Comrade Nguyen Thi Ninh (1901-1944): Preserving the qualities of a communist
Nguyen Thi Ninh was born in 1901, in Yen village, De Thap street (now Ben Thuy ward, Vinh city, Nghe An).
In 1970, under the direction of Nghe An Provincial Party Committee, Vinh City Party Committee organized a conference to verify the Party history of the secret period of Vinh-Ben Thuy Party Committee (from March 11 to March 17, 1970). This historical conference unanimously honored 9 cadres and Party members who represented the heroic fighting tradition of the Party Committee and people of Vinh-Ben Thuy City (before the August Revolution of 1945). Among those 9 representatives, there were former members of the Party Central Committee (such as comradeLe Mao), some are members of the Nghe An General Farmers' Association (like comradeHoang Trong Tri). Notably, there was only one person who was female and a regular party member, working in communications, that was Nguyen Thi Ninh (commonly called Vi Ninh, alias Binh).
In the past, Ben Thuy area had a high population density, little land and all was infertile sand, so people's lives were often poor and miserable. Income was already too low, people had to work hard to pay poll tax, land tax and miscellaneous corvée labor. Because Ben Thuy area is located on the North-South highway, every year, people in this area often had to appoint people to work as "phu tram". Phu tram was a person who acted as a liaison from one station to another with the task of transferring documents, summons, orders from the royal court to the locality and all kinds of memorials, petitions, and letters from various places to the royal court.
Quyet Station at the foot of Quyet Mountain is one of the province's major stations, so the proportion of people in the Ben Thuy area who have to work as postmen is much higher than in other stations. Regardless of day or night, rain or storm, cold or scorching sun, as soon as they hear three drum beats, the postmen must immediately be present to "run the station", usually on foot. In addition to delivering official documents and papers, the postmen also have to deliver state goods and carry high-ranking officials on palanquins to the capital (to Hue) or to go on official visits to other places, or "return home in glory to pay respect to their ancestors" after passing the imperial examinations... Therefore, in the past, the Ben Thuy area had a very good folk song:
Love you I want to love life
Hear three drum beats, limbs go weak.
Due to a life of poverty and hardship due to natural disasters and the oppression and exploitation of colonialists and feudalists, the people of Ben Thuy area have a brave and enthusiastic personality, are not afraid of the rulers and are ready to sacrifice for a greater cause.
Since the French colonialists imposed the yoke of slavery on our people with the Patenotre Treaty in 1884, Ben Thuy, from an agricultural land, became an urban area with many large industrial and commercial establishments. In 1914, the Governor General of Indochina forced King Duy Tan to issue a decree on March 11, 1914, upgrading Ben Thuy town to Ben Thuy town. Hundreds of hectares of cultivated land of Ben Thuy farmers were confiscated by the French colonialists to build factories. Farmers in turn became hired workers in factories. People called them "brown shirt" workers (to distinguish them from "blue shirt" workers - technicians from the North).
At only 14 years old, Nguyen Thi Ninh had to earn a living at the Ben Thuy Match Factory. Although she was supposed to be a worker, in reality she was living in a prison. In the factory's production workshops, every 15 meters there was a tube filled with rattan and bamboo canes, which the foreman used to beat the workers whenever someone was late to work or did not greet the foreman or boss. Most of the workers in the Match Factory were women and children. The factory did not have separate toilets or urinals for women.
Nguyen Thi Ninh's younger sister, Nguyen Thi Hai, also worked as a matchmaker at the match factory since she was 12 years old. One day, the foreman Hach found her dozing off while she was doing so. He beat her severely, then stuffed her into a matchbox and shook her vigorously until she passed out. When she returned home, she became seriously ill. Because her family was poor and did not have enough medicine, she died before reaching adolescence.
His parents died early, and he and his sisters raised each other. The painful and unjust death of his younger brother made Ninh hate the landlords, the invaders, and the traitors even more.
When she came of age, Nguyen Thi Ninh married Le Viet Vi, a porter from the same hometown. From then on, people often called her Vi Ninh.
Coming from the same hometown as Nguyen Thi Ninh and working in the same match factory were comrades Le Mao, Le Viet Thuat, Nguyen Loi, and Nguyen Phuc, who were members of the first class of Phuc Viet Association in Vinh - Ben Thuy. Fortunately for Vi Ninh, it was these comrades who awakened her national consciousness and admitted her to the Phuc Viet Association (Tan Viet). From then on, Vi Ninh became more and more enthusiastic in participating in the struggles in the factory.
In 1925, there was a cholera epidemic, many workers died. On that occasion, the foremen played a trick by forcing workers to contribute money to buy offerings twice a year to pray to God and Buddha for protection, to ward off evil spirits and diseases. Faced with the exploitation and oppression of the foremen, workers at the Match Factory organized many struggles, first to boycott the farce of the anti-epidemic offerings. Gradually, the struggles had more specific content such as: demanding a pay increase, reducing working hours, demanding the use of female foremen to control female workers, demanding the construction of separate toilets for women... The most prominent was the strike in June 1926. The workers' demands were against the forced labor regime and to expel the evil foreman Hong from the factory. After 4 days of strike and fierce struggle, the owners of the Match Factory were forced to accept the workers' demands.
In 1928, the struggle movement developed to a new level. This was due to the active activities of Ms. Vi Ninh and other sisters in the Tan Viet subgroup, the Trade Union, the Mutual Aid Association, and the Friendship Association. In early 1928, the workers of the Match Factory forced the owners to order the dismissal of the most notorious and evil foremen such as Cai Nhuan and Cai Cuong; at the same time, the struggle forced the owners to accept people elected by the workers as "foremen" to run the work in the factory. Mr. Le Huy Hoc was elected by his brothers and sisters to replace Nam Tuong Hach as the boss in the entire Match Factory. The active activities of the workers of the Match Factory, where there were core members such as Le Mao, Le Viet Thuat, Le Doan Suu, Nguyen Phuc, Nguyen Loi, Vi Ninh, Nguyen Thi Bay, Nguyen Thi Due... had a strong impact on the struggle movement in other factories in Vinh - Ben Thuy.
The great results that have been achieved are due to the workers' efforts to endure hardships and sacrifices, to shed much sweat and blood. During the struggles, the bosses colluded with the secret police to arrest many people and brutally torture them, among whom the two women who were most brutally beaten were Le Thi Tu and Nguyen Thi Ninh.
From March 1930, the Diem factory had a Communist Party of Indochina cell. Nguyen Thi Ninh was honored to participate in the same cell with comrade Le Mao - Party cell secretary, Vinh - Ben Thuy Provincial Party Secretary (by October 1930, he was an alternate member of the Party Central Committee), and comrades Nguyen Phuc and Nguyen Loi were both members of the Central Party Committee in the years 1930-1931.
In 1930, famine occurred severely in the two provinces of Nghe An and Ha Tinh. In Vinh - Ben Thuy, the price of rice suddenly skyrocketed from 3-4 dong/quintal to 20 dong/quintal. The countryside had a bad harvest. The life of farmers was already miserable, but the life of workers was even more miserable, because prices skyrocketed but wages did not increase. Faced with this situation, the factory party cell organized a struggle to demand that the owners increase workers' wages from 5 cents to 10 cents, reduce working hours from 16 hours to 12 hours a day, enforce labor insurance laws for those who had accidents, boil water for workers to drink while working, open more doors and paint glass doors to prevent heat, build separate toilets and urinals for male and female workers, and appoint female supervisors to control the women (replacing the male supervisors who often took advantage of and played dirty tricks on the women).
When the workers raised their demands, the bosses refused to resolve them. Immediately, the workers declared a strike. Vi Ninh, along with other comrades in the Party cell and the trade union, actively mobilized their brothers and sisters to participate in the struggle in many ways: female workers were determined not to go to work; women at home encouraged their husbands and children to persevere in the struggle to the end. In addition, they mobilized to help families facing difficulties in life to increase the potential for the strike. It was Vi Ninh who first proposed to set up a relief fund to help families with striking workers facing especially difficult circumstances.
Three days later, Bide - Chief of the Vinh-Ben Thuy Secret Police sent two teams of soldiers to the factory to use intimidation tactics, but the workers' fighting spirit remained unshaken. Finally, the bosses had to give in. They had to sell rice to the workers at 6 dong/quintal. The workers were allowed to nominate several women to be "foremen" such as Ms. Nguyen Thi Bay (sister of Nguyen Viet Luc) to be foreman of the stick-dispensing department; Ms. Nguyen Thi Due to be foreman of the packaging department; and a woman from the North was allowed to guard the factory gate to replace the cruel and ridiculous foreman. Working hours were reduced from 16 hours to 12 hours per day. The bosses also had to implement other demands to a certain extent. Once again, the victorious struggle of the workers at the Match Factory quickly had a positive impact on the struggle movement at the Wood Factory and other factories in Vinh-Ben Thuy.
Due to her outstanding achievements in the struggle movements at the Match Factory, Nguyen Thi Ninh was mobilized by the Central Region Party Committee to work as a communications officer for the Central Region Party Committee during the revolutionary climax of 1930-1931, which culminated in the Nghe Tinh Soviet. Communications was an extremely important and also very dangerous job. The most challenging and fierce time was during the recession, when the leaders of the Central Region Party Committee sacrificed themselves one after another and fell into the enemy's net (Le Mao, Nguyen Duc Canh, Nguyen Phong Sac...)
With the vicious curse "If there is Nghe Tinh, there will be no rich, if there is no Nghe Tinh, there will be no poor", the French colonialists and their henchmen brutally murdered cadres, party members and revolutionary masses. In many places in the province, there were mass graves such as in Phuc Son (Anh Son), Phuc Chau, Phu Long (Hung Nguyen district), Ngu Phuc, Vo Liet (Thanh Chuong district)... Secret agents and soldiers often went to check and arrest revolutionary cadres from around midnight to 2 am. In the Ben Thuy area (as well as many other areas), they cut down trees, leaving them only waist-high or lower to easily control passersby. In De Thap street (Vi Ninh's hometown), they built 4 high guard towers on 4 sides of the street to control passersby. Those who went to work were only allowed to pass by during the designated hours.
Overcoming all difficulties and dangers, Vi Ninh dodged the dense network of sieges to deliver leaflets of the Regional Party Committee to localities in Nghe An province and the entire Nghi Xuan region (Ha Tinh).
Vi Ninh's family's livelihood still came from the small salary at the match factory and her husband's job as a porter. When the factory owners laid off a large number of workers whom they considered to be politically active, Vi Ninh also lost her job, and the family's life became even more difficult. But what made her husband hesitant was that they had been married for a long time but had not yet had a child. Seeing his wife working secretly, he became more worried about her life and the peace of the family. She patiently chose her words to explain to her husband about the situation of losing her country and her home, because of the need for someone to go out and save the country and the people...
By the end of 1931, the key cadres of the Central Region Party Committee were only comrades.Le Viet Thuatand Nguyen Loi. Vi Ninh and Nguyen Loi created a very secret headquarters of the Regional Party Committee right in the area of De Thap Street. She persuaded her husband to give the family's precious wooden furniture to the Regional Party Committee. That secret location was in a wild area with dense trees and many sharp thorny melon trees, where no one went. Nguyen Loi and Vi Ninh asked other comrades to buy many raincoats to use as roofing sheets to protect from the rain. Comrade Secretary of the Regional Party Committee Le Viet Thuat was always there, and no one else was allowed to go there besides Nguyen Loi and Vi Ninh. Vi Ninh persuaded her brother-in-law Le Viet Loi to pretend to catch fish in the nearby area every day and keep an eye out to see if anyone came near, then find a way to inform Nguyen Loi and Vi Ninh.
Thanks to the protection of the leadership core of the Regional Party Committee, until the end of 1931 and the beginning of 1932, the Nghe An and Ha Tinh Provincial Party Committees still received instructions from the Central Regional Party Committee. Therefore, the situation of recklessness and spontaneity was overcome, the loss of life of party members and revolutionary masses was reduced, and the movement was still maintained in some places in the two provinces.
In the Directive of the Central Region Party Committee sent to Nghe An Provincial Party Committee on August 13, 1931, there is a paragraph:“...Each Party committee level must send reserve cadres to replace each other when captured by the enemy... In places where everything was lost, they searched for the membership numbers of old mass associations, used the book “Shipwreck Diary” and recalled the struggles of last year to encourage their enthusiasm and re-establish new organizations... During the period of enemy terror, despite losing contact with superiors, comrades still operated as usual...”.
One day at the end of August 1931, when Vi Ninh was on a business trip, she received news that soldiers from Hung Nguyen district came to her house with the district chief's order to summon Nguyen Thi Ninh to the district office. Knowing that she had been exposed and could not escape the dense network of secret agents, she calmly returned to the Regional Party Committee office to report on her work and say goodbye: "They have sent soldiers to arrest me, but you guys just stay put, keep that cave a secret for yourselves. Even if I die, I will not reveal anything nor accept anything. You guys just stay put.”
When comrade Nguyen Loi discussed with Ms. Vi Ninh not to return home, the Regional Party Committee would introduce her to work elsewhere. Vi Ninh replied: “Where can I go that they can’t catch me? The only thing you can do is not confess, not confess, as you said. Besides, I still have a family. So you guys just let me go out and let them catch me. What will they do to us?”
Vi Ninh had thought it through. Even if he ran away, he would not be able to escape, and in just a few days his house would be destroyed and his family would be harmed because of them. Very confident in his conscience, responsibility and willpower, Vi Ninh calmly entered the prison, after introducing to the Regional Party Committee a female comrade to replace him in the traffic work for the Regional Party Committee.
She confided to her fellow soldiers that if she did not confess or admit anything, the enemy would have no evidence to charge and sentence her, and she could be imprisoned for a few months and then released... But the reality was not as simple as Vi Ninh had thought. She was interrogated in Hung Nguyen prison and then in Vinh prison. It is difficult to recount all the endlessly brutal tortures the prison guards endured on a slim woman like Vi Ninh. They used four ropes to tie her hands and feet, then pulled her body up in the middle of the room and swung her body to hit the wall. In the four corners of the room, four soldiers were ready with whips, occasionally lashing them with shouts and questions, demanding confessions.
When Nguyen Loi was later imprisoned, the jailers took him to see them torture Vi Ninh and Cu Le in the hammock style as mentioned above. A few days later, Nguyen Loi was also tortured in the same way and was also whipped with steel wire. Vi Ninh endured the hammock style of torture for 1 month and 20 days, but she still did not reveal what the enemy wanted to know.
The savage actions of the evil spirits devastated Vi Ninh's body in a terrible way, it seemed like she was no longer alive. Her whole body was swollen, her legs were purple with blood, her arms were swollen to the point where the rope was not visible, her skin was ulcerated, maggots were wriggling, blood oozed out, making her faint, her hair hung down like a hanged person, her mouth was wide open, her eyes were sunken, it looked so painful.
Vi Ninh described the miserable prison scene in a few verses:
Hands locked, legs shackled, body aching
The shirt and pants were painfully sticky.
Looking at the prison food, I shiver forever.
With hungry mosquitoes awake all night
Because her hands were swollen, Vi Ninh could not feed herself. The women in prison took turns helping her eat and change her clothes. When she was held in solitary confinement, she had to bend down to eat rice to stay alive and continue fighting.
Although there was a person working in traffic for the Party (at the provincial level) who could not bear the torture and declared that she was a traffic officer of the Provincial Party Committee, she still stubbornly refused to admit it.
Seeing Vi Ninh's wounded body, a prison guard shuddered and gritted his teeth, exclaiming: "Wow, this communist bandit is so brave! I have never seen a woman as brave as this, even when she died she still refused to open her mouth."
At Vinh prison, Nguyen Thi Ninh and Nguyen Thi Nghia (from the North) were typical examples of great courage, demonstrating absolute loyalty to the Communist Party and the revolutionary path that leader Nguyen Ai Quoc had outlined.
Although his body was destroyed, Vi Ninh was still very alert and calm, his conscience was not troubled because he had not done anything harmful to the revolution, to his comrades, and to his compatriots. Perhaps Vi Ninh only had one great pain when he learned that the secret agency of the Regional Party Committee had been exposed. That was the place that Nguyen Loi and Vi Ninh had worked hard to create and protect for quite a long time, but they did not expect the enemy to find out. Even more painful was that comrade Le Viet Thuat, the last Secretary of the Regional Party Committee of the Nghe Tinh Soviet movement, was also arrested and died in the Vinh prison cell, very close to where Vi Ninh was imprisoned.
Political prisoners and ordinary prisoners in Vinh prison for many generations all admired and loved Vi Ninh. Whenever there was an opportunity, fellow prisoners gathered to care for and comfort Vi Ninh and organized a struggle to demand the prison release a person who had been tortured to the point of disability without enough evidence to convict him.
Because they could not get any secrets from the prisoner who had died and come back to life, because there was no evidence to prosecute and because of the continuous struggle of political prisoners in Vinh prison, by the end of 1934, the French colonialists and their henchmen had to release Nguyen Thi Ninh.
Although her body was disabled, Vi Ninh's spirit and strong will were like a block of tempered steel, unshakeable. She kept her sacred promise to the Central Region Party Committee to maintain her communist qualities, not to succumb to the enemy's power, and to resolutely protect the Party's secrets, even if she had to sacrifice her youth.
Nguyen Thi Ninh is truly a shining example of communism of Nghe An Party Committee.