Police and plain clothed security officials broke up a charity event organized by the Catholic Church for disabled South Vietnamese war veterans in southern Tien Giang province, according to the priest who helped organize the event.
The former soldiers were prevented from accepting donations and gifts, Father Le Ngoc Thanh of Sau Bong Redemptorist Church in the city of Can Tho in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta region told Radio Free Asia recently.
The event was meant to provide gifts to South Vietnamese war veterans to mark Tet, or Vietnamese New Year.
The program was held by volunteers in cooperation with Father Ho Dac Tam of the Redemptorist Church in the Tien Giang town of Can Gio, said Father Thanh, who runs an injured Vietnamese veterans’ charity.
“We distributed donations to injured soldiers from 13 provinces,” RFA reported him as saying. “We also had events like this in Kien Giang, Bac Lieu, and Ca Mau [provinces] recently, and all was well,” he said.
However, things changed in Can Tho he said.
“Veterans gathered in Cai Lay [district] to receive their gifts. The first 10 got their gifts without any problem, but after that, the police moved in and halted the event.”
The communist state does not endorse such activities, despite them helping elderly and disabled veterans who would not otherwise receive government assistance.
Church people and volunteers then tried to move the event to the nearby city of My Tho, but this was also broken up, Father Thanh said.
“The people who halted our event were uniformed policemen, traffic policemen, security officials wearing masks, and thugs,” the priest said.
“They did not let veterans sit outside the church,” he added.
One veteran at the program who wished to remain anonymous told RFA that the Vietnamese state persecutes both South Vietnamese military war veterans and the Catholic Church.
“They did not let us inside when we arrived,” he said, referring to the security officials.
“We walked around until we met some church people outside. They told us to wait for our gifts. We did get them,” he said.
The Vietnam War veteran said he was wounded in his right hand while fighting in Quang Tri, the northernmost provincial capital of the former Republic of South Vietnam, during the 1968 Tet Offensive.
“I was very happy to hear we would receive some gifts, but I’m scared,” he added. “I am afraid of the government because I am associated with the South Vietnam government.”
The annual charity event for disabled veterans of the South Vietnam military was first launched by the Saigon Redemptorist Church in 2013.
After the fall of Saigon to communist forces in 1975, more than 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers were sent to re-education camps where they were reportedly tortured.
