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Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3 NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011  Moreover, almost as soon as the truce became effective, the Catholic bishops entered into a test of power with the Viet Minh, using their "self-defense forces" to balk DRV occupation. The response was predictably ruthless: Catholic villages were attacked by PAVN troops, and in two instances, inhabitants reportedly were massacred; churches were burned, Church property confiscated, priests tortured or jailed, and heavy taxes levied on Church lands and buildings. Among the consequences of that violence was a Catholic propaganda campaign against the Viet Minh—, the-Virgin-had-gone-South theme—and mass migrations of whole parishes.


 * 4.

The movement of refugees from North Vietnam quickly became a central point of international controversy. Both parties to the Geneva Agreement accused the other of violations in impeding the free egress of would-be migrants, and both sides were undoubtedly at least partially justified in their charges. Aside from the propaganda campaign, France—with substantial American aid—helped refugees with food, medicine, and transportation. American and French ships moved whole villages southward, and American and French charities provided for their well-being during the journey and after their arrival in their new homeland. The U.S. Government, besides assigning a Task Force of the Seventh Fleet to refugee assistance, furnished the Saigon Government with $56,000,000 in 1955, and $37,000,000 in 1956 for refugee relief and resettlement considering the outflow from North Vietnam "a convincing tribute to the Free World and an indictment of the Communists." At the same time, both the GVN and the U.S. actively discouraged migration from the South—the GVN mainly by administrative obfuscation, the U.S. primarily through another propaganda campaign, targeted against Viet Minh in South Vietnam.

DRV behavior toward refugees during the year in which "regroupment" was authorized has served then and since as an indictment of its character, and proof that it could not be expected to permit free elections. Leo Cherne of Look, and Dr. Tom Dooley dramatized the misery and fearfulness of the refugees for American audiences. Ngo Dinh Diem utilized refugees systematically to mobilize opinion in South Vietnam against Geneva, the ICC, and the DRV as well. Since the issue has become central to the American policy debate on Vietnam, Frank N. Trager, for example, has stated that, after the DRV perceived that the numbers moving south by far exceeded those coming north, the DRV was impelled to:

""...impose restrictions and brutal punishments on those who to go South. Summary arrests, denial of permits, intimidation by 'show trials' of those who served as leaders of the exodus, and executions served to inhibit the exercise of the option. Residual petitions affecting 95,000 persons in the North were presented to the International Control Commission. Nothing ever came of these. An unknown number were thus never allowed to leave the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The refugee problem was one of the most far reaching issues at the time..."" Rh