Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai

Biography

Minh Khai was born on 1 November 1910 in Vinh, Nghệ An Province, Annam. In 1927, she co-founded the New Revolutionary Party of Vietnam (Tân Việt Cách mạng Đảng) which was a predecessor of the Communist Party of Vietnam. In 1930, she went to Hong Kong and became a secretary for Hồ Chí Minh (at the time known as Nguyễn Ái Quốc) in the office of the Orient Bureau of the Comintern. In 1931 she and Hồ became romantically involved. They planned to get married, but were separated when Minh Khai was arrested and jailed by British police on suspicion of involvement in subversive activities. Very little is known about Hồ and Minh Khai's relationship: according to some reports, they were in fact married; some historians believe that they passed each other off as husband and wife without ever having had an official marriage ceremony. The modern government of Vietnam maintains that Hồ Chí Minh never had any romantic relationships in life, let alone got married.

From 1931 to 1934, she was jailed by the British administration in Hong Kong. In 1934, she and Lê Hồng Phong were voted to be attendees in the Seventh Congress of Comintern in Moscow. Later she married Lê.

In 1936, she returned to Vietnam and became the top leader of the communists in Saigon. She was seized by the French colonial government in 1940 and was executed by firing squad the next year. Her husband Lê had been jailed in June 1939, and later died in the tiger cages at Poulo Condore prison in September 1942.

Today, Minh Khai is honoured as a revolutionary martyr by the Vietnamese Communist Party, and some roads, schools, and administrative units in Vietnam are named after her.