Vietnam War

===In Southeast Asia===

==== In Vietnam ====
{{Further|Re-education camp (Vietnam)|Mayaguez incident}}
[[File:B52 CRASH WRECKAGE AT HUU TIEP LAKE HA NOI FEB 2012 (6887035292).jpg|thumb|upright|B-52 wreckage in Huu Tiep Lake, [[Hanoi]]. Downed during [[Operation Linebacker II]], its remains have been turned into a war monument.]]
On 2 July 1976, North and South Vietnam were merged to form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Robbers |first=Gerhard |title=Encyclopedia of world constitutions |publisher=[[Infobase Publishing]] |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-8160-6078-8 |page=[{{GBurl|id=M3A-xgf1yM4C|p=1021}} 1021]}}</ref> Despite speculation that the victorious North Vietnamese would, in President Nixon's words, "massacre the civilians there [South Vietnam] by the millions," there is a widespread consensus that no mass executions took place.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Elliot |first=Duong Van Mai |title=RAND in Southeast Asia: A History of the Vietnam War Era |publisher=RAND Corporation |year=2010 |isbn=978-0-8330-4754-0 |pages=499, 512–513 |chapter=The End of the War |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=g9o8fAo2R6wC&pg=PA499}}</ref>{{Refn|group="A"|A study by Jacqueline Desbarats and Karl D. Jackson estimated that 65,000 South Vietnamese were executed for political reasons between 1975 and 1983, based on a survey of 615 Vietnamese refugees who claimed to have personally witnessed 47 executions. However, "their methodology was reviewed and criticized as invalid by authors [[Gareth Porter]] and James Roberts." Sixteen of the 47 names used to extrapolate this "bloodbath" were duplicates; this extremely high duplication rate (34%) strongly suggests Desbarats and Jackson were drawing from a small number of total executions. Rather than arguing that this duplication rate proves there were very few executions in post-war Vietnam, Porter and Roberts suggest it is an artifact of the self-selected nature of the participants in the Desbarats-Jackson study, as the authors followed subjects' recommendations on other refugees to interview.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Elliot |first=Duong Van Mai |title=RAND in Southeast Asia: A History of the Vietnam War Era |publisher=RAND Corporation |year=2010 |isbn=978-0-8330-4754-0 |pages=512–513 |chapter=The End of the War |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=g9o8fAo2R6wC&pg=PA512 }}<br />cf. {{Cite journal |last1=Porter |first1=Gareth |last2=Roberts |first2=James |date=Summer 1988 |title=Creating a Bloodbath by Statistical Manipulation: A Review of ''A Methodology for Estimating Political Executions in Vietnam, 1975–1983'', Jacqueline Desbarats; Karl D. Jackson. |journal=Pacific Affairs |volume=61 |issue=2 |pages=303–310 |doi=10.2307/2759306 |jstor=2759306}}</ref> Nevertheless, there exist unverified reports of mass executions.<ref>''see'' Nguyen Cong Hoan' testimony in {{Cite report |url=http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/002939991 |title=Human Rights in Vietnam: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on International Organizations of the Committee on International Relations: House of Representatives, Ninety-Fifth Congress, First Session |date=26 July 1977 |publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office |pages=149, 153}};<br />''see also'' {{Cite journal |last1=Desbarats |first1=Jacqueline |last2=Jackson |first2=Karl D. |date=September 1985 |title=Vietnam 1975–1982: The Cruel Peace |journal=The Washington Quarterly |volume=8 |issue=4 |pages=169–182 |doi=10.1080/01636608509477343 |pmid=11618274}}</ref>}} However, in the years following the war, a vast number of South Vietnamese were sent to [[Re-education camp (Vietnam)|re-education camps]] where many endured torture, starvation, and disease while being forced to perform hard labor.<ref>{{Cite web |last1=Sagan |first1=Ginetta |last2=Denney |first2=Stephen |date=October–November 1982 |title=Re-education in Unliberated Vietnam: Loneliness, Suffering and Death |url=https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~sdenney/Vietnam-Reeducation-Camps-1982 |access-date=1 September 2016 |website=The Indochina Newsletter}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Nghia |first=M. Vo |title=The Bamboo Gulag: Political Imprisonment in Communist Vietnam |publisher=McFarland |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-7864-1714-8}}</ref> According to Amnesty International Report 1979, this figure varied considerably depend on different observers: "...{{Nbsp}}included such figures as "50,000 to 80,000" (''Le Monde'', 19 April 1978), "150,000" (Reuters from Bien Hoa, 2 November 1977), "150,000 to 200,000" (''The Washington Post'', 20 December 1978), and "300,000" (Agence France Presse from Hanoi, 12 February 1978)."<ref>{{Cite web |year=1979 |title=Amnesty International Report, 1979 |url=https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/POL100011979ENGLISH.PDF |access-date=26 March 2018 |publisher=Amnesty International |page=116|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20230323142937/https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/pol10/001/1979/en/|archive-date=March 23, 2023}}</ref> Such variations may be because "Some estimates may include not only detainees but also people sent from the cities to the countryside." According to a native observer, 443,360 people had to register for a period in re-education camps in Saigon alone, and while some of them were released after a few days, others stayed there for more than a decade.<ref>''Huy, Đức. Bên Thắng Cuộc. OsinBook.''</ref> Between 1975 and 1980, more than 1 million northerners migrated south to regions formerly in the Republic of Vietnam, while, as part of the [[New Economic Zones program]], around 750,000 to over 1 million southerners were moved mostly to uninhabited mountainous forested areas.<ref name="Desbarats">{{Cite book |last=Desbarats |first=Jacqueline |title=Repression in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam: Executions and Population Relocation |series=Indochina report ; no. 11 |publisher=Executive Publications |location=Singapore |date=1987}}</ref><ref name="Chapman">{{Cite news |last=Chapman |first=William |date=17 August 1979 |title=Hanoi Rebuts Refugees on 'Economic Zones' |newspaper=[[The Washington Post]] |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1979/08/17/hanoi-rebuts-refugees-on-economic-zones/a26c10ab-3791-4d76-9c4a-db4f7d48be32/ |access-date=30 June 2021|archive-date=June 14, 2023|archiveurl=https://archive.today/20230614164256/https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1979/08/17/hanoi-rebuts-refugees-on-economic-zones/a26c10ab-3791-4d76-9c4a-db4f7d48be32/}}</ref>
[[File:35 Vietnamese boat people 2.JPEG|thumb|upright|Vietnamese refugees fleeing Vietnam, 1984]]

[[Gabriel García Márquez]], a [[Nobel Prize]] winning writer, described South Vietnam as a "False paradise" after the war, when he visited in 1980:
{{Blockquote|The cost of this delirium was stupefying: 360,000 people mutilated, a million widows, 500,000 prostitutes, 500,000 drug addicts, a million tuberculous and more than a million soldiers of the old regime, impossible to rehabilitate into a new society. Ten percent of the population of Ho Chi Minh City was suffering from serious venereal diseases when the war ended, and there were 4 million illiterates throughout the South.<ref>{{Cite magazine |title=Read Gabriel García Márquez's Moving Vietnam Piece |magazine=Rolling Stone |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/the-vietnam-wars-19800529 |access-date=25 April 2018}}</ref>}}
The U.S. used its [[United Nations Security Council veto power|security council veto]] to block Vietnam's recognition by the United Nations three times, an obstacle to the country receiving international aid.<ref>{{Cite news |date=21 September 1977 |title=Vietnam Is Admitted to the U.N. As 32d General Assembly Opens |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1977/09/21/archives/vietnam-is-admitted-to-the-un-as-32d-general-assembly-opens.html |access-date=27 April 2018 |issn=0362-4331|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20230409052642/https://www.nytimes.com/1977/09/21/archives/vietnam-is-admitted-to-the-un-as-32d-general-assembly-opens.html|archive-date=April 9, 2023}}</ref>

==== Laos and Cambodia ====
By 1975, the North Vietnamese had lost influence over the Khmer Rouge.<ref name=Hastings/>{{Rp|708}} [[Phnom Penh]], the capital of Cambodia, fell to the Khmer Rouge on 17 April 1975. Under the leadership of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge would eventually [[Cambodian genocide|kill 1–3 million Cambodians]] out of a population of around 8&nbsp;million, in one of the [[List of genocides by death toll|bloodiest genocides in history]].<ref name=Heuveline/>{{Rp|}}<ref>{{Cite web |last=Sharp |first=Bruce |date=1 April 2005 |title=Counting Hell: The Death Toll of the Khmer Rouge Regime in Cambodia |url=http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/deaths.htm |access-date=15 July 2016 |quote=The range based on the figures above extends from a minimum of 1.747 million, to a maximum of 2.495 million.}}</ref><ref>The [[Documentation Center of Cambodia]] has mapped some 23,745 mass graves containing approximately 1.3 million suspected victims of execution; execution is believed to account for roughly 60% of the full death toll. See: {{Cite book |last1=Seybolt |first1=Taylor B. |title=Counting Civilian Casualties: An Introduction to Recording and Estimating Nonmilitary Deaths in Conflict |last2=Aronson |first2=Jay D. |last3=Fischoff |first3=Baruch |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year=2013 |isbn=978-0-19-997731-4 |page=238}}</ref><ref>[[Ben Kiernan]] cites a range of 1.671 to 1.871 million excess deaths under the Khmer Rouge. See {{Cite journal |last=Kiernan |first=Ben |author-link=Ben Kiernan |date=December 2003 |title=The Demography of Genocide in Southeast Asia: The Death Tolls in Cambodia, 1975–79, and East Timor, 1975–80 |journal=Critical Asian Studies |volume=35 |issue=4 |pages=585–597 |doi=10.1080/1467271032000147041 |s2cid=143971159}}</ref>

The relationship between Vietnam and [[Democratic Kampuchea]] (Cambodia) escalated right after the end of the war. In response to the Khmer Rouge taking over [[Phu Quoc]] on 17 April and [[Tho Chu]] on 4 May 1975 and the belief that they were responsible for the disappearance of 500 Vietnamese natives on Tho Chu, Vietnam launched a counterattack to take back these islands.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Farrell |first=Epsey Cooke |title=The Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the law of the sea: an analysis of Vietnamese behavior within the emerging international oceans regime |publisher=Martinus Nijhoff Publishers |year=1998 |isbn=90-411-0473-9}}</ref> After several failed attempts to negotiate by both sides, Vietnam invaded Democratic Kampuchea in 1978 and ousted the Khmer Rouge, who were being supported by China, in the Cambodian–Vietnamese War. In response, China invaded Vietnam in 1979. The two countries fought a brief border war, known as the Sino-Vietnamese War. From 1978 to 1979, some 450,000 ethnic [[Hoa people|Chinese]] left Vietnam by boat as refugees or were deported.

The Pathet Lao overthrew the monarchy of Laos in December 1975, establishing the [[Lao People's Democratic Republic]] under the leadership of a member of the royal family, [[Souphanouvong]]. The change in regime was "quite peaceful, a sort of Asiatic '[[velvet revolution]]'"—although 30,000 former officials were sent to reeducation camps, often enduring harsh conditions for several years. The conflict between Hmong rebels and the Pathet Lao [[Insurgency in Laos|continued]] in isolated pockets.<ref name=Courtois/>{{Rp|575–576}}

==== Unexploded ordnance ====
[[Unexploded ordnance]], mostly from U.S. bombing, continues to detonate and kill people today and has rendered much land hazardous and impossible to cultivate. According to the Vietnamese government, ordnance has killed some 42,000 people since the war officially ended.<ref>{{Cite web |date=3 December 2012 |title=Vietnam War Bomb Explodes Killing Four Children |url=http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/12/03/vietname-war-bomb-explodes_n_2229727.html |website=The Huffington Post}}</ref><ref>[http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/latest-news/vietnam-war-shell-explodes-kills-two-fishermen/story-fn3dxix6-1226046291270 Vietnam war shell explodes, kills two fishermen] The Australian (28 April 2011)</ref> In Laos, 80&nbsp;million bombs failed to explode and remain scattered throughout the country. According to the government of Laos, unexploded ordnance has killed or injured over 20,000 Laotians since the end of the war and currently 50 people are killed or maimed every year.<ref name="Wright">{{Cite news |last=Wright |first=Rebecca |date=6 September 2016 |title='My friends were afraid of me': What 80 million unexploded US bombs did to Laos |work=CNN |url=http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/05/asia/united-states-laos-secret-war/ |access-date=18 September 2016}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Lao PDR - Casualties and Victim Assistance |url=http://www.the-monitor.org/en-gb/reports/2016/lao-pdr/casualties-and-victim-assistance.aspx |access-date=17 July 2022 |website=Landmine and Clustering Munition Monitor}}</ref> It is estimated that the explosives still remaining buried in the ground will not be removed entirely for the next few centuries.<ref name="Nguyen" />{{Rp|317}}

==== Refugee crisis ====
{{Main|Indochina refugee crisis|Vietnamese boat people}}
Over 3&nbsp;million people left Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in the [[Indochina refugee crisis]] after 1975. Most Asian countries were unwilling to accept these refugees, many of whom fled by boat and were known as [[boat people]].<ref>{{Cite web |last1=Stephen Castles |last2=Mark J. Miller |date=10 July 2009 |title=Migration in the Asia-Pacific Region |url=http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/migration-asia-pacific-region |publisher=Migration Polict Institute}}</ref> Between 1975 and 1998, an estimated 1.2&nbsp;million [[refugee]]s from Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries resettled in the United States, while Canada, Australia, and France resettled over 500,000. China accepted 250,000 people.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Robinson |first=William |title=Terms of refuge: the Indochinese exodus & the international response |publisher=Zed Books |year=1998 |isbn=978-1-85649-610-0 |page=[{{GBurl|id=_rjiOXMRd4sC|p=127}} 127]}}</ref> Of all the countries of Indochina, Laos experienced the largest refugee flight in proportional terms, as 300,000 people out of a total population of 3&nbsp;million crossed the border into Thailand. Included among their ranks were "about 90 percent" of Laos's "intellectuals, technicians, and officials."<ref name=Courtois/>{{Rp|575}} An estimated 200,000 to 400,000 [[Vietnamese boat people]] died at sea, according to the [[United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Nghia |first=M. Vo |title=The Vietnamese Boat People, 1954 and 1975–1992 |publisher=McFarland & Company |year=2006 |isbn=978-0-7864-2345-3}}</ref>