Who is madam nu?

Answer 1

I think you mean Madam Nhu - she was the sister-in-law of President Ngo Dinh Diem, ruler of South Vietnam from 1955 - 63, the wife of his brother and chief political advisor Hgo Dinh Nhu. Her maiden name was Tran Le Xuan, and she was born into a wealthy aristocratic family in 1924. Her paternal grandfather was close to the French colonial administration, and her father was a French-educated lawyer before he married into the Vietnamese Royal House (her mother was grand-daughter of former Emperor Dong Khanh). Speaking only French, and unable to write in Vietnamese, Tran Le Xuan dropped out of school at an early age and focused her attentions on the dramatic arts and learning to play the piano. When she met Ngo Dinh Nhu, she decided to marry him against her mother's wishes, abandoning the family religion of Hinayana Bhuddism in order to embrace his own religion of Roman Catholicism. They married in 1943. Upon Ngo Dinh Diem's appointment as Prime Minister in 1955, he launched a campaign to run as President in the elections that October. He was elected with a landslide majority, largely thanks to political intimidation of the opposition parties that was orchestrated by Tran Le Xuan. Upon Diem's accession to the Premierhip, Xuan took the title 'Madame Nhu' and officially became South Vietnam's First Lady, Diem being unmarried. She quickly became the power behind the throne, assuming a highy influential role in the politics and running of the state. Ngo Dinh Nhu was essentially a Fascist, being an open admirer of Hitler and vehemently intolerant of liberalism. He and Madame Nhu influenced the rule of Ngo Dinh Diem as they saw fit. Madam Nhu was a ruthless, cruel manipulator, with little or no regard for the feelings or wishes of the populace. She was instrumental in the bringing in of a number of so-called 'Morality Laws', which made abortion, divorce and contraception illegal, punished adultery, and outlawed dance halls and beauty pageants. Although she made great show of tightening the nation's drug laws and stamping out opium dens, she and her husband were themselves deeply involved in organised crime, racketeering, and the drugs trade. An iconoclast, she had several statues of heroic Vietnamese women from history erected across Hanoi that bore her own features. She also founded the 'Women's Solidarity Movement', an extreme right wing female paramilitary organisation. The regime became notorious for it's massive persecution and suppression of Bhuddism in the early '60s - virulently anti-Communist, the Nhu's believed that the religion promoted tolerance and practices that were too liberal for their liking. Thus thousands of Bhuddist monks were regularly arrested, beaten up and jailed by the security forces- pro-Bhuddist activists were executed, temples and shrines destroyed, and the public encouraged to discriminate against Bhuddism. When demonstrations and rallies were held in defence of the religion, they usually ended in bloodshed, with dozens dead and hundreds more injured. When Bhuddist monk Thic Quang Duc burnt himself to death in the streets of Saigon in 1963, Madame Nhu mocked his actions, describing it as a 'barbecue' and saying 'let them burn themselves and we can keep warm'. Her parents (who President Diem had appointed to high office following his accession to power) resigned their positions in protest - devout Bhuddists, her whole family eventually disowned her for her role in the persecutions. When the United States condemned the oppressions, Madame Nhu rounded on the US as well, claiming that it was governed by weak liberals who were soft on Communism and who sought to manipulate the Vietnamese government for it's own ends. She is also reported to have ordered a blacklist drawn up of Western news correspondents whom she judged to be in sympathy with the opposition, and to have ordered that they be shot if they continued their coverage. On 1st November 1963, the Diem regime was overthrown in a military coup led by General Duong Van Minh- President Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu were assassinated. Madame Nhu was in Beverley Hills in the USA at the time with her daughter- her parents were in New York. She accused the US of being behind the coup, and (unfortunately prophetically) clared that America's problems in Vietnam were only just beginning. The new regime confiscated all of Madame Nhu's property in South Vietnam, and forbad her to return to the country. She thus moved to France, where she has been living ever since. In 1967, her 22-year old daughter Le Thuy was killed in a car crash at Longjumeau. Her parents were strangled to death in October 1986 at their home in Washington DC, for which her brother Tran Van Khiem was charged with their murder (though he never stood trial, being judged mentally incompetent to plead). Madame Mhu spent most of the 1990s living on the French Riviera, charging money for interviews and seldom making public appearances. The most recent interview she gave was in 2002, for Dan Chua Ma Chau, a Vietnamese Catholic magazine. The article was published two years later. This villianous woman is now reportedly living in Paris, where she is said to be working on her memoirs.