Raymonde Dien was a French communist activist. She became known for being imprisoned during ten months in 1950 after a protest against the Indochina war.
Life
On February 23, 1950, Raymonde Dien, a shorthand typist, participated in an improvised demonstration, alongside several hundred other members and supporters of the PCF, the French Communist Party. They demonstrated at the train station of Saint-Pierre-des-Corps, in order to slow down a military train transporting armoured vehicles destined for Indochina. The crowd occupied the train tracks, and some participants laid down on them. Once the demonstration was over, the military personnel in charge of the convoy signalled a woman wearing trousers to the police forces. She was arrested by the police. They matched her to the description and had witnesses recognize her. They accused her of having laid down on the tracks. She was imprisoned in Tours. She was the only demonstrator to be prosecuted; the secretary of the railroaders' section of the CGT, a French trade union associated with the Communist party, also imprisoned, was freed after three weeks. She was prosecuted for "participation in an act of deterioration of equipment susceptible to be used for national Defense." She was transferred to the Fort of Hâ in Bordeaux, where she was incarcerated with two ex-secretaries of the Gestapo. The lawyer Marie-Louise Jacquier-Cachin defended her, but a military court condemned her after a two-day trial, on June 1st, 1950, to a year in prison and fifteen years of deprivation of civic rights. Her trial was clearly political. Alongside Henri Martin, she became a symbol of the opposition to the Indochina war. A campaign to support her was organized in France and in Communist countries. Maurice Thorez, general secretary of the Communist party, declared his support to both Henri Martin and her, and they also became part of an activist song: "Henri Martin, Raymonde Dien / Don't want us to kill the Vietnamese / They love peace so much / That they are suspect to the judges." Raymonde Dien was freed on Christmas in 1950. Between 1953 and 1958, she was one of the leaders of the Union des jeunes filles de France, the women's branch of the PCF's youth organization.
