Phu Rieng Do
Phu Rieng Do (Phú Riềng Đỏ) is the name of a famous labor movement at Phu Rieng Rubber Plantation in Vietnam in 1930.
Phu Rieng was one of about French Michelin's rubber plantations that streched in a three-hundred kilometer band from the South China Sea to the Mekong Reiver in Cambodia. After the World War I the French colonial government had allocated huge blockes of forerst land to metropolitan corporations; from 1920 on, large amounts of capital became available to construct roads, nurture rubber seedings clear land, and plant saplings. More than 30.000 labors from Tongkin (Tongking)were recruited to develop those rubber plantations. Phu Rieng was one of the biggest rubber plantations in Vietnam at that time.[1]
The french capitalists exploited the workers pitiless and brutal. The working and living conditions in those rubber plantations were described as "health on the earth" [1] According to the official records of colonial administration 17 percent of Phu Rieng workers died in only 1927[2], but even that figure might be conservative, since the plantation supervisory staff had reason to cover up some losses.
On 3rd February 1930 more than 5,000 rubber workers of Phu Rieng Rubber Plantation, under the leadership of a communist named Tran Tu Binh, rebelled against plantation’s owner to protest against the cruel and slave-like working conditions at the plantation. The “rebellion” workers occupied the local administration and established a autonomic control for 4 days. They arrested the French plantation supervisor and force him to agree with their requests to improve working condition at the plantation. The workers started demonstration against the colonial administration in the area.
Fearing the spreading of the movement to other neighboring areas, on 6th February 1930, French colonial government sent 300 legionnaires, 500 local soldiers under the direct command of the Governor of Cocochina Krauheimer; Resident of Bien Hoa, Marty; his assistant, Vilmont; the head of Surete', Arnoux, came up to Phu Rieng. The movement was repressed soon and its leaders were arrested or killed. The leader of the movement, Tran Tu Binh, was sentenced to 5 years of imprisonment in Con Dao island. The Phu Rieng Do movement became the first labor movement in Vietnam directed by the Vietnamese Communists.
Refrences
- ^ Dimitri Volkogonov "Lenin - A New Biography", page 8. ISBN 0-02-933435-7
- [3] Tran Tu Binh, "Red Earth: A Vietnamese Memoir of Life on a Colonial Rubber Plantation", Ohio University, 1985. p.23.
- [4] Pierre Brocheux, "Le Proletariat des plantationd'heveas au Vietnam meridional: aspects sociaux et poltiques (1927-1937)", Les Movement Social No 90, Paris (Jan-March 1975) Paris. p. 65
Further reading
Tran Tu Binh, "The Red Earth: A Vietnamese Memoir of Life on a Colonial Rubber Plantation" (Memoir), Ohio University Center for International Studies Center,1985. [[5]]