HANOI: Vietnam’s former Communist Party leader Do Muoi, a revolutionary who broke out of a French prison and later led the controversial push to dismantle private businesses after the Vietnam War, died late Monday at age 101, officials said. Muoi, a party member for nearly 80 years, passed away in a military hospital in Hanoi following a long illness, the government and state media said. “Comrade Do Muoi… made many great contributions to the revolutionary cause of the party and the nation,” the official state-run Vietnam News Agency said Tuesday. Muoi escaped four years later by slipping out of his prison uniform and fleeing via a sewer drain. Muoi eventually fell in step with the party’s embrace of “Doi Moi” economic reforms starting in the 1980s, which saw Vietnam slowly open its doors to privatization and foreign investment.

Source: Manila Times October 02, 2018 16:18 UTC