| Money flows from Ho Chi Minh City, it's Vietnam's richest.
However, North Vietnam controls the South. Northerners hold all administrative
and police posts. Regulations forbid any person who fought against the
communists from owning property and the repression extends three generations:
these laws apply to a person's children and children's children. We met
an ex-South Vietnamese soldier who felt abandoned by his American allies.
The Vietnamese government branded him a traitor, sent him to a re-education
camp for 10 years (really a prisoner of war camp), and today keeps him
from taking a job, getting a pension, buying property, or owning a business.
His children and grandchildren suffer under the same bans, including no
education. He wanted the USA to grant him refugee status but this never
happened. He claims that a lot of soldiers who were loyal to the USA and
South Vietnamese government have lost everything and receive no relief.
Now he takes money under-the-table as a tour guide (he learned English
during the War fighting with Americans). He says that the war is over
but not forgotten by either side. Repression of the south keeps a stranglehold. |
