Tyranny triumphed in Vietnam
A million people fled the “people’s paradise.”

The 30^th anniversary of communist victory over South Vietnam has now passed.  Hanoi celebrated by releasing 7,000 political prisoners from concentration camps.  Many more remain imprisoned long after world socialism extinguished freedom throughout Indochina.

In 1975, when Communist tanks burst through Saigon, terror swept the city. Mothers, facing imminent death, thrust babies into the hands of complete strangers, hoping they might survive the coming bloodbath.  GIs and diplomats evacuated Vietnam clutching those infants, and half a planeload of orphans died when one plane crashed during a daring takeoff attempt.

Across Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, bloody retribution followed.  Anti-war activists claimed that communist victory would usher in a “people’s paradise.”  But when communism arrived, a million Vietnamese risked death, fleeing that imagined “paradise.”  Thousands were raped, tortured and drowned at sea, yet the exodus continued for a generation.

Concentration camps--euphemistically called “reeducation camps”--became Vietnam’s growth industry with the fall of Saigon. “Reeducation” meant death for one in three inmates.  We will never know the enormity of Indochina’s postwar killing, but it was certainly huge.  In Cambodia alone, 3 million were executed—some for the “crime” of wearing eyeglasses.

The terror unleashed by communism never really ended.  Today, the Hmong of Vietnam’s Central Highlands still suffer death for refusing to renounce their Christian faith.

Back home, Americans welcomed Vietnamese refugees.  Those immigrants proved a blessing to this nation. Today, there are no citizens more grateful, more patriotic, more studious or harder-working than Vietnamese immigrants.

Acknowledging the tyranny of communism, in 2004, Chapter 970 of the Code of Virginia was enacted to recognize that the former flag of South Vietnam “symbolizes freedom and democracy and represents the cultural heritage of Vietnamese-Americans.”  I am proud to have bled for freedom in Vietnam; I am proud to have helped enact the law recognizing its free heritage; and I am proud that while communists celebrate their 30-year triumph of tyranny, America remains a safe haven for those who escaped the “people’s paradise.” 

Colonel Richard H. Black (Ret.)
Virginia House of Delegates
32^nd District

[In 1967, Delegate Black, then a lieutenant in the 1^st Marine Regiment, was wounded while attacking Viet Cong positions at the Hoi An River.]

[Posted 5/3/05]