Bình Xuyên

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Bình Xuyên ( Hán tự : 平川) were originally a group of river pirates who operated from the swamps near Saigon . During the first Indochina War , they succeeded in monopolizing organized crime, especially the opium trade , in southern Vietnam through the patronage of the French secret service .

Origins: 1920-1943

The group was formed in the 1920s from a loose coalition of groups of river pirates and initially had around 200-300 lightly armed members. Most of them had originally been youngsters from Cholon , Saigon's Chinatown , or contract workers on rubber plantations, where they had been kept under slave-like conditions (death rate 20% p. A.). They levied “protective tariffs” on the junks and sampans that headed for the port of Cholon. They occasionally kidnapped or robbed wealthy Chinese traders from the city. Their hiding places were in the Rung Sat swamp, which has formed east of the mouth of the Soirap River. To the north, the swamp is bounded by the line Nha Bè - Phu My . The distance to the southern Saigon district of Cholon was about 15 km in the 1950s. The name of the group was derived from the local group of the same name from which the founding members of the group came. They were led by Le Van Vien (* 1904 near Cholon, † 1970 in Paris), better known as Bay Vien. After the illiterate was cheated of his inheritance at the age of 17, he hired himself as a chauffeur for a small gangster. Later he came into contact with the godfather Duong Van Duong ( Ba Duong ; † Feb. 1946), who became an important recruiter for the Japanese occupiers. At the beginning of 1945 Bay Vien escaped from the prison island of Côn Đảo (also: Pulo Condore; Côn Sơn), where he became known, like many others, through contact with nationalist political prisoners with anti-colonialist ideology.

Anti-colonialism: 1943–1948

During the Japanese occupation , especially from 1943, the gangsters enjoyed the protection of the military police ( Kempeitai ). Of particular importance was Matsushita Mitsuhiro, an intelligence officer who disguised himself as the director of Dainan Koosi and was directed by the Japanese consul general in Hanoi Yoshio Minoda . When the Japanese installed a national Vietnamese administration on March 9, 1945 in order to eliminate the remaining French, some Binh Xuyen members were given amnesty and some were hired as police officers. Bay Vien and other gangsters allied the organization with the Viet Minh at the time . When they were ousted from Saigon by the returning French in the autumn, Bay Vien stayed underground as a military commander. He allied himself with the "avant-garde" youth movement led by Lai Van Sang . The gangsters now armed and commanded a group of idealistic urban intellectuals. On October 25th, French troops began an attack and drove the resistance back into the swamps. However, around 250 men remained underground as assassins organized in cells.

By extorting protection money , the organization obtained the means to arm seven regiments (approx. 10,000 men) by 1947 . When the Viet Minh began harassing French colonists , most of the attacks in the south were carried out by Binh Xuyen people. Because of the contradictions between revolutionary ideology and crook mentality, there was friction. The Viet Minh became aware that Bay Vien had contacted the 2eme Bureau in March 1948 . A trap was set for him with an invitation to Ho Chi Minh's birthday party on May 19, which he recognized and surrounded himself with a bodyguard of 200 men. At the same time, cadres trained in the swamps (called: Can Bo ) incited the idealistic young people who had stayed behind, who then disarmed a large number of the gangsters on May 28 and gained control of the swamps. Bay Vien found out about this, but was able to escape to Saigon on June 10, pursued by the Viet Minh.

Collaboration: 1948–1955

The French captain of the 2ème Bureau Antoine Savani tracked down Bay Vien on the 16th and persuaded him to publicly renounce the communists in the capital . The French colonial rulers thus gained partial control of the cells that still existed in the city in order to use them as anti-communist fighters. Funds from Operation X - the opium trade organized by the secret service - were used for financing: US $ 85,000 in 1954.

The approximately 800 men (including returnees from the swamps) were soon allowed to conduct their criminal activities relatively undisturbed in Cholon. To do this, they support the French in cleansing operations in areas that have been officially granted to them as the "Nationalist Zone". In doing so, they were so effective that there was no Viet Minh activity in Saigon from 1952 . At the same time, the gangsters operated the usual "trades" in public: prostitution , control of the transport industry, drug trafficking and gambling , whereby the concession (from December 31, 1950) for the two casinos Grand Monde (Cholon) and Cloche d'Or (Saigon) proved to be particularly profitable. A certain percentage of the profits were paid to the 2eme Bureau , MACG and the Emperor Bao Dai . The growing wealth of Bay Viens was largely invested as a financial advisor by Mathieu Franchini , a Corsican with excellent connections to the Marseilles mafia .

Two opium kitchens were operated in Saigon in the 1950s, one near the National Assembly, the second at the gang's headquarters near the Y- Bridge in Cholon. In these kitchens, the raw opium supplied by the GCMA was made into its smokable form. The product was sold in opium hells and shops for the local Chinese population, and surpluses were exported. The profits were shared by the gangsters with Captain Savani and Major Roger Trinquier of the MACG , who financed the guerrilla war against the Viet Minh through their secret services. Until 1954 the Binh Xuyen had a quasi-monopoly on opium products in the capital and Cochinchina . An approximately 100 km long strip of land between Saigon and Cap Saint-Jacques (today: Vũng Tàu ) was under their sole control. That year, Lai Van Sang , the organization's "military chief", was promoted to general director of the National Police. The leader, Bay Vien, was meanwhile the richest man in Saigon and had been proposed as prime minister - as an adversary to Diem. The Binh Xuyen supported the French not only in the fight against the Viet Minh, but after the defeat of Dien Bien Phu they also supported the French in their guerrilla war against the increasing American influence.

The American-backed Military Security Service (MSS) began excavating individual Binh Xuyen cells in February 1955 . On March 28, the police headquarters were occupied by paratroopers , followed by two days of street fighting, with 26 dead and 112 injured. French troops secured an armistice. Between April 28 and May 3, 1955, the South Vietnamese Army ( ARVN ) of Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem, supported by the CIA at the time, fought its way door-to-door into Cholon-Saigon. The result of the six days of fighting was over 500 dead, 2,000 injured and 20,000 homeless . The remaining Binh Xuyen were driven into the swamps again and the US straw man controlled Saigon and the surrounding area in order to further expand his position of power in the following days. Bay Vien fled to France, where he lived comfortably on what was left of his fortune.

literature

  • Alfred W. McCoy : The Politics of Heroin. CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade. Revised and expanded edition. Hill, New York 1991, ISBN 1-55652-126-X , excerpts online .
  • Antoine M. Savani: Notes on the Binh Xuyen. sn, Saigon 1945 (mim.).
  • Peter Scholl-Latour : Death in the rice field. Thirty Years War in Indochina (= Ullstein Book 33022 Contemporary History ). Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1982, ISBN 3-548-33022-3 , pp. 86-90.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ McCoy: The Politics of Heroin. 1991, p. 148.
  2. ^ McCoy: The Politics of Heroin. 1991, map p. 164 ( Memento of the original dated August 30, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.drugtext.org
  3. ^ Jacques Dalloz: Dictionnaire de la Guerre d'Indochine 1945 - 1954 , Paris, 2006, p. 36
  4. ^ McCoy: The Politics of Heroin. 1991, p. 151.
  5. ↑ see: For such messes. In: Der Spiegel. No. 25, June 22, 1950, p. 21.
  6. ↑ cf. Map in: Bernard B. Fall : The Political-Religious Sects of Viet-Nam. In: Pacific Affairs. Vol. 28, No. 3, 1955, pp. 235-253, here p. 236, doi : 10.2307 / 3035404 .
  7. ^ McCoy: The Politics of Heroin. 1991, p. 153.
  8. ^ Brian Crozier: The Diem Regime in South Vietnam. In: Far Eastern Survey. Vol. 24, No. 4, April 1955, pp. 49-56, here p. 55, doi : 10.2307 / 3023970 .
  9. ↑ different loss figures: ARVN: 100 dead, 350 wounded, Binh Xuyen and civilians each: 200 dead and 600 wounded (S 660); Michael Clodfelter: Warfare and Armed Conflicts. A statistical Encyclopedia of Casualty and other Figures, 1494-2007. 3rd edition. McFarland, Jefferson NC et al. 2008, ISBN 978-0-7864-3319-3 .
  10. ↑ cf. The showdown. ( Time report May 9, 1955). en: Battle for Saigon

See also

Commons : Binh Xuyen Force  - collection of images, videos and audio files