Hoàng Minh Chính

Hoàng Minh Chính ( born November 16, 1922 in the province of Ha Nam, † February 7, 2008 in Hanoi ) was a prominent Vietnamese dissident.

1937 Chinh joined the revolution. He was once a leading figure in the Communist Party, where he held several important posts. In the Vietnamese government, he was Vice - Minister of Education, Deputy Director Nguyen Ai Quoc Party School and director of the Marxist-Leninist Philosophy Institute. He was up in the 1960s as one of the leading ideologues of the regime. However, he soon became increasingly disillusioned with the Communist ideology and called for more democracy. He also criticized some of the party decisions. He had many years in prison and spend under house arrest.

The last decade of his life Chinh was actively involved in the democracy movement in his home country, as in the founding of the Democratic Party. In an unprecedented concession Chinh 2005 was permitted by the Vietnamese government, a trip to the U.S. in order to be dealt with against pancreatic cancer. During the stay, he appeared before a congressional committee to report on the situation in Vietnam. He called this to put greater pressure on the Vietnamese government. The speech sparked an aggressive campaign in the Vietnamese media against Chinh, but he was allowed to return. In 2006 he participated in the largest democracy campaign in part so far, but younger Democrats demanded a clean break with the past. This was not possible due to the communist past Chinhs.

The health Chinhs deteriorated in 2007. Meanwhile, he suffered from a number of diseases and spent much time in the hospital. He died in early 2008 at the age of 85 years, on the first day of the new lunar year.