
We had not yet made any answer when, on July 11, the Standing Bureau received a report from the Security Service that the reactionaries of the Nationalist Party were preparing a very serious provocation. According to their scheme their men would lie in ambush along the route of the French troops and open fire on them, throwing grenades. They hoped to cause the French to open hostilities with us: thereupon they would distribute leaflets calling on the people to overthrow the government and next offer their own hands to the French. For the moment they were making feverish preparations, printing leaflets and collecting weapons.
We knew that though the men of the Nationalist Party publicly made frenzied criticisms of our talks with the French, they were secretly trying to join hands with them. They had been in contact with them for a long time. As for the French, while they carried out negotiations with us, they were indulging in some murky scheming. Some of the French reactionaries planned to use Vietnamese traitors to draw them into this adventure.
The security comrades were instructed to follow every activity of the counter-revolutionaries closely.
At that time the Nationalist Party was made up of two reactionary groups. One, with Vu Hong Khanh at its head, had been living abroad for a long time, supported by Chiang Kai-shek; it had lost contact with the country. The other, including Nguyen Tuong Tam, Chu Ba Phuong and others; belonged to the pro-Japanese Dai Viet party set up in 1939. About the beginning of 1945, the Dai Viet group, foreseeing the defeat of the Japanese, had gone to Yunnan to seek Vu Hong Khanh. The two groups merged together under the name of Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang (Viet Nam Nationalist Party) in order to win the favour of Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomingtang (Quoc Dan Dang in Vietnamese). Though the Dai Viet leaders had joined forces with Vu Hong Khanh’s group, they looked down on it. What they wanted was a refuge to avoid being charged with collaborating with the Japanese fascists. Apart from this they still nurtured their own designs. When Lu Han withdrew, the pro-Chiang elements trod on his heels in their hurry to go abroad. Most of the Dai Viet group remained in the country, waiting for an opportune moment to serve the new masters, and the scheme of provocation was theirs.
Well aware of their reactionary designs the standing Bureau decided to refuse the French permission to hold their march for Security reasons and instructed the Police to act promptly so as to nip the counter-revolutionaries’ designs in the bud.
On July 12, at daybreak, a police commando unit rushed into the headquarters of the Nationalist Party at 132 Minh Khai Street and searched the house. The reactionaries were caught red-handed with pieces of material evidence: a printing machine and heaps of leaflets still wet with ink.
At 7 a.m., the Bac Bo Police launched simultaneous raids on many offices of the Nationalist Party in Hanoi. In three houses by lake Thuyen Quang the reactionaries resisted with machineguns but the police, acting in coordination with the self-defence, succeeded in forcing them to surrender.
At 7 On Nhu Hau Street1, the police discovered a press for making false banknotes and a room littered with instruments of torture — electric charge devices, pincers, hammers and so on. The walls were stained with blood. In the garden at the back of the house, we unearthed seven bodies some of which had been dismembered. Two persons kidnapped for ransom were saved just at the moment when the assassins were about to execute them.
While the police were carrying on their search, a man in shorts entered carrying a Japanese sword. Striking an attitude he proclaimed himelf in a loud voice as a leader of the Nationalist Party and a member of the National Assembly and declared that no one had the right to interfere with him. One of the kidnapped persons pointed his finger at him affirming that he was the man who, the day before, had threatened him with his sword and forced him to write a ransom note.
The people came in great numbers to see the bodies we had unearthed. Some identified members of their families. It is not easy to imagine the motives that urged the reactionaries to commit such crimes. Among the victims, some were our cadres who had been kidnapped and then liquidated; some were women who had been seized while passing by their offices, raped, robbed and finally murdered, while others were pedicab-drivers whom those brutes had killed so as not to have to pay them.
At 6 a.m. the following day, the police continued their search of the Nationalist Party centre in Quan Thanh Street. This was close to where the French had troops stationed and the reactionaries thought that they would protect them. When our police came they took up position behind a thick wall and fired at us with machineguns. There was a prolonged exchange of fire. Two hours later, the French came in their armoured cars hoping to intimidate our police force. But, our representative in the Liaison and Control Commission intervened at once and the armoured cars had to beat a retreat. In the end our men gained entry into the house, and seized many documents that they had not had time to destroy.
At the H. Q. of the Nationalist Party in Do Huu Vi (present-day Cua Bac) Street, we found still more bodies of men, women and even French soldiers whom the reactionaries had killed to provoke incidents between the French and our administration. Among the documents captured, we found a plan for a campaign of assassination and kidnapping. The Nationalist Party had been conspiring to murder French officers and men and kidnap French women and children. This was to have been carried out in Hanoi itself between July 10 to 17 by a group of special agents.
Mr. Huynh Thuc Khang came with us to look at the Nationalist Party centre in On Nhu Hau Street.
A few days later, some Nationalist Party men came to Bac Bo Palace and requested an interview with the acting President to justify the revolutionary line of their party. When he heard this Mr. Huynh asked at once, “Where are they?”.
Rising up he went out leaning on his stick. Seeing them at the foot of the stairs, he pointed his staff at their faces and shouted:
“Rascals! Robbers!. And you have the face to give yourselves out to be nationalists and patriots!”
He turned his back on them and came back to his office.
After the On Nhu Hau street affair, even the most politically naive people who so far had more or less believed in the propagandist stunts of the Nationalist Party saw what they were up to.
On July 16, at a press conference acting President Huynh Thuc Khang declared:
“Unity is indispensable... if we want to build our democratic republic, but no one should use ‘unity’ as a pretext for taking illegal actions. I advise all political groups and parties and all citizens to stand united. But, in the interests of the State, those who have taken illegal actions must be brought before the law. Genuine members of the Nationalist Party are ensured the right to act freely within the framework of law. The law is applied to everybody... Those who kidnap, hold to ransom or assassinate people must be severely punished by the law. The 10 articles of the National Edict signed by President Ho Chi Minh and Vice-President Nguyen Hai Than have laid down regulations regarding such cases. I only apply them. This is not an affair between political parties. The searches which have just been carried out are dictated by public security.”
1 Today Nguyen Gia Thieu street.