Mass Resignation Protest

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31480, 21 September 1967, Page 13

Mass Resignation Protest

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) SAIGON, Sept. 20.

The director and key field staff of a major volunteer agency supported by the United States Government have resigned in an angry protest against the Vietnamese war, the “New York Times” News Service reports.

At the same time, 45 teachers, agricultural specialists and social workers who are members of the agency signed a letter to President Johnson that calls the war “an overwhelming atrocity.” The letter will be handed today to the Ambassador, Mr Ellsworth Bunker. “We have seen enough to

say that the only monuments to this war will be the dead, the maimed, the despairing and the forlorn,” says the letter, signed by members of the Intematoinal Voluntary Services, a private group supported by the U.S. Aid programme. “The trend has been escalation of the war. We say the trend should be de-escalation.”

The International Voluntary Services (1.V.5.) has 179 volunteers, more than any of the other relief groups in South Vietnam.

One of the most highlyrespected agencies in the coun. try, it has sought to help the Vietnamese at the village and hamlet level, with volunteers teaching English, training refugees, working on agricultural projects and aiding the war’s widows and orphans. Most of the I.V.S. volunteers,, who usually remain in Vietnam for two years, are

former college students and social workers. More than 20 are conscientious objectors who are performing alternate service in Vietnam with the I.V.S.

A bitter dispute has developed between several relief agencies, including I.V.S. and the US. mission in Saigon. It centres on the right of United States civilian volunteers to discuss their opinions of the war with South Vietnamese and Americans as well as what several agencies feel are pressures by the United States Government to become more involved in the war effort. The resignations disclosed today, as well as the letter to President Johnson, were the first public acknowledgements of a dispute which also threatens several other agencies composed of vocal and, in some cases, anti-war volunteers.

The four officials who sub-

mitted their resignations in the last week were Don Luce, the 33-year-old director of the 1.V.5., Don Ronk, leader of the I.V.S. in the Da Nang area, Willie Meyers, I.V.S. leader in the Mekong Delta, and Gene Stoltzfus, associate chief of the I.V.S. for community development, which includes refugees and youth work.,, Mr Luce, who has worked in Vietnam for nine years, said slowly and intensely:— “We need an end to this war. We’re witnessing right now the destruction of Vietnamese family life, of its agriculture and transportation. We’re seeing the developing of city slums.

“I have a feeling that the changes needed are greater than the person-to-person kind of things I.V.S. does. . . . “As individuals, we cannot become part of the destruction of a people we love. “We’re leaving here because this is the only way to express our disagreement with the tragedy going on here.” In a five-page letter to Mr. Johnson, the 45 volunteers said they were “finding it increasingly difficult to pursue quietly bur main objective: helping the people of Vietnam.” The volunteers—many of them young agricultural specialists from small towns in Illinois, Pennsylvania and Ohio—said that anti-Ameri-canism was growing in Vietnam, that Washington was supporting “a Government which gaols pacifists and neutralists,” and that the suffering of the Vietnamese was “greatly intensified by today’s American presence. . . . “The Vietnam war is in itself an overwhelming atrocity. Its every victim—the dead, the bereaved, the deprived—is a victim of this atrocity. “Viet Cong terrorism is real. So are the innocent victims of United States bombing, strafing and shelling.” After urging the United States to stop bombing the North, recognise the National Liberation Front and start peace' talks, the volunteers concluded: “There is no alternative: It is their ISouth Vietnamese) cry. and ours ‘End this war.’ ”