Lý Tự Trọng

Lý Tự Trọng
(Modern Bust in Ho Chi Minh City)

Lý Tự Trọng (* 20 October 1914 in Nakhon Phanom , † 20th / 21st November 1931 in Saigon ) was a Vietnamese communist youth activist and resistance fighter against the French colonial rule in Indochina . He was executed for killing a French police inspector at the age of 17.

Life

Lý Tự Trọng's family originally came from the Thạch Hà district in the central Vietnamese province of Hà Tĩnh . However, his father Lê Hữu jedocht was involved in the anti-French Cần-Vương uprising and after its failure had to flee to Siam , where his son was born almost two decades later. The birth name was actually Lê Hữu Trọng , but at the age of three the child was adopted by another former rebel named Cửu Tuấn and grew up under the name Lê Văn Trọng . The family lived first in Nakhon Phanom and then from autumn 1921 in Chiang Mai , as there was a progressive Chinese school there. The adoptive father was in contact with Phan Bội Châu , the leader of the Vietnamese independence movement at the time , through the intermediary Đặng Thúc Hứa .

In the spring of 1925, ten-year-old Lê Văn Trọng and his three adoptive siblings were sent by sea to Canton (Guangzhou) in southern China to continue their education there. Nguyễn Ái Quốc (who later became Hí Chí Minh) settled here after his return from the Soviet Union at the end of 1924 and, in collaboration with the underground movement Tâm Tâm Xã, started to build a communist Vietnamese exile organization. He was also supported by the Kuomintang and Comintern adviser Borodin . In mid-1925, the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League was formed . A central component of this was a cadre school, in which young Vietnamese were to be trained to become revolutionaries and independence fighters. The majority of the students came from Vietnamese families in exile in Siam. The children were given new names after their arrival in Canton; Lê Văn Trọng became Lý Tự Trọng . In the school of the Revolutionary Youth League he was one of eight young people in the first class. In the years that followed, he learned not only Marxist theory, but also rhetorical skills, Chinese and English, as well as strategies for underground life. In cooperation with the neighboring Whampoa Military Academy , the students were taught basic military knowledge. The class also wrote political publications that were then smuggled into Vietnam. During this time, Lý Tự Trọng was Hồ Chí Minh's favorite pupil, who despite frequent absence represented a father figure for the boy.

In early 1927, the united front between Chinese nationalists (Kuomintang) and communists ( CCP ) broke up. The Kuomintang now set about smashing all communist organizations in their sphere of influence. Hồ Chí Minh went to Moscow, other leaders of the Revolutionary Youth League emigrated to Hong Kong in the UK , to Siam or secretly returned to the Vietnamese territories. In early 1929 preparations were made in Hong Kong for the establishment of an Annam Communist Party ("Annam" was an alternative name for Vietnam). Even before the official founding , the communists from Tonkin (North Vietnam) split off and founded their own party. Only after Ho Chi Minh's return in early 1930 did the parties reconciliation and merge to form the Communist Party of Vietnam .

Lý Tự Trọng had previously been sent to Saigon in Cochinchina (South Vietnam) in the autumn of 1929 . Here he now led the cover name Huy (or Hui ). His job was to help set up a communist youth organization locally and to maintain contact between Saigon and Hong Kong as a multilingual liaison officer. On his messenger services to and from the city's port, he narrowly escaped the colonial police several times.

On February 8, 1931, a Sunday, the group around Lý Tự Trọng and Phan Bôi organized a rally on the occasion of the anniversary of the failed Yên-Bái uprising . The action took place on the municipal sports field after a soccer game, so the young communists were sure to have a large audience. During the rally - a red hammer and sickle banner had just been unfurled - undercover agents from the French secret police Sûreté suddenly appeared and tried to arrest the activists. When one of the police officers, a certain Inspector Legrand , tried to arrest the speaker Phan Bôi, he was shot by Lý Tự Trọng. Both Lý Tự Trọng and Phan Bôi were caught, detained and presumably tortured shortly afterwards.

Lý Tự Trọng was eventually sentenced to death for murder. He died under the guillotine at the gates of Saigon Central Prison on the night of November 20-21 . He was only 17 years old, making him the youngest known victim of French colonial justice. The execution sparked unrest both inside and outside the prison. The French responded with brutal repression. The number of those arrested was so great that an additional prison camp had to be built in a suburb.

On the part of the communist party, Lý Tự Trọng was revered as a hero and martyr of the revolution. Many schools and streets in Vietnam today bear his name, in particular one of the main arteries in downtown Saigon ( đường Lý Tự Trọng ) was named after him after the country's military reunification . A youth award from the Communist Party also bears his name. In Hanoi , a statue was erected in his honor in a park near the Trấn Quốc Pagoda on the banks of the West Lake .

His grave was rediscovered in 2010, after which his remains were reburied in a solemn ceremony in his family's hometown in the Ha Tĩnh province. The new tomb was declared a national monument in 2014.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Date of birth according to Lịch sử Hà Tĩnh (“History of Hà Tĩnh”), Volume 2, Nhà xuất bản Chính trị Quốc gia (“National Political Publisher”), Hanoi 2000, p. 420.
   Place of birth according to Christopher Goscha : Thailand and the Southeast Asian Networks of The Vietnamese Revolution, 1885-1954 , Curzon, Richmond 1999, p. 102.
   In the literature, the year of birth also differs from 1913 and 1915.
   Sophie Quinn-Judge ( Ho Chi Minh: The Missing Years, 1919– 1941 , University of California Press, Berkeley 2002, p. 320/321) gives Sakon Nakhon as the place of birth .
   Both November 20th and 21st are given as the date of death. According to Ngo Van ( In the Crossfire: Adventures of a Vietnamese Revolutionary , AK Press, Oakland 2010, p. 51) the executions in Saigon took place around midnight.
2. ↑ Hỏi Đáp về Sài Gòn Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh (“Questions and Answers on Saigon / Ho Chi Minh City”), Volume 2, Nhà Xuất Bản Trẻ (“Trẻ Publishing House”), Ho Chi Minh City 2006, p. 10.
3. ^ Virginia Morris, Clive A. Hills: Ho Chi Minh's Blueprint for Revolution: In the Words of Vietnamese Strategists and Operatives , McFarland, Jefferson NC 2018, pp. 21-25.
4. ↑ Hue-Tam Ho Tai: Passion, Betrayal, and Revolution in Colonial Saigon: The Memoirs of Bao Luong , University of California Press, Berkeley 2010, pp. 37-52 (Chapter 3, "Apprentice Revolutionaries").
5. ↑ Vietnam Courier , Volume 18/19, Xunhasaba, Hanoi 1982, pp. 8/9 (section “Ly Tu Trong - a young communist”).
6. ^ Ngo Van: In the Crossfire: Adventures of a Vietnamese Revolutionary , AK Press, Oakland 2010, pp. 50/51.
   The date of the shooting of the policeman is often given as February 9th (instead of the 8th); this is unlikely, however, since the soccer game probably took place on a Sunday.
7. ↑ Peter Zinoman : The Colonial Bastille: A History of Imprisonment in Vietnam, 1862-1940 , University of California Press, Berkeley 2001, pp. 54/55
8. ^ National Museum of the History of Vietnam: The first member of Vietnamese Communist Youth Union - Ly Tu Trong , April 14, 2015.
9. ↑ Vietnamese Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism: Ly Tu Trong tomb relics ranks national relic site , October 20, 2014.