Vietnamese Declaration of Independence
https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/vietdec.htm[6/22/2012 2:41:27 PM]
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE OF THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF VlET-
NAM
(September 2, 1945)
All men are created equal; they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights; among these are Life,
Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. In a
broader sense, this means: All the peoples on the earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be
happy and free.
The Declaration of the French Revolution made in 1791 on the Rights of Man and the Citizen also states: "All men are
born free and with equal rights, and must always remain free and have equal rights."
Those are undeniable truths.
Nevertheless, for more than eighty years, the French imperialists, abusing the standard of Liberty, Equality, and
Fraternity, have violated our Fatherland and oppressed our fellow citizens. They have acted contrary to the ideals of
humanity and justice.
In the field of politics, they have deprived our people of every democratic liberty.
They have enforced inhuman laws; they have set up three distinct political regimes in the North, the Center, and the
South of Viet-Nam in order to wreck our national unity and prevent our people from being united.
They have built more prisons than schools. They have mercilessly slain our patriots; they have drowned our uprisings
in rivers of blood.
They have fettered public opinion; they have practiced obscurantism against our people.
To weaken our race they have forced us to use opium and alcohol.
In the field of economics, they have fleeced us to the backbone, impoverished our people and devastated our land.
They have robbed us of our rice fields, our mines, our forests, and our raw materials. They have monopolized the
issuing of bank notes and the export trade.
They have invented numerous unjustifiable taxes and reduced our people, especially our peasantry, to a state of
extreme poverty.
They have hampered the prospering of our national bourgeoisie; they have mercilessly exploited our workers.
In the autumn of 1940, when the Japanese fascists violated Indochina's territory to establish new bases in their fight
against the Allies, the French imperialists went down on their bended knees and handed over our country to them.
Thus, from that date, our people were subjected to the double yoke of the French and the Japanese. Their sufferings
and miseries increased. The result was that, from the end of last year to the beginning of this year, from Quang Tri
Province to the North of Viet-Nam, more than two million of our fellow citizens died from starvation. On March 9
[1945], the French troops were disarmed by the Japanese. The French colonialists either fled or surrendered, showing
that not only were they incapable of "protecting" us, but that, in the span of five years, they had twice sold our country
to the Japanese.
On several occasions before March 9, the Viet Minh League urged the French to ally themselves with it against the