Vietnam marks 40 years since fall of Saigon

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam – Vietnam was set Thursday, April 30, to mark the 40th anniversary of Saigon’s fall with a huge military parade celebrating the moment their communist forces ended a decades-long conflict and delivered a painful blow to American moral and military prestige.

The center of Vietnam’s usually bustling southern business hub was sealed off ahead of the parade marking the moment tanks smashed through the gates of the Presidential Palace in the then southern capital of Saigon – now named Ho Chi Minh City.

“That day my comrades and I were overjoyed as our country was totally liberated and we gained freedom and independence,” veteran Le Cong Bui, 63, who planned to attend the parade, told Agence France-Presse. 

The Northern victors went on to reunite the country under a communist government after a draining war which eviscerated much of Vietnam, killing millions of its people as well as 58,000 American servicemen.

The conflict was also bitterly divisive in the US and still haunts the country.

As the first Cold War conflict to be covered extensively covered by the western press – and the first to be lost by a modern superpower that thought itself unbeatable – it remains seared into the public imagination, most often as a tragic waste of blood and treasure.

The winning side has also struggled with the meaning of the war as the nominally communist government deepens its embrace of market capitalism.

For decades, Hanoi has celebrated its military victory as a means to legitimize its ongoing authoritarian rule. 

The communists’ 1975 victory was a moment of global historic importance, said Vietnam expert Jonathan London, at City University of Hong Kong. 

With the parade the party is trying to both commemorate victory and “erase any possibility that its achievements over the last 40 years have fallen short of the mark,” he said.

Vietnam has come a long way since the end of the war, and especially over the last 20 years since the adoption of market reforms, London added, but wartime anniversaries still play a key role for the older generation. 

Yet increasingly, the public is indifferent or even hostile to such shows of official patriotism.

“I don’t care about this parade – it’s bad for business,” said Nguyen Thi Dieu, 25, a vendor who sells cold water and snacks in the city center told Agence France-Presse.

“The parade is just for the TV cameras and for the top leaders, not for people like me.”

Vietnam remains a one-party state where dissent is not tolerated and all media is state-controlled. 

Local press has run fawning stories ahead of the anniversary, heavy on wartime heroism.

But online, where many citizens now prefer to read their news, criticism of the anniversary is more widespread.

“Let the past go, it’s been 40 years,” wrote businessman Tran Minh Chien on his Facebook page in a typical comment, urging the government not to waste time and money on a major military parade. – Rappler.com