Involvement “Damaging”

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32354, 21 July 1970, Page 16

Involvement “Damaging”

New Zealand was doing itself ttemendooM damage by continued support of the preflent regime In South Vietnam and Involvement in the Vietnamese war, the generaksecretary of the New Zealand Student Christian Movement (the Rev. D. Borrie, of Wellington) said In Christchurch last even* ing.

Mr Borrfe, who was one of three men from New Zealand who spent a week in South Vietnam recently on a tactfinding tout, said that he

thought countries such as New Zealand had to take a non-aligned stand and begin to Search Out new ways of helping South-East Asia.

. “There is much that toe Vietnamese can teach us, but we have got to listen to them,” he skid. “We must have friendship and friendship without guns. We are not going to loose face among the Americans, nor the Australians, but we are going to gain th* respect of the Vietnamese.”

The Vietnamese people had many suggestion* how this help could be given, but it should be aid which they requested, he Said. They needed social and economic reform, technical assistance at the planning level, and in the establishment of industry, and practical assistance in agricultural reform.

Another area of need, and one which provided New Zealand with an opportunity to help, was education. At present there were only about 40,000 students in Vietnam. “We also have to look very carefully at where New Zealand can best spend its money,” said Mr Borrie. “Whether it is best for us to spend a lot of money In Vietnam and forget about the South Pacific." The main purpose of toe visit by the New Zealand delegation which wa* joined by teams from Australia and toe ufiited State* and one representative from the Netherlands was to meet people eoneerned about peace in Vietnam and to find out about toe repression that toe Saigon Government was inflicting on these people, said Mr Borrie. An attempt wa* alio made to let the Vietnamese people know that there were many people in the Western world who were concerned about toe situation. Mr Borrie said that several Students he Spoke to had been released from prison two months previously and still bore the marks of fortune.

AU said that they had been imprisoned because they had publicly called for peace. It wa* estimated that 50,000 people were in prison without trial, he said, and mahy of those who Were not Sent to prison were ordered into the army and forced to aet as unarmed decoys. “From what 1 saw 1 am convinced that there is outright opposition to the Thieu-Ky regime. It is only there because of the backing received from couiittie* such a* the United States and New Zealand."

Mr Borrie said that toe Vietnamese people were united in their desire for all Westerners to leave Vietnam.

“I didn’t hear one person who was happy to have Westerners stay,” he said. “To the Vietnamese all Westerners are Americans, and they don’t want Americans. They want freedom to work out their own problems.” It wks fairly clear that once Westerners left Vietnam there would be a very quick downfall of toe ThieuKy regime, he said.