Talk:1954 Geneva Conference

signing

Added the line that only France and the DRV signed the document. The online Encyclopedia Brit. states that the agreement was between .... But the Pentagon Papers, which includes the text of the Accords show only Brigadier-General DELTEII of France and TA-QUANG BUU Vice-Minister of National Defence of the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam signing the document.

LN Hello my name is emily jane malaulau

What the hell is this? Diem was not clamping down on "supporters of the Geneva agreement," he was clamping down on armed militants who wanted Vietnam reunited under the Hanoi regime at all costs. I'm sure they would've loved an election since Uncle Ho would've won, but that doesn't diminish the Viet Cong's dedication to "revolutionary violence." Ruy's revisionist babble was rightly changed, and hopefully will be so again. J. Parker Stone 11:42, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

So like Eisenhower, you admit that "I'm sure they [the opponents of Diem's government] would've loved an election since Uncle Ho would've won". So we support elections only when we're pretty sure "our" side will win? What kind of commitment to democracy is that? To justify cancelling the election mandated by the Geneva Accords because the likely victors were dedicated to "revolutionary violence" is akin to supporting the British at the Battles of Lexington and Concord because the Brits were just trying to disarm violent revolutionaries.

Of course, the analogy isn't perfect - unlike the Americans in Vietnam, the British had built up, subsidized and defended the American colonies for generations and thus had a legitimate stake in them; and popular support for independence from the British Empire was nowhere near as solid at the time as was popular support in Vietnam for Ho Chi Minh in 1954-56; I doubt Hancock, or Adams, or anyone else in the Continental Congress would have won a colonies-wide popular election on the platform of independence in 1775 (whether or not slaves, women and unpropertied men were enfranchised). --Davecampbell 18:07, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

"So we support elections only when we're pretty sure "our" side will win? What kind of commitment to democracy is that?" YES!!!! What is so difficult about this policy, other than the temptation it offers to minds of a confused morality? By the time of the signing of the Geneva Convention it was quite obvious that Communist "independence" movements had an interest in elections only to the extent that they conferred a patina of (international) legitimacy on governments that intended to be - as they in fact became - totalitarian. If it is anti-democratic to deny elections on the grounds that to hold them would result in the end of democracy, it is also anti-democratic to allow elections that would surely result in the end of democracy. But in a world of actual alternatives, none of which are ideal, what do you do? If, under these circumstances, you do not support the Diem of actual history, then you are simply unfit to make these decisions. The refusal on the pro-Vietminh/anti-anti-Communist side to acknowledge the actual character of the regime and its conduct, preposterously asserting that they were mere classical liberal democratic movements of national independence, is at this point enough to absent them from the debate. We who have eyes and ears are no longer as ignorant as those in the 1960s, you fools. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.189.197.252 (talk) 17:11, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

America not only failed to mandate elections by not signing the accords, and stopped them altogether by backing Diem, but in thus scorning the NLF, which was at that time a movement that held democratic ideals high, it left them access to only the Hanoi government, and both, only access to the CCCP, similar to the way that spurning Fidel Castro's diplomatic overtures led him to seek ties with the CCCP.

From "The United States in Vietnam - An Analysis in Depth of America's Involvement in Vietnam", by George McTurnin Kahin and John W. Lewis, Delta Books, 1967. Appendix 6-B, Page 390:
The first two of four sub-points of the Second of Ten Points of the "Ten-Point Program of the National Liberation Front", 1960:
"II. To Bring Into Being a Broad and Progressive Democracy
1. To abolish the current constitution of the Ngo Dinh Diem dictatorial administration-lackey of the U.S. To elect a new National Assembly through universal suffrage.
2. To promulgate all democratic freedoms: freedom of expression, of the press, of assembly, of association, of trade unions, of movement...To guarantee freedom of belief; no discrimination against any religion on the part of the State. To grant freedom of action to the patriotic political parties and mass organizations, regardless of political tendencies." Anarchangel (talk) 13:00, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Need for consistency -- At present the article states in the intro that the Accord was "not accepted by the delegates of either South Vietnam [an anachronism as the geographic division was created by the Accord] or the United States." The body states in the section The Geneva Accords that both "the State of Vietnam" (Diem's body) and "the Democratic Republic of Vietnam" (the Viet Minh body) signed, along with many others, excluding only the United States. The body then states in Post Declaration Events that "Diem refused to hold the national elections, noting that the State of Vietnam never signed the Geneva Accords." So which is it? Did the State of Vietnam sign or not? On a different matter, it is not quite clear if the Accords are the same as "the Geneva Agreements" mentioned in a section containing that name. Chris Lowe (talk) 02:18, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

At that time ,state of vietnam become repuclic of vietnam ,so diem said state of vietnam signed it but repuclic of vietnam did not sign it 123.26.190.5 (talk) 04:55, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

Migration

Saying that "some move[ing] north and some move[ing] south" is not showing the whole picture. Most migrants moved south to escape the repressive communist regime. DHN 17:56, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

If we want the whole picture, we should also take account that the Vietnamese Catholics who moved south were largely seen as collaborators with the French colonial occupation (analogous to "Tories" during the American Revolution, with the above caveats), and were mainly urban middle-class and therefore mobile; while the bulk of the Viet Minh's support were farmers whose entire livelihood was tied up in the bit of land they farmed, and urban workers and poor. --Davecampbell 18:14, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

It is true that farmers would be disinclined to leave their crops, but Hanoi also issued statements urging southerners to remain in the south, so that they could vote in the anticipated elections. The numbers of Vietnamese moving north were mostly soldiers; the Geneva Convention mandated that they move north of the line. In retrospect, Diem's propaganda urging Catholics to move south should have been seen as an indication that he never intended to hold elections, or perhaps, was a poor strategist.Anarchangel (talk) 13:00, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Background

The article currently states:

This was significant because it was also the first time that a western nation was defeated by a South-Eastern Communist country.

First, North Vietnam was not a "Communist" country - or any other kind of country, for that matter - at the time of Dien Bien Phu. It didn't exist until after, and as a result of, the battle - as a temporary partition accepted by treaty, conditioned upon the holding of a reunifying election in 1956 (scuttled by the U.S. and the RVN).

The Dien Bien Phu page (as of this date) puts it more correctly, "

Dien Bien Phu was "the first time that a non-European colonial independence movement had evolved through all the stages from guerrilla bands to a conventionally organized and equipped army able to defeat a modern Western occupier in pitched battle."

Secondly, I think you mean "Southeast Asian" rather than "South-Eastern".

--Davecampbell 18:25, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

no this stuff has nothing to do. the idea before this line was with "it was the first time" was to point out that the algerian war started in 1954 because of the issue of the indochinese war. it was preceded by uprising in morocco as well. that was the idea (i think).

Second, there was no need for "holding of a reunifying election" since Vietnam was already unified per the State of Vietnam in 1954, it was because of ho chi minh that the country was divided once again, north COMMUNIST and south FREE (I guess). Paris By Night 01:50, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

"A referendum on his leadership netted him 98% of the vote, with 133% in Saigon." Is this an error? No one can get more than 100% of a vote. angela26 06:43, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

No it's not an error. The referendum was rigged. See 1955 State of Vietnam referendum. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 06:45, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

(even though it was the French)

i removed that part. 207.29.128.130 19:37, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

what was that supposed to mean? :) Paris By Night 01:43, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

not neutral

such phrases like:

• "Communist and freedom fighter were synonymous in the minds of many Vietnamese" ever been in many vietnamese minds?

It was lazy of me not to give a citation previously, but no more lazy than the wording of your comment, which at face value seeks no more than to ridicule a supposed mindreading feat, when in fact, "synonymous in the minds of" is a quite common phrase meaning no such thing. You are free to raise objections about the wording, but it is a neutral appraisal with a basis in recorded fact. In the defense of Vietnam against not only the French, but Japan in WW2, and China following WW2, the Communist Party played a major and conspicuous role. In "The United States in Vietnam - An Analysis in Depth of America's Involvement in Vietnam", by George McTurnin Kahin and John W. Lewis, Delta Books, 1967, the authors repeatedly point to the links, both real and perceived, between Vietnamese nationalism and Communism, and between the defense of Vietnam against the invasions by Japan, China, and France, and the Communists who achieved that defense.
Chapter 1, page 16: "The Indochinese Communist Party became the focal point for nationalist resistance against the Japanese occupation"Anarchangel (talk) 13:00, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

• "Diem continued to make poor decisions" ho, I guess only ho chi minh made GREAT decisions. that's why all political parties were forbidden in vietnam.

Paris By Night 01:41, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Not all. Personally I would prefer a State Party that is at least honest about allowing only certain candidates to run for office, rather than an Electoral College with ties to non- and supra-governmental groups that can steal both candidacy and office away from the Popular Vote whenever it chooses.Anarchangel (talk) 13:00, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

• 1) yes, at that time, majority of Vietnamese think so, at least it is what my grandma told me (born 1930 so she waas 15 in 1945, old enough I guess)

2)Would you be happy with "Diem continued to make poorer decisions than Mr Ho"? Mgz 09:29, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

That is what your grandma told you!? This is a reasonable standard, you think? You have just disqualified your own opinion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.189.197.252 (talk) 17:15, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Shame on you, Ngz, for not knowing that the standard for Wiki is that verification > veracity, and eyewitness testimony is worth less than speculation in this week's Blog.Anarchangel (talk) 13:00, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Not the first time

I think you can argue that Haiti, Ethiopia, and the United States were earlier examples of a local force defeating a colonial power.

Roadrunner 16:10, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Referendum

The Conference Final Declaration provides for "General elections to be held in July 1956, under supervision of an international commission composed of representatives of the Member States of the International Supervisory Commission."[1] There is nothing in the accords about a referendum. The 1955 referendum allowed Diem to oust Bao Dai and proclaim a republic, i.e. it was about a set of issues not related to this article. To state that the cancelled election led to the Vietcong and thus to the Vietnam war is hardly NPOV. The Vietcong was an instrument of the Cold War, directed by Hanoi and Moscow. If you were a Vietnamese frustrated by South Vietnam's imperfect elections, what would be the logic in joining a movement that does not believe in competitive elections of any kind? Kauffner (talk) 16:03, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Dates

I'm a bit confused, on the page for April 26th http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_26 It cites that day as the beginning of the conference. MBVECO (talk) 23:57, 20 February 2010 (UTC)MBVECO

MBVECO, the article start date has now been fixed to reflect the proper start of the conference. Before the article didn't address the part of the conference that dealt with the Korean question. That was the cause for the gap in start-dates. 211.228.53.158 (talk) 12:07, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

The Korean Question

The article didn't talk about the first half of the conference, which addressed the Korean question. I've tried correct the omission, but more work may have to be done on it. 211.228.53.158 (talk) 12:04, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

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Provisions

Where are the items listed on the Provisions section documented?

The section starts by citing the following:

"The Final Declarations of the Geneva Conference July 21, 1954". The Wars for Viet Nam. Vassar College. Archived from the original on 7 August 2011. Retrieved 20 July 2011.

• Paragraph 6 of this document says, "the military demarcation line is provisional", but I can't find where it is described.
• I also do not find mention of a demilitarized zone.
• Paragraph 8 allows "everyone in Viet-nam to decide freely in which zone he wishes to live", but I don't find any mention of "free movement of the population between the zone for three hundred days".
• Paragraph 5 says "that no military base under the control of a foreign State may be established in the regrouping zones of the two parties" and the zones "shall not constitute part of any military alliance".
• I also do not find mention of any "International Control Commission," nor of Canada, Poland nor India, though an "International Supervisory Commission" is mentioned; I assume this must be the same thing.

Also, paragraph 7 says, "free general elections by secret ballot ... shall be held in July 1956, under the supervision of ... the International Supervisory Commission". I've heard for years that the Geneva Accords promised free and fair elections in 2 years. This paragraph 7 clarifies when, and I think that's a key provision of these accords that should be mentioned in this article. I'm adding it now. DavidMCEddy (talk) 21:51, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

what "official weird new style"?

@SnowFire and Datu Hulyo: When I clicked "Geneva Conference" in "For other similar events, see Geneva Conference", I got, "(Redirected from Geneva Conference (disambiguation))". Doesn't this say that we're better here

• with {{For|other similar events|Geneva Conference}}
• than with {{For|other similar events|Geneva Conference (disambiguation){{!}}Geneva Conference}}?

The second option might be appropriate if the official name of the target article were "Geneva Conference (disambiguation)". That's not true in this case. Therefore, I hope you will understand that I'm not being pedantic by reverting User:SnowFire's reversion.

Beyond this, as a general rule, I prefer to avoid "weird new styles" to the maximum extent possible, because they make it harder for newbies to get into Wikipedia -- in addition to making it harder for long established Wikimedians. DavidMCEddy (talk) 04:26, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

See WP:INTDAB. I did not write that policy nor think it's a particularly great idea, but it is the new standard, and yes it does make it less accessible for newbies to get into Wikipedia and makes the source text more confusing about what's really going on. The idea is to make it so that intentional links to disambiguation pages always go to XYZ (disambiguation), so that people who run automated disambig-link detectors don't get buried with false positives.

---

• In a hatnote:
  • Incorrect: {{other uses|Springfield}}
  • Correct: {{other uses|Springfield (disambiguation)}}
  • Correct: {{other uses|Springfield (disambiguation){{!}}Springfield}}

---

The article was using the last case. SnowFire (talk) 04:39, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. From reading WP:INTDAB, I can see the logic of that policy.

However, that article is not named "Geneva Conference (disambiguation)". The current name is just "Geneva Conference" without "(disambiguation)". It probably should be named "Geneva Conference (disambiguation)", but it wasn't when I checked just now.

For present purposes, it probably doesn't matter which redirect we use here, because an autochecker likely wouldn't know it's a disambiguation page, because it doesn't currently have "(disambiguation)" in the title.

The name of the "Geneva Conference" article probably should be changed to "Geneva Conference (disambiguation)". If you'd like to change that, I would support that. DavidMCEddy (talk) 04:59, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Re your first & third comment: Nope! Wikipedia article titling policy is that a disambiguation page can be the "primary topic" and sit at [[Foo]] rather than [[Foo (disambiguation)]]. There have been various proposals to force-move all disambiguation pages to [[Foo (disambiguation)]], but they have always failed. So that's quite intentional that [[Geneva Conference]] is at the base name, not at [[Geneva Conference (disambiguation)]]. The idea is that when that's the case, intentional links to the disambiguation page need to go through [[Foo (disambiguation)]], even if it just immediately redirects to [[Foo]]. Your intuition about the autochecker is wrong: it DOES know that "Geneva Conference" is a disambiguation page (because it's marked as one by category - it doesn't use the article title to determine this, but rather the actual article), and the link you created will be flagged for cleanup if left alone. Basically, while the checkers are "smart" and can see a real disambig page even if it's at a normal name, the only way they've figured out to mark "intentional" links to disambiguation pages is the strange way of actually including (disambiguation) in the link, since this is a matter of editorial intent and not something that a machine can intuit. And yes, none of this is obvious, so there's no shame in not knowing it! But, that's where things stand at the moment. SnowFire (talk) 05:40, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Reliability

I have not found any sources in this article nor in Wikisource that indicate that the Laos and Cambodia agreements entered into force on July 23, 1954, at least one additional source is required to verify this information. 2401:D800:F85:B0D9:7EC3:FDDF:D06D:C04D (talk) 17:45, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

There seem to have been other documents governing Laos and Cambodia.

Wikisource includes Wikisource:Final Declaration of the Geneva Conference on the Problem of Restoring Peace in Indo-China, July 21, 1954, which mentions in several places "agreements ending hostilities in Cambodia, Laos and Viet-Nam". This suggest there were at least two and probably three agreements.

Wikisource includes Wikisource:Agreement on the Cessation of Hostilities in Viet-Nam, July 20, 1954, which ends with, "Done in Geneva at 2400 hours on the 20th of July 1954 in French and in Viet-Namese, both texts being equally authentic", signed by the Commander-in-Chief of the French Union Forces in Indo-China and the Vice-Minister of National Defence of the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam.

Some organization should have copy(ies) of the other agreement(s) regarding Cambodia and Laos.

I would encourage anyone interested in this issue to search for those agreements. Copies should be available someplace. At minimum, the French, Cambodian and Laotian governments should have copies as well as various libraries and research centers. If a web search fails to find copies, it should at least help identify governmental entities, NGOs and researchers who should be happy to help provide such.

Thanks for your interest in this. If you look into this, I hope you find documents that can be cited here. In the meantime. I don't perceive this to be a big enough issue to justify a substantive change in this article. DavidMCEddy (talk) 19:06, 5 August 2023 (UTC)