Vietnam’s prime minister yesterday hit out at the “barbarous crimes” of its wartime US foe as the nation marked four decades since the fall of Saigon, now called Ho Chi Minh City, an event that delivered a communist victory and a painful blow to US moral and military prestige.
The central streets of southern Ho Chi Minh City were filled with a forest of hammer and sickle flags of the Vietnamese Communist Party, as regiments of goose-stepping soldiers filed past the country’s top leaders.
In front of Independence Palace — whose gates northern tanks clattered through in one of the iconic moments of the 1975 victory — Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung struck out at the US attempt to contain the spread of communism in Southeast Asia through war in Vietnam.
“They committed countless barbarous crimes, caused immeasurable losses and pain to our people and country,” he said in an address.
The war killed millions of Vietnamese — both civilians and combatants from the divided North and South — and left hundreds of thousands more wounded.
The physical effects of conflict still linger, including through deformities that Vietnam says are caused by the dioxin Agent Orange, sprayed by the US Air Force to pare back the thick jungle used as cover by the northern guerrilla forces.
The communist victory was one of “ardent patriotism,” Dung said, hailing the reunification of Vietnam, which was cleaved apart in 1954 into the communist North and the US-backed South.
However, divisions remain — up to 1 million “boat people” fled the South in the aftermath of the conflict and now form a vocal diaspora, staunchly opposed to Vietnam’s authoritarian one-party state.
Domestically, the Communist Party is also facing rising public discontent over high-level corruption, growing inequality and its continued efforts to smother criticism.
Ties between the wartime enemies have warmed in recent years, with Washington drawing closer to Hanoi in the face of growing Chinese assertiveness in the region.
Vietnam has also long since abandoned the Soviet model and embraced the market capitalism of its one-time enemy, ushering in a period of prosperity and growth.
With public discontent rising, the authoritarian state relies heavily on its past military victories to legitimize its rule, observers say.
People used to see the war “as one for national liberation and unification,” University of Oregon associate professor of political science Tuong Vu said.
“These days, most Vietnamese perhaps believe that the war was a tragic event during which Vietnamese killed other Vietnamese... The Communist Party is no longer seen as patriotic or invincible,” he said.
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