I still remember the 2 refugees camps that my family lived at, after fleeing Vietnam. I only have strong memories of 2nd Indonesian one because our family was only at 1st Malaysian one for a short time before we were moved to the Indonesian refugees camp. I want to go & pay respects to an Uncle who died & is buried there. My cousin, Bill, was born in field hospital at Palang refugee camp.
This #documentary shows almost exact same difficult experiences that my parents had, trying to get sponsorship to come to Canada, when in refugee camp.
Please watch these vids - to get a bit of an idea of what me & my family lived through to get to Canada & to honour the 200,000+ people who died, trying to find freedom & safety.
Subtitled. Some vets of 1st female only division are in documentary. One of them was a leader my big Auntie served under from 1968-1972. My Auntie Chan was injured by mortar fire & had to leave frontlines. She worked resistance army radio dispatch after her recovery for 2 yrs.
It was a true people's resistance because almost everyone who joined did it voluntarily, after witnessing mass atrocities of loved ones, seeing US forces bomb entire villages to ashes & using #AgentOrange on us. The citizen volunteers had zero military experiences & were regular citizens prior. Everyone from doctors to taxi drivers to lawyers to news vendors to university professors to mechanics to housewives to college students to farmers & everyone in between. https://youtu.be/DVpo6k3n6II?si=J-7PeVS919uH0C2X
Prior to joining the resistance army, my big Aunt was a nurse at Saigon hospital. Same hospital I was born in. She wasn't a violent person or anyone who ever thought she'd be holding any gun, much less using one in a live war. She only joined after US bombed a school & killed over 15 people she knew. Then witnessed US kidnapping 3 of her classmates & their bodies dropped off on road. My Aunt joined after experiencing all of that & thinking she'd be killed too. #AsianMastodon
IF you want to start understanding why everyday citizens join citizen resistance armies - start understanding that almost no one really wants to & most only join them when they feel there is no other options & the rest of the world doesn't care if they live or die. IF you want to stop more resistance armies from forming - you need to listen to voices of the oppressed more than voices of folks doing the oppressing. #AsianMastodon
The USA & Canada tried to rewrite our true history. I'm not OK with that so I am going to keep showing folks - our side - as not just war refugees but as people who had family members in longtime resistance armies - against foreign invaders & colonial forces. Vietnamese people have never lost any wars - despite being lesser equipped with weaponry. I am proud to be a Saigon war baby ✊️
We are some of the toughest human souls on Earth.
We survive EVERYTHING & still don't forget how to smile!
Reminder - we fought & beat off France, Japan & Russia before USA too. Then China as well.
With our little lesser armed peasant armies - filled with determination for freedoms, from colonization & imperialism forces. We were constantly underestimated because the bigger, more well armed foreign forces underestimated our ingenuity, love for lands & fierce united determination.
Even when USA tried to team up against us, they lost.
YOU NEED TO STOP LISTENING TO WARMONGERING US MEDIA.
THEY & US GOVERNMENT HAS NEVER CARED ABOUT CIVILIANS.
I am yelling because it seems you folks don't understand - you're being too nice & quiet as thousands of innocent ppl are being slaughtered, using your tax monies.
REMEMBER WHAT USA DID IN VIETNAM. REMEMBER HOW THEY LIED FOR YEARS. I AM A LIVING SURVIVOR. I REFUSE TO LET USA KEEP LYING!
@jaycee I come from Teochew & Tai Oi backgrounds. Imperialism & colonialism tried genociding us. My family & our peoples, on both sides, have faced two different & multiple genocides in different times & we are still here. We ain't going away.
Body Count's album Born Dead came out in 1994. I was in what the rest of the world would call High School, the title song was heavy, both musically and in its content, this kind of narrative was rare for 90s teens growing up on mainstream media. However, it was 100% correct then, as it is now.
On tour the band changed the lyrics, In London they added "Born Jamaican", in Berlin "Born Turkish" etc.
In 3 decades we have not moved the dial on civilization.
Did you notice the money that went into music and media after LA burned. No more Public Enemy, we got P Diddy in a suit under a disco ball. That was deliberate.
@Jeramee Lied about Laos, lied about Cambodia, lied about East Timor - TONS more that US government blatantly lied about. Even when faced with hard evidence, they still refused to fully come clean & take responsibility.
The US government courts denied a legal suit for Vietnamese Agent Orange human damages - denying they caused human deaths & still kids born w/with AO defects. They paid US ppl afflicted by AO though. This is another reason why some of us still hate US government.
@msquebanh When I watched the Ken Burns documentary about the war it was the first time I had ever seen anything that showed anything of detail or with sympathy for the Vietnamese experience. It change my view dramatically and I found it very enlightening and refreshing (if that's a word that can be used in connection with that war). Thanks for posting. I will check it out.
@tuckerteague Thank you for wanting to expand your mind. This documentary upsets a lot of US folks - especially ones who created false narratives about Vietnamese peoples.
@tuckerteague My big Auntie joined this very first all female division about 9 months after it was formed. They did a strong matriarch rising warrior women call in Saigon on their very first recruitment walk through calls & my Aunt decided to quit her job & join the resistance.
@msquebanh@tuckerteague My perspective on America’s role in that region gained a whole lot of breadth when I visited Thailand. Spending a few weeks in the same place and getting to know peoples stories, I went from just feeling vaguely “bad” about America’s role to feeling furious about just a few of America’s specific actions, and ardent to understand more of the narrative that our Masters here try to keep from me.
@cmdrmoto@tuckerteague Thank you, for wanting to learn more. The end of the conflicts in Vietnam fed into battles in Timor. I'll be posting about related South East Asian struggles soon. East Timor will be one of those. There's several others that deserve more worldwide attentions too.
@cmdrmoto@tuckerteague There's a ton of expose documentaries that both Vietnam & US govts want to hide from public viewing because it harms their new 'let's be biz friends' money relationships. I'm going to keep trying to find ways to get those banned documentaries, shown. Vietnam is still one of the most censored nations in the world.
@cmdrmoto@tuckerteague Palang is now a living museum & historic site. I'm upset about white folks who go there - trying to get famous for doing their amateur ghost hunting shit there & not respecting the fact that many of us who lived there are still alive & some of our loved ones died there.
Would folks be OK tramping around a lot of unmarked graves on their lands? Likely, NOT. Yet; they're OK, coming to island as tourists & trampling on our dead loved ones.
@cmdrmoto@tuckerteague Palang deserves the same protections as other important historical sites & should never be a place to be exploited by tourists. It was both a place of temporary refuge & also place of forever nightmares, for many of of living boat people survivors.
@cmdrmoto@tuckerteague We are now entering the 5th generation of kids affected by #AgentOrange & #USA refuses to pay for #damages inflicted upon millions of #innocent people & refuses to help clean up lands & waters they have #poisoned by their #biochemical#warfare. 40+ years later & our peoples, our soils & waters are poisoned. We lost all our wildlife to it. It kills all plants.
@tuckerteague I will soon share about a couple of experiences I have had with US veterans, who have a lot of regrets about their roles in the war & how we made peace with each other decades after. I believe there's always ways to bridge - even with people who once saw me & my family as enemies they should kill. I don't want to kill them. I want to know they learned that killing us wasn't OK & that it's not them we're angry towards - it is the #USGovt we can't forgive. More reasons why...
This was a documentary that right wing people tried to ban from being shown to university students - because it didn't show USA in good light. It showed a completely different perspective than the messages being indoctrinated into USA public at the time. It was considered, dangerous to show a lot of the material used in this documentary.
It's nearing anniversary time of me & my family arriving in Canada. I have a ton of early memories flooding back. I wanted to share some of what those are - so people who may not know much about us Chinese Vietnamese war refugees can learn more, from an actual survivor & not via whitewashed false narratives.
At Palang, there was only 2 other field medical station tents available for a population of over 6000 when we were there. It increased to several thousands more people after Malaysia made it illegal for Vietnamese boat ppl to land on their shores(patrolled by gunships after cut off time), more desperate refugees ended up at Palang.
The lack of essential medical supplies & nutritional food resulted in thousands dying at the camps.
You could smell stench of death, daily, within the camp quarters. I knew what rotting dead people smelled like, from seeing/smelling them before we fled Vietnam. You never forget that smell.
We fled just before worst of Chinese & Vietnam battles happened & under heavy persecution of Chinese peoples by ppl who targeted Chinese folks. Had we waited a few months longer to flee, we'd have been returned to Vietnam, by Malaysia govt.
What you couldn't escape was the stench from dead bodies washing up on shores, daily. I remember looking down from small hillside, to where another big refugees boat had been pulled up. Only 40 or so survivors were brought to processing center. More than 200 died trying to arrive. I remember Mom carrying me, as she was helping to dig graves for all who didn't survive. I remember helping to light candles & incense as we did almost nightly ceremonies for thousands of dead folks.
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