Nguyễn Thị Bình

Nguyễn Thị Bình underground in the 1960s

Nguyen Thi Binh ( Nguyễn Thị Bình , born on May 26, 1927 as Nguyễn Châu Sa in Sa Đéc District in Dong Thap Province ) is a Vietnamese teacher and politician . She was involved in the peace negotiations in the Vietnam War and was Vice President of Vietnam from 1992 to 2002 .

Life

In her early youth, Binh had to work as a fish seller. When her brother and other youths were publicly tortured for demonstrating against the oppression and pillage of the French colonial powers, Binh witnessed what contributed to their own politicization. Although agitation was punishable by imprisonment or even death, she distributed leaflets when she was 16.

When their husband, the local Communist Party leader in Bến Tre , was arrested, their son was only three days old. Binh was also arrested, abducted and tortured soon after. Her imprisonment periods in Chi Hoa ( Saigon ) from 1951 to 1953 are documented. Only after her release did she learn of her husband's death in French custody.

During her time in the underground of the Vietnam War, she organized as the highest-ranking female commander the national women's liberation front (referred to by Hồ Chí Minh as the "long-haired army" or "long-haired warrior"), which among other things infiltrated the US armed forces and agitated there.

She became known worldwide as Foreign Minister of the Provisional (Underground) Government for South Vietnam from 1969 , when she prepared and led peace negotiations with the USA . Among other things, these negotiations reached the 1973 Paris Armistice Agreement (January 27, 1973; Lê Đức Thọ for North Vietnam and Henry Kissinger for the United States). She then became Minister of Education of the reunified country, then Vice President in 1992.

Since March 2009 she has also been involved in the newly founded Russell Tribunal on the Palestine question .

literature

Florence Hervé: Lexicon of the rebels . edition eberbach, Dortmund 1996. ISBN 3-931782-03-4 . (Short biography)

Web links

• Short biography on onlinewomeninpolitics.org
• Nguyen Thi Binh in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)