L’Écho annamite
- Open Letter
- The Embassy of Phan Thanh Gian in 1863
- Against the Perpetrators of Attacks
The 6 November 1926 front page of L'Écho annamite carried an open letter signed by René Maran. It blamed the man it was attacking for the Kompong-Chnang affair, in which Résident Bardez was killed, borrowed Governor-General Alexandre Varenne's condemnation of impunity for violence against defenseless inhabitants, and accused Bardez of collecting taxes by holding innocent people captive and letting women be raped. A historical column by Ung-Hoe followed Phan Thanh Gian's 1863 embassy from its imperial audience to a solemn audience with the queen in Madrid, escorted by Commandant Aubaret. A short news item reported that Mussolini was preparing a bill to reorganize the Sûreté Générale and introduce the death penalty for attacks on the King, the royal family, the Regent or the head of government.
Translation
Open Letter
It was of him and his like that Governor-General Alexandre Varenne meant to speak when he railed against "the total impunity that has been guaranteed to individuals who had committed inexcusable acts of [?] violence against defenseless inhabitants." It is he who is responsible for the Kompong-Chnang affair, in which M. Bardez was killed: Bardez who, as the rigid executor of the Résident Supérieur's orders, was bringing in the tax by holding innocent people captive and by letting women be raped.
The Embassy of Phan Thanh Gian in 1863
After the imperial audience, which was truly magnificent, the ambassadors made ready to go to Spain to carry out a mission similar to the one they had just accomplished. Commandant Aubaret was charged with accompanying them to the court of Madrid, where they were received in solemn audience by the queen.
Against the Perpetrators of Attacks
Mr. Mussolini is preparing a bill to reorganize the Sûreté Générale and to introduce the death penalty for the perpetrators of attacks on the life of the King, the Queen, the Crown Prince, the Regent or the Head of Government.
Context
The killing of Résident Bardez at Krang Laev in 1925
Maran's letter treats the death of "M. Bardez" as an affair its readers already know. Félix Louis Bardez, the French résident of Kampong Chhnang province, went in person on 18 April 1925 to the village of Krang Laev, which was behind in paying its taxes. In the village hall he summoned the villagers deemed in arrears, had some of them handcuffed and threatened to take them to prison; in the ensuing mêlée the villagers beat Bardez, his interpreter and a militiaman to death. Eighteen people from Krang Laev were tried, and the court handed down one death sentence and five sentences of hard labor for life, yet the trial gradually became a platform against the abuses of the colonial administration, and André Malraux took up the case from Saigon in his paper L'Indochine enchaînée. Maran's phrase about collecting the tax "by holding innocent people captive" corresponds to this hostage-taking; his further charge that Bardez let women be raped is the letter's own accusation and does not appear in the modern account of the incident.
The Bokor hill station and the tax behind the affair
The tax Bardez was pressing for had a specific purpose. When he arrived at Kampong Chhnang, a supplementary tax was being introduced to pay for the construction of the Bokor hill station. The resort's centerpiece, the Bokor Palace Hotel, was inaugurated in 1925, the same year as the killing at Krang Laev. The human cost of the works came out during the Bardez trial: nearly 900 deaths were cited among Cambodian workers mobilized by force or under very harsh conditions. Another account gives the same order of magnitude: nine hundred dead in nine months. Both are reported estimates rather than a documented count, but they explain why the Bokor works became part of the case against the protectorate's leadership that Maran's letter presses, beyond Bardez himself.
Governor-General Varenne and the Résident Supérieur
Maran borrows his strongest words from the head of the colony itself. Alexandre Varenne, a French politician and journalist best remembered as the founder of the newspaper La Montagne and classed among the politicians of the socialist SFIO, was Governor-General of French Indochina from 1925 to 1928, so the condemnation of "total impunity" that the letter quotes came from the top of the administration Maran was attacking. The excerpt names the letter's target only as "him", but its description of Bardez as the rigid executor of the Résident Supérieur's orders is consistent with pointing at the head of the Cambodian protectorate: Bardez had earlier served as private secretary to Résident Supérieur Hervé Baudoin. By tying the killing to orders from above, the letter moves the question from a peasant crime to the conduct of the protectorate's leadership.
Mussolini's bill, the Special Tribunal and the Catalan plot of 1926
The short Italian item reports a bill still in preparation. Fascist Italy's apparatus for punishing crimes against the regime took shape that year: the Special Tribunal for the Defence of the State, established in 1926 to judge crimes against the regime, was implemented through Mussolini's Leggi fascistissime, which consolidated the totalitarian regime. The item also appeared in the same week as a conspiracy that touched Mussolini's police directly. On 4 November 1926, two days before this issue, the plot of Prats de Molló, Francesc Macià's planned invasion of Catalonia from France, collapsed: Macià was arrested in the country house he occupied and the French police detained 111 people near the Spanish border. Ricciotti Garibaldi Jr, grandson of the hero of Italian unification, was involved, but he was a double agent serving Mussolini's political police, through whom Primo de Rivera learned of the planned invasion, and the failure was apparently due to a leak from Garibaldi's group. The death-penalty clause itself remains, in this paper, the report of a bill in preparation.
Original
Lettre ouverte
C'est de lui et de ses pareils que M. le Gouverneur Général Alexandre Varenne voulait parler, lorsqu'il vitupérait: «L'impunité totale qui a été assurée à des individus qui s'étaient livrés contre des habitants sans défense à des actes inexcusables de [?] violence.» C'est lui qui est responsable de l'aftaire de Kompong-Chnang où fut tué M. Bardez qui, rigide exécuteur des ordres du Résident Supérieur, faisait rentrer l'impôt en séquestrant des innocents, et en laissant violer des femmes.
L'Ambassade de Phan-thanh-Gian en 1863
Après l'audience impériale, vraiment grandiose, les ambassadeurs se disposèrent à se rendre en Espagne pour remplir une mission semblable à celle qu'ils venaient d'accomplir. Le commandant Aubaret fut chargé de les accompagner auprès de la cour de Madrid, où ils furent reçus en audience solennelle par la reine.
Contre les auteurs des attentats
M. Mussolini prépare un projet de loi pour la réorganisation de la Sùreté Générale et l'introduction de la peine capitale contre les auteurs d'attentats contre la vie du Roi, de la Reine du Prince Héritier, du Régent ou Chef de Gouvernement.