[ndlr] L’ouvrage publié en 2010 par Truong Minh Hoa suscita une vive polémique sur Amazon et certains blogs politiques vietnamiens. Elle est alimentée par les articles virulents de cet auteur publiés sur le site Tin Paris. Au delà de ces querelles de personnes (qui révèlent de profondes fractures au sein de la communauté exilée), l’ouvrage très instructif sur le système concentrationnaire de la RSVN notamment au Sud est à signaler.

Book presentation: Two days after Saigon fell to the communists, Hoa Minh Truong walked along the path leading to the Tan Xuyen village council. He had been there many times during his army service but this time he was filled with fear. The extra-tight security included a young Viet Cong trooper who clutched a Russian-made AK-47 automatic rifle in his small hands. The gun was just one of many multi-death tools supplied in the name of revolution by the major communist powers to Vietnam’s communists. The trooper could not have been more than fifteen years old. In the yard next to the building Hoa noticed a huge heap of uniforms, helmets, boots, belts and ammunition. All of these items had been dumped there when the South Vietnam government surrendered and ordered its forces to disarm. Hoa was on the losing side of the war for reasons that, to him, remained unclear and unacceptable. Now, he and many thousands of others were being forced into so-called re-education camps. Held there without trial, these prisoners faced terrible conditions and cruel punishments. Many did not survive, but Hoa did. In this remarkable book, he offers his story to the world. Author Hoa Minh Truong is a well-published author of fiction, non-fiction and poetry in the Vietnamese language. He now lives in Perth, Australia with his wife and daughter.

Réf. : Truong Minh Hoa, The dark journey. Inside the reeducation camps of Vietcong, Durham CT, Eloquent Books, 2010, 246 p.

Aperçu Google Books

 

Review :

Sherree Broadhurst: This book should be compulsory reading (05/03/2012)

Well named, “The Dark Journey” is a story that needs to be told. It is a revealing breakdown of the political background to the rise of communism in Vietnam, and at the same time, it graphically describes the hardships endured by political prisoners caught in the crossfire of malicious communistic policies enforced by vindictive cadres. Nobody should have to suffer what Mr Truong and over 100,000 other political prisoners had to endure. His story evokes sympathy from the reader in direct proportion to the atrocities he experienced. It is a heavy book to read, but the effort is worth it for the revelations it contains, and the greater empathy awakened in the reader for political prisoners everywhere, for refugees, and for soldiers who fought in the Vietnamese and other Asian wars.

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L’ouvrage a été auparavant publié en langue vietnamienne (une première fois en 1998 selon l’auteur et réédition ci-dessous en 2006, Australie)

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