Phu Rieng Do

Phu Rieng Do (Phú Riềng Đỏ) is the name of a famous labor movement at Phu Rieng Rubber Plantation in Vietnam in 1930.

Phú Riềng was one of about 25 French colonial rubber plantations that stretched along a 300 kilometer band from the South China Sea to the Mekong Reiver in Cambodia. After World War I, the French colonial government had allocated huge blocks of forest land to metropolitan corporations; from 1920 on, large amounts of capital became available to construct roads, nurture rubber seedings, clear land and plant saplings. More than 30,000 laborers from Tonkin (Tongking) were recruited to develop those rubber plantations. Phú Riềng was the biggest rubber plantation of the Michelin company in Vietnam at that time. 5555 people died

The French capitalists exploited the workers pitilessly and brutally. The working and living conditions in those rubber plantations were described as "hell on the earth". [ Tu Binh, "Red Earth: A Vietnamese Memoir of Life on a Colonial Rubber Plantation", Ohio University, 1985. p.23 ] According to the official records of the colonial administration, 17 percent of Phú Riềng workers died in only 1927 but even that figure might be conservative, since the plantation supervisory staff had reason to cover up some losses. [ Pierre Brocheux, "Le Proletariat des plantationd'heveas au Vietnam meridional: aspects sociaux et poltiques (1927-1937)", Les Movement Social No 90, Paris (Jan-March 1975) Paris. p. 65 ]

On 03 February 1930, more than 5,000 rubber workers at the Phú Riềng Rubber Plantation, under the leadership of a communist named Trần Tử Bình, rebelled against the plantation’s owner to protest against the cruel and slave-like working conditions at the plantation. [ Supranote 1. p.60 ] . The “rebellion” workers occupied the local administration and established an autonomic control for four days. They arrested the French plantation supervisor and forced him to agree to their requests to improve working conditions at the plantation. The workers started a demonstration against the colonial administration in the area.

Fearing the spread of the movement to neighboring areas, on 06 February 1930, the French colonial government sent 300 legionnaires, 500 local soldiers under the direct command of the Governor of Cocochina Krauheimer; Resident of Bien Hoa, Marty; his assistant, Vilmont; the head of Surete', Arnoux, up to Phú Riềng. [ Supranote 1. p.76 ] The movement was soon repressed. The leader of the movement, Trần Tử Bình, was sentenced to five years of imprisonment on Côn Đảo island. The Phú Riềng Đỏ movement became the first labor movement in Vietnam directed by the Vietnamese Communists.

References

Further reading

Tran Tu Binh, "The Red Earth: A Vietnamese Memoir of Life on a Colonial Rubber Plantation" (Memoir), Ohio University Center for International Studies Center,1985. [http://www.selectbooks.com.sg/getTitle.cfm?SBNum=7057]