'Requiem'

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Following our Cu Chi tunnels experience we headed back to the capital Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon as it used to be known before reunification) and after longed for showers and some lunch we headed off on a scary but hilarious cyclo tour of the city. Cyclos are the equivalent of the Indian rickshaws, only on these contraptions you sit at the front with the guy pedalling behind you rather than in front in India. This, of course, means that YOU are heading into the traffic first! Remember my description of the massed mopeds? Well all 4 million of them seemed to be heading towards us as we set off ACROSS the flow of traffic on left turns! Apparently cyclos have right of way in this crazy system and very trusting of this rule the riders seemed to be! We were taking a tour around the des res district 1 where there were many plush 5 star hotels; one would be the luxurious pad for my room mates last night in Vietnam!

We stopped at various places along the way, from the incongruous Roman Catholic Cathedral built by the French (we went inside briefly and heard a mass going on), the beautiful post office, again built by the French and decorated with elaborate maps, wooden booths for telephones (and now ATMs too!) and a huge portrait of president Ho Chi Minh. We also saw the Reunification Palace, originally built by the French but bombed during the war so that it had to be rebuilt, now looking very 70s! This is where dignitories visiting Vietnam are received.

But the main stop was a visit to the War Remnants Museum. Outside were displays of American planes tanks and helicopters (these being larger than the planes, which surprised me). Inside the museum I headed up the stairs to the third floor where I'd heard about an amazing photographic exhibition 'Requiem' made up of photos taken by war photographers from many different countries who had covered both the French and American wars in Vietnam, many who had died during the course of their important work. The images were harrowing, moving and utterly absorbing, showing you the horrors of war that no human being should have live through. Each photograph had a corresponding board explaining the background to the shot or the photographer who had taken it, personalising the war so well that the stories brought tears to my eyes. To see mothers clasping children to them with terror in their eyes as they pleaded for their own lives or that of their husband or wading across the river to evade capture. Truly heart breaking.

There were photos of American war crimes, water torture, dragging bodies behind tanks tied by ropes, soldiers pretending to shoot a father to get information out of his son. The irony of the US declaration of independence (displayed next to the photos) would have been laughable if it weren't so horrific 'We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness'. Americans being more equal than everyone else obviously you understand! The conclusion of the Bertrand Russell Tribunal was also displayed and is pretty damning stuff:

"The United States bears responsibility for the use of force in Viet Nam, and has, therefore, committed against the country a crime of aggression, a crime against peace... In subjecting the civillian population and civilian targets of the DVRN to an intense and systematic bombardment, the USA has committed a crime of war. There is on the part of the US armed forces utilization or testing of weapons prohibited by the laws of war (CBUs, napalm, phosphorus bombs, combat gases, toxic chemicals). The prisoners of war captured by the US armed forces are subjected to treatments prohibited by the laws of war. The US armed forces subject the civilian populations to inhuman treatments prohibited by international law. The US government is guilty of genocide vis-a-vis the Vietnamese people."

Another statement displayed summarised for me the attrocious nature of any war; civilians, innocent and wanting to just get on with their lives caught up in something not of their making: "Hamlets and villages of farmers becoming battle fields is a great characteristic of the US war in Vietnam. 80% of the Vietnamese people are farmers. In the US attacks, shellings and bombings have killed more people than soldiers. There were about 3 million people killed, 4 million people wounded in the recent war. The war also left them homeless and forced them to flee their native villages." I read these statistics and then remembered that this kind of thing is still going on today, in stupid wars and conflicts that should not be happening. What sort of animals are we that we can let this happen to our fellow human beings. History repeats and we still don't learn. The power-crazed bastards must have their day and the innocent masses pay the price for their greed.

One of the most heart rending sections of the Requiem exhibition was seeing the affects of Agent Orange used in the Ranch Hand operation. The objective was to trigger desertification of the tropical rain forest, where the Vietnamese soldiers were hiding and making ambushes on the Americans. The defolients used for the purpose (known as agent orange), containing the carcinogenic dioxin chemical, were sprayed from aircraft day after day over the forests. Four million Vietnamese were exposed to the chemicals and even American soldiers on the ground were not avoided. The after effects of this terrible experiment were devastating to the families, causing horrific burns, health problems, birth defects such as conjoined twins and have continued effecting second generations and sometimes even third. The photographs were graphic and harrowing to see, including one of young children running, naked, burning from the effects of agent orange sprayed on them, a baby in hospital screaming in pain from burns, conjoined twins and other birth defects. So heart breaking and made me so f**king angry!

I came away from the museum with a whole new passion to make sure I oppose any more of these f**king stupid wars going on in the world and to defend the ordinary person, the little person, the one who normally has no voice, and to shout 'STOP!' I wish the minority b**tards didn't exist, I wish we could live together happily and ban ridiculous patriotism, religious nutcases, power hungry b**locks and selfishness. I wish! I wish!

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