Isn't it crazy how there can be so much going on in the
world and you don’t even realize it? It isn’t until you take that brave step
outside of your comfortable bubble that you can actually see the world for what
it is. As I was looking through Salgado’s book, Migrations, I found a section titled “The Vietnamese Immigration.” I
immediately thought of the Vietnam War that ended as taboo in America. But as I
researched the stories of the refugees from that war I realized there was so
much more behind it than the dishonor of American Soldiers. To start relatively
at the beginning, Vietnam was colonized by France, but during the Second World
War the French government collaborated with the Japanese until Japan overthrew
the French to encourage Vietnamese Nationalism. Vietnam eventually declared
independence but France wasn’t willing to give up their control, so war broke
out. France lost and through the Geneva conference the country was split into a
Communist North Vietnam and an American-backed South Vietnam. The Communist
group Viet Cong planned to reunite Vietnam through communist rule. US troops mobilized
along with multiple allies to try and resist the establishment of a communist
government, until ceasefire was arranged.
This agreement was only respected for a short time however, because
Saigon eventually fell to communist reign and united the country into the
Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The war had horrible repercussions for the
Vietnamese people and up to 2 million were killed and there was massive
displacement of the civilian population. The term “boat people” came from those
who would try and cross the South China Sea using a boat to escape the traumas
of the communist reign. The number of boat people increased by four times and
most ended up in refugee camps, 195,000 of these landing in the Hong Kong
detention centers in the photographs. And that is where the pictures come into
the story. For the first while as the boat people were arriving they would be
taken to various countries such as US, Canada, Britain, and Australia. But as
the boat people were arriving by the thousands every month a law was adopted
that declared all newcomers as illegal immigrants and they were sent to a detention
center if they were not screened as a political refugee by the United Nations. The
conditions inside of these detention centers are horrific.
Women and girls are
raped, both children and adults are tortured, and the food was scarce. It
breaks my heart because there is a statue of liberty standing at the entrance
of one of the detention centers symbolizing how some people dream to make it to
America, and that is all that these people want. They left their country to
make it to a better situation, only to find them in a prison. The picture that
impacted me the most was of the children. In the description it says that “inside
this prison there are thousands of children who have never seen a dog, a cow, a
horse, or a garden. Their school inside the detention center is behind bars;
their lives like those of their parents, are surrounded by concrete, iron
fences, and barbed wire.” I can’t even imagine living my entire life without
ever really experiencing anything. These poor people aren’t really welcome
anywhere, they left their home country, but they aren’t accepted in their new
country so they have no real purpose for themselves. This entire nation of
people has suffered while I sit in a heated room with electronics and friends
and I had no idea that this is what goes on the opposite of the world. It’s all
a matter of going out and finding out what really is going happening. “The key
to the future is understanding the present.”
Works Cited
Salgado, Sebastião. "Russian Immigrants." Migrations: Humanity in Transition. New York: Aperture, 2000. 61-73. Print.
"Vietnam Divided." Through My Eyes. N.p., n.d.
Web. 20 Sept. 2012. http://www.throughmyeyes.org.uk/server/show/nav.23334
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