Vietnam ex-party chief behind harsh communist reforms dead

Vietnam’sformer Communist Party leader Do Muoi, a revolutionary who broke out ofa French prison and later led the controversial push to dismantleprivate businesses after the Vietnam War, died late Monday at age 101,officials said. Muoi, a party member for nearly 80 years, passedaway in a military hospital in Hanoi following a long illness, thegovernment and state media said. “Comrade Do Muoi... made many greatcontributions to the revolutionary cause of the party and the nation,”the official state-run Vietnam News Agency said yesterday. Born inHanoi in 1917, Muoi joined Ho Chi Minh’s communist revolution at age 19,eager to expel Vietnam’s French colonial rulers who were eventuallyoverthrown in 1954. His revolutionary activities landed him inHanoi’s infamous Hoa Lo prison in 1941 - later dubbed the ‘Hanoi Hilton’by American POWs, including John McCain, imprisoned there during theVietnam War. Muoi escaped four years later by slipping out of his prison uniform and fleeing via a sewer drain. Muoispent much of his political career climbing party ranks, eventuallyjoining the politburo in 1982 and gaining a reputation as a conservativeideologue. After the Vietnam War ended in 1975, he led a campaigndubbed “X2” to dismantle tens of thousands of private enterprises in thesouth - then the economic engine of the newly-unified country. Hemade no secret of his anti-capitalist views and became known for aninfamous motto. “Capitalists are like sewer rats, whenever one sees thempopping up one must smash them to death!” he said, according to NhanTri Vo’s book “Vietnam’s Economic Policy Since 1975”. He lateradmitted the X2 crusade was “a little too dogmatic”, though he nevertook personal responsibility for the brutal campaign. But heretained his hardline reputation throughout the 1990s, decrying peasantprotests against taxation as attempts to “sabotage” the state, andpushing for a compulsory labour scheme to rebuild the country’s tatteredinfrastructure. Muoi eventually fell in step with the party’sembrace of “Doi Moi” economic reforms starting in the 1980s, which sawVietnam slowly open its doors to privatisation and foreign investment. Andas party leader - he held the powerful title from 1991 to 1997 - heoversaw the government’s push to normalise relations with Washington in1995. But repairing ties with the former wartime foe came with conditions. In1997 he told then US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright thatWashington should help Vietnam recover from “consequences left by thewar, including rehabilitation for handicapped people and consequencescaused by the Agent Orange”, according to the party’s officialnewspaper.Muoi’s death comes after Vietnam’s president Tran Dai Quang died in Hanoi on September 21 at age 61. He is expected to be given a state funeral, though details have not yet been released.