Thailand and the Viet Minh League (02)

Thailand and the Viet Minh League (02)

The President of the Viet Minh Party in Battambang was Thoi, who worked in the local hospital. The Viet Minh Party in communication with the Viet Minh Government in Hanoi and seized every opportunity to make more trouble for the French in Cambodia.

From November 1945 on several hundred armed Vietnamese in Battambang massed along the Cambodia-Thailand border to stop the eventual French advance across the frontier.

Their political leaders and some Japanese deserters met regularly at Battambang with the connivance of the Thai Administrator to foment ant-French and anti-Cambodian(i.e. collaborationist) feeling.

Collections were made amongst the Vietnamese for the support so long as the Vietnamese for the support of the dissident elements and for the purchase of arms. The Thai authorities  in no way hindered such collections so long as the Vietnamese helped them to guard the border. All the French could do at this juncture was to request the British authorities, whose duty was to disarm the Japanese in Battambang, to warn the Thais that such tolerance amounting to complicity might have serious effects.

Despite this warning together with French bellicose statement that they would use force of arms to expel the Thais from that occupied territories, the Thai leaders in Bangkok did not yield; they continued supplying arms and offered training facilities to teach guerrilla tactics to the Vietnamese dissidents throughout the period prior to the Franco-Thai agreement reached in November 1946.

The Vietnamese dissidents were active not only in Battambang but also in Northeastern Thailand where there were around 20,000 long time Vietnamese residents. These refugees of longstanding were joined by a new influx of compatriots from Laos in early 1946.

Viet Minh agents led by Dr Nguyen Duc Qui used these refugees as a source of funds, supplies and recruits. As on the Cambodian front, the Viet Minh armed forces worked together with the Free Laotians and the Thai police force to prevent the French from securing an easy return to the Kingdom of Laos.

The headquarters of the Viet Minh resistance, of which Dr Nguyen Duc Qui was President, in Northeastern Thailand was in Udon Thani province. After the French attack on Thai soil in May 1946, however, the political leaders of the Viet Minh were invited to move to Bangkok, while their armed forces still continued launching raids on French military strongholds across the Mekong River.

Among the Indo-Chinese nationalists, the Vietnamese movement was best organized. In Bangkok, the Viet Minh agents had a variety of political organizations. Their Bangkok headquarters as at Soy Lang-Xuan, one of the centers of old Vietnamese community, with Dr Nguyen Duc Qui and Le Van Nham as President and Vice President respectively.