May Vietnam be free!

Nguyễn Thiện Ngôn rubbed his eyes, silent as the delegates argued and motioned against each other loudly, in the smoky and dim hall. The heat bore down oppressively, even here in Yunnan in China, to the north of Vietnam, in the summer and without the wind to banish it. He cleared his throat. "Brothers". The voices continued. "Brothers!" His voice cut through the tumult as he rose from his seat, and eyes turned to face him at the dais.
He let the last voices fade, surveying the faces looking at him, wearied by the debate of hours, lined by the travails of fear which had etched their faces older than their years, gaunt, but still fired and passionate. "The time has come. We have debated for long enough. Brothers, in availing ourselves upon the wisdom of the eight-fold path, I call upon us for a vote. There will be no speeches in favor, or against, only aye, or nay. I will not vote until the end. He looked to the left. "Brother Đỗ Ngọc Hải, to you."

Đỗ Ngọc Hải looked around and quietly said. "No."
Phùng Ðức Nhân stood up, and declared loudly "yes."
Trần Phúc Lâm cleared his throat, learned forwards, and pronounced "yes."
Lục Đăng Quang simply stated "no" in his normal listless voice. A strange man that one, so fired with passion in the field, so quiet and reserved in these discussions.
Mạc Thế Tường defiantly looked at Lục and declared "yes" firmly.
Huỳnh Bảo Quốc shook his head as he said "no."
Hoàng Vĩnh Thọ stood up and started to speak. "Comrades, le"- the gavel of Nguyễn Thiện Ngôn crashed down. "Yes or no, no more". Hoàng glared at him defiantly, then sighed. "No."
Kiều Việt Long. "Yes". No more, no less.
Thái Duy Hiền droned out "yes".
Kim Phú Hưng spoke quietly "no."
Đỗ Ðại Thống belted out "yes, dammit!" in his booming peasant voice.
Đinh Quốc Thiện shouted out "No, never to that!".
Quách Trường Long stared at the counterpart next to him, then pronounced "yes".
Lê Tuấn Linh's gaze was on the table in front of him, as he said "no".
Đỗ Ðức Thành pronounced the word "yes", his eyes glinting with anger as he stared at the brothers who had declared no.
Phan Thanh Thiên sighed, and declared "no" himself. His words hung in the air, echoing in the small chamber, the words to tie it. All eyes turned towards the dais.

Nguyễn Thiện Ngôn's pen still scratched on the paper, tallying up the votes, but as Phan's voice trailed off, he looked up and conversationally pronounced the verdict. "Eight for, eight against. Aye". The crowd who had declared no stood up, shouting, and Đinh Quốc Thiện's chair grated as he thrusted it backwards, storming out of the building. The thin door slammed behind him, and the crowd fell silent.

Nguyễn surveyed them. "Brothers, for those who wish to take your leave of us, do as brother Đinh has done. For the rest, we speak as one body, one voice, and we follow one route. The issue is decided. The draft is final, and it will not be changed."

The paper rustled as he picked it up in his hands, and he began to read the neat and precise writing that stretched across the page.

[code]In the name of Vietnam, in the name of the eight-fold path, in the name of liberty, we, the representatives of the Union of Vietnamese Independence, declare the Buddhist Democratic Republic of Vietnam an independent nation, fully free and of the most complete and perfect liberty.

All men are created equal along the route of the eight-fold path. They naturally seek to pursue their liberty, their happiness, their justice, wisdom, discipline, and ethics.

For half a century, the French have oppressed the people of Vietnam and turned us asides from righteousness and duty.

They have replaced our monasteries with churches, they have brought shame to our monks and replaced them with their alien priests.

They have dishonored our nation and brought the false teachings of the Occident to replace the morality we have guarded for thousands of years.

They have expelled the true faith, and replaced it with their falsity.

They have destroyed the free and happy life that our people lived, replacing it with iron and prisons.

They have destroyed the noble teachings and schools of our nation, replacing them with abominations and force.

They have reduced us to the chains of misery, poor and forced into an unnatural submission.

They, the sons of 1789, have allied with the Mandarins and the aristocrats, to oppress the peasants and the common people of Vietnam.

They have imposed unfair and burdensome taxes, restricting the development of our nation.

They have stolen our rice and our grain, for their foreign and alien wars.

They have turned our rice fields into fields of slaves for their capitalists, our peoples into the tools of their merchants.

They have destroyed the unity and the sovereignty of our nation, dividing it artificially into separate components of Cochinchina, Annam, and Tonkin.

They have used us as fodder for cannons and machine guns in the imperialist and capitalist war.

The crimes of the French against the nation and the people of Vietnam are more numerous than the stars themselves. Only the smallest tithe have been recounted here. The recent war which has wracked the world, has exposed the deceit, corruption, and weakness of the French. It has shown the hollowness of the false Occidental civilization, as compared to the morality and peace of the Asian World, nourished by its millennia of the cultivation of the spirit and the ideal.

Around the world, the spirit of the colonized and oppressed peoples have been awoken, and the morale strength of the once-mighty has been sapped and laid low. The four noble truths of Buddhism teach the acceptance of suffering, but no free people can cravenly accept the injustice which has been inflicted by the mighty upon the weak.

Already the troops of Vietnam fight nobly for the independence of our nation. The men of the earth arise from their slumber, as Vietnam awakes from her long nightmare. The struggle before us may be yet hard, but we accept suffering and walk the path of liberation, confident in our ultimate victory. From each corner of the globe, the oppressed look on us with hope, our Asian brothers celebrate each victory we have, and those who follow too the Noble Eightfold Path rejoice that we light a flame which no army the world has ever known may hope to extinguish. Workers and slaves of the world, you have nothing to lose but your chains, and a world and the path of truth to attain!

For these reasons, we, members of the Union of Vietnamese Independence of the Buddhist Democratic Republic of Vietnam, solemnly declare to the world that Vietnam has the right to be a free and independent country which follows the teachings of the noble Buddha. The entire Vietnamese people are determined to mobilize all their physical and mental strength, to sacrifice their lives and property in order to safeguard their independence and liberty.[/code]

It is done Nguyễn Thiện Ngôn pronounced, his throat sore and horse. He cleared it for a last time. "Now brothers, let us join together and pray."