VLVL 4: War, politics and love

[jbor]

on 31/8/03 11:40 PM, Otto at ottosell at yahoo.de wrote:

> My knowledge is based on the first-hand accounts of many
>> hundreds of South Vietnamese refugees living in the local communities I
> work
>> with, most of them pretty certain they'd been living in a sovereign state
>> all their lives until they were forced to flee, and also pretty adamant
>> about the social and political differences between their own people and
>> their North Vietnamese oppressors.
>> 
> 
> I'm sorry but these people naturally tell things only from their point of
> view which isn't, given the fact that they've left Vietnam, very objective.
> Many of the so-called "boat people" over here aren't refugees (except the
> ones who worked for the corrupt government or the US-troops) but came for
> economical reasons. I wouldn't base my knowledge of WW-2 on tales of Germans
> who went to Argentina or Paraguay.

Many of "the so-called 'boat people'" over here had been in fact boat
people, and for all the people who managed finally to make it to land in
their leaky, overcrowded fishing boats and sampans there were another two or
three boatloads who didn't, whose boats sank or who were intercepted by
pirates. These people weren't working for the "corrupt government or the US
troops", and they weren't rich -- these are myths. They worked in schools
and universities, were farmers, drove taxis, whatever, and virtually anyone
who ran a shop or small business was a target after 1975. As I said
originally, and I agree with Mark, you have a lop-sided view of the Vietnam
War and its aftermath, and there is no comparison whatsoever between the
real experiences of hundreds of thousands, millions, of Vietnamese refugees
who fled the peninsula in the mid-70s and '80s and "tales" of Germans who
escaped to South America.

best