An Important Visit

Welcoming Address by Sandra Mccallum on the Occasion of the Visit of the Delegation of Vietnamese Women

On behalf of everyone present here tonight and of all New Zealanders concerned for Peace and National Independence and Sovereignity for Vietnam, I wish you welcome to New Zealand.

It is indeed an honour that the four of you, representing the Women's organisations of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and South Vietnam should be with us tonight. It is very fitting that you, a delegation of Vietnamese women should make your visit here during International Women's Year.

International Women's Year means many different things to many different people. But by your visit to New Zealand you focus our attention on the role of women in fighting imperialism — in your case United States imperialism. Your struggle has shown women all over the world that women's liberation will come about not from attacking males, but in joining with males as equals in a common struggle against those structures and systems that enslave people. This is not of course to suggest that we do not reprimand our male comrades when they behave in a chauvanistic way towards us! Neither is it to suggest that women should not come together as women in their own organisations to work for both, issues that immediately effect them, and for the wider struggles in society.

Indeed, it is organisations such as the two Vietnamese Women's organisations represented here tonight, and the Women's Union of Albania that I was lucky enough to visit this time last year that point the way to how we should develop a women's movement in New Zealand that would work for the genuine interests of New Zealand women and of the New Zealand people as a whole.

Your visit to New Zealand has been a victory for the anti-war movement in New Zealand.

This is the first time that the New Zealand government has allowed Vietnamese people from PRG territory to visit New Zealand. Up until now the New Zealand government has not even recognised that the Provisional Revolutionary Government exists. They said that the PRG did not control any territory or people, that it had no government structure, and that it didn't function as a government. According to the New Zealand government's logic, two of our guests here tonight did not even exist.

However the New Zealand government finally had to face facts and now, although not yet recognising the PRG dipolmatically, has been forced at least to recognise the existence of the PRG.

I have just spoken about how your coming to New Zealand has been a victory for the anti-war movement in New Zealand. But I would like to mention an even greater victory that is going on right now. This is the recent victories of the Patriotic People of both Vietnam and Cambodia against United States imperialism and its puppet regimes in both countries. Never has United States imperialism been given such a hiding. The Vietnamese and Cambodian people have indeed shown that Imperialism is only a Paper Tiger.

Unfortunately the losses sustained by the Vietnamese people, especially over the past three decades, have been large. The loss of life, of buildings and of vegetation, has been tremendous. The DRV and the PRG need our support in terms of medical, food and reconstruction aid.

Later on tonight we will see that result of the efforts of one group in New Zealand to provide aid to these areas. I hope tonight that the rest of us can commit ourselves to working to raise money to help heal the wounds of war and build a new, free. United Vietnam.

Comrades, thank you very much for being here with us tonight. Long live the friendship between the New Zealand and Vietnamese people! Victory for the Vietnamese revelution!