“We’re back in Saigon“, loose Phat Bui, 62, who follows the situation in Afghanistan morning and evening.
He fled Saigon, baptized from Ho Chi Minh City, shortly before the withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam in April 1975. His sister worked at the United States Embassy and the whole family (eight children) had been evacuated, taking only a few spare clothes.
“When I fled Vietnam, I was about 17 years old. I was scared, like my parents. In Saigon, it was chaos. So I can understand what’s going on (in Afghanistan). I know they are afraid and they fear for their life and their future. I have a lot of compassion for them“Says Phat Bui while receiving AFP at his California home.
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The 60-year-old lives in an area south of Los Angeles known as “Little Saigon“because of the some 200,000 Americans of Vietnamese origin who have settled there.
“I feel very sad, very depressed“, he said, explaining receiving”every day around 500 emails“from his community on the current situation in Afghanistan.”They say what they see rekindles the pain they experienced in Vietnam“, assures this local elected official, who also chairs the American-Vietnamese federation of Southern California.
“It was very hard for us“, Phat Bui recalls showing two photos from his childhood in Vietnam.”We lost everything“.
Finally arriving in the United States after weeks of a grueling journey, he rebuilt his life in California and married Mai Luong, who fled Vietnam ten years after him.
They are both inexhaustible about the hardships their family and friends have endured since the end of the war, whether they found asylum abroad or remained in Vietnam.
– “Abandoned” –
The images of the stampede at the gates of Kabul airport are particularly shocking to the veterans who fought at the time against communist forces alongside the Americans.
“We experienced this same chaos 46 years ago. I was on the battlefield in 1975 and the situation was dire. I just tried to get out“Says 70-year-old Cau Tsu.
An officer at the time, he remembers advising his men: “If you have a way to get away, go! If you stay, good luck!”
“We felt abandoned“, launches the old man in a voice charged with emotion, evoking the last minutes of combat after the departure of the American soldiers and the suicide of certain comrades in front of the defeat.
And Cau Tsu is angry with the US government for the treatment of its Afghan allies.
“I’m not sure the government had a good plan (…). We can go to the moon! How come we can’t take them all like in Vietnam?“, he exclaims.
According to the latest official report on Tuesday, Washington had contributed to the evacuation of 70,700 people – including 4,000 American nationals – since the establishment of the airlift on August 14, the day before the Taliban entered Kabul.
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For Cau Tsu, there is no doubt that the Vietnamese community will mobilize to support the Afghan refugees. “We have to help them. We are indebted to them because the American people gave us a second chance“, he believes.
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