Colonel Who Accepted South Vietnam's Surrender Dies

Colonel Bui Tin, a North Vietnamese colonel who had a prominent role in the Vietnam War'sfinal moments but later fled the country and became an unlikely critic of its ruling Communist Party, died at the age of 90-years-old in the Parisian suburb of Montreuil, France. 

Bui Tin personally accepted the surrender of South Vietnam in 1975. He was also present at the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 when Vietnamese revolutionaries defeated French troops to secure their country's independence.

When Bui Tin awoke on April 30, 1975, he probably did not expect to play a direct role in a pivotal moment in Vietnamese history.

Later that morning, he rode aboard a North Vietnamese tank to the presidential palace in Saigon. There, he walked inside to find Gen. Duong Van Minh, the last president of South Vietnam, sitting in a conference room. "I have been waiting since early this morning to transfer power to you," General Minh told Colonel Bui Tin. "There is no question of your transferring power," was the colonel'start reply. "Your power has crumbled. You cannot give up what you do not have."

Bui Tin then reassured General Minh that he had nothing to fear; it was only the Americans who had been beaten, he said. "If you are a patriot, consider this a moment of joy," he said, before making small talk about the general's tennis game and orchid collection. "The war for our country is over," he added.

Colonel Bui Tin was not a commander but the deputy editor of an army newspaper, Quan Doi Nhan Dan. As the highest-ranking North Vietnamese officer in the room, however, it made sense for him to formally represent the winning side.

Many South Vietnamese officials would be imprisoned for years after the war in what the Communist Party called "re-education camps." Nevertheless, debates within the party would rage for decades over the role that Marxist-Leninist dogma should play in the country's postwar development.

During a trip to France in 1990 - just as Vietnam'smain patron, the Soviet Union, was crumbling - Colonel Tin declared himself a political dissident and complained that his country was troubled by "bureaucracy, irresponsibility, egoism, corruption, and fraud."

Bui Tin was born on Dec. 29, 1927, in Nam Dinh, a northern Vietnamese city about 50 miles south of Hanoi.  His father had been a mandarin in Vietnam's last royal court, became one of a small number of educated Vietnamese who rallied to Ho Chi Minh'srevolutionary cause.

Bui Tin saw the Soviet bloc's disintegration as the right moment for his own political about-face. The Communist Party's leadership "failed to bring liberty and prosperity to Vietnam," he wrote in The Washington Post in October 1991. "Rather than improve the abysmal condition of the population, they have blindly pursued sectarian policies designed to maintain their power," he added.

Even before his defection, Colonel Bui Tin was known as something of a maverick. Notably, he discovered and published Ho Chi Minh's last will and testament, proving that Ho had wanted his ashes scattered around Vietnam. The discovery exposed what Colonel Tin said was the fraud behind the party's decision to build a mausoleum in Hanoi for the country's founder.

Colonel Tin might someday have become chief of the Communist Party "if he had only thought about himself," said Vo Van Tao, a Vietnamese political activist in the southern city of Nha Trang. "But he was an independent thinker with a democratic outlook who disagreed strongly with the regime."

Today, Vietnam is a haven for foreign investors seeking a place with cheap labor and a relatively stable political environment. And despite steady waves of online dissent from the Vietnamese public, the party has maintained its grip on power.

In 1991, Colonel Tin traveled to Washington and testified before a Senate committee that dealt with American prisoners of war. He also met with Senator John McCain of Arizona, a former prisoner of war in Hanoi, to discuss what the senator later described as their "mutual interest in promoting democracy in Vietnam."

After Colonel Tin spoke to the committee, Mr. McCain approached him and stretched out his palm for a handshake. He got a hug instead. 

Colonel Tim is survived by his wife, Le Thi Kim Chung; a daughter, Bui Bach Lien; a son, Bui Xuan Vinh; four siblings; and five grandchildren.