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Anti-Americanism Sweeps Vietnam Says Former Teaching Assistant

NO WRITER ATTRIBUTED

South Vietnam is experiencing a new broad-based anti-American rebellion-blacked out by the press-that is "the most significant political event since the Tet offensive," a former Harvard teaching assistant recently expelled from Vietnam claimed here yesterday.

"The number-one enemy has become the Americans," said Cynthia Frederick in a press conference at the Cambridge Institute, a social center funded by the Ford Foundation. "The anti-American feeling in Vietnam is now just as extensive as the damage from the American presence."

Two weeks ago, South Vietnamese anti-war, anti-American groups formed a nationwide "Popular Front for the Defense of Peace" to coordinate peace activities. Frederick, who said she was expelled for her part in organizing the coalition, explained "the Popular Front's demands are more militant than the NLF's. The PFDP demands immediate, total, unconditional withdrawal of foreign troops-not the negotiated withdrawal the NLF seeks.

The new movement, she said, is strongly nationalistic. "Even the Catholics, who had for a long time been the most outspoken anti-Communists, are very much involved."

There has been "virtually a blackout of news" about the anti-American unrest in both the South Vietnamese and American press, Frederick said. "Political repression is increasing. It is inevitable that a crackdown is going to begin."

"If the movement does remain unpublicized, I imagine the South Vietnamese government will really oppress it," Frederick added. "Unless the truth is made known to the American public, our government may well be responsible for one of the biggest bloodbaths there to date."

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