VZCZCXRO1552
RR RUEHCHI RUEHDT RUEHNH
DE RUEHHM #0472/01 1330915
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 120915Z MAY 08
FM AMCONSUL HO CHI MINH CITY
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 4456
INFO RUCNASE/ASEAN MEMBER COLLECTIVE
RUEHHM/AMCONSUL HO CHI MINH CITY 4680

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 HO CHI MINH CITY 000472 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR EAP/MLS, DRL, AND PRM 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: SOCI PREF PHUM PGOV VM
SUBJECT: ARVN VETERANS TODAY 
 
REF: REF A:  HCMC 039     REF B:  07 HCMC 01191 AND PREVIOUS 
 
HO CHI MIN 00000472  001.2 OF 004 
 
 
¶1.  (U) Summary:  The day to day differences between the lives 
of veterans of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) and 
other Vietnamese citizens are slight in most of Vietnam today. 
An atmosphere of latent mistrust and lingering hostility still 
exists in some poorer areas.  Geography and economic development 
appear to be the most important variables in explaining the 
differences in treatment of ARVN veterans -- the more economic 
transformation and growth a community has experienced, the less 
its local authorities seem to worry about former soldiers of 
"the old regime."  In the rapidly developing urban areas of 
Vietnam, ARVN veterans experience little or no discrimination. 
In contrast, veterans in central Vietnam and more isolated parts 
of the Mekong Delta where poverty is prevalent often face 
discrimination from hostile and uncooperative local officials. 
The most commonly cited problem among ARVN veterans is 
difficulty in obtaining civil documents.  ARVN veterans also 
complain that "revolutionary families," including those of North 
Vietnam Army (NVA) and Viet Cong (VC) veterans, enjoy benefits 
not available to others.  For the last twenty years, the ARVN 
veteran experience has roughly paralleled that of most other 
southerners; those with more education and more economic 
resources, including help from relatives overseas, have done 
better.  End summary. 
 
¶2.  (SBU) Over the last two years, case workers in the 
Humanitarian Resettlement Section (HRS) have interviewed roughly 
two thousand former re-education camp inmates applying for 
Humanitarian Resettlement (HR) to the U.S. under the "HO" 
category.  Most of those interviewed have been ARVN veterans and 
most of the information in this cable is drawn from those 
interviews.  Geographically, those interviewed come from all 
over the southern half of Vietnam.  Middle-ranking veterans -- 
NCOs, warrant officers, lieutenants, and captains -- are 
probably over-represented in this group because few enlisted 
soldiers were re-educated long enough to qualify for HO and few 
higher ranking veterans remain in Vietnam.  Nonetheless, those 
interviewed do include a large number of former enlisted 
soldiers and a very small number who ranked from major to 
colonel.  Those interviewed also include a large number of 
former police officers, but few ex-civil servants. 
 
What has life been like for ARVN vets? 
-------------------------------------- 
¶3.  (U) After the Communist victory in 1975, the new government 
instructed ARVN veterans (among many others) to report for 
re-education.  Some received rather perfunctory terms, while 
others served many years.  Typically after release from 
re-education camp, veterans were directed to return home and 
report to local police for probation.  Many were moved with 
their families to New Economic Zones (NEZs) where they completed 
their probation.  Probation could last several years, but in 
most cases it was twelve months, after which veterans were able 
to have their civil rights restored.  This process sometimes 
took several more years.  With restoration of civil rights, 
veterans were able to apply for identity cards and obtain family 
registration books.  With these documents, they could obtain 
essentially the same services as any other Vietnamese citizen. 
In practice, it often took ARVN veterans considerably longer to 
obtain the documents, especially the family registration books. 
Many veterans were reluctant to make repeat visits to government 
offices to ask for documents or certification of papers, as this 
exposed them to reminders that authorities considered them to be 
"traitors." 
 
¶4.  (U) Frequently, attempts to obtain identification documents 
were fruitless.  There are still a few ARVN veterans who have 
not received either document, which leaves them with limited 
livelihood options in the informal sector such as day laborer, 
motorcycle taxi driver, lottery ticket seller and small-scale 
vendor.  Persons without ID cards cannot open bank accounts, or 
obtain government-subsidized health care and other routine 
public services.  In contrast to ID cards, drivers' licenses are 
easily available through payment of bribes, but a driver's 
license is no substitute for an ID card. 
 
¶5.  (U) A larger set of veterans encounter difficulties 
obtaining family books.  Issued by local authorities, family 
registration books are used to determine legal residence in 
Vietnam.  When one moves from one part of Vietnam to another, 
one is supposed to obtain a new family book.  Some ARVN veterans 
have given up trying to obtain their own book and have had their 
families registered in a relative's book.  Lack of a family book 
makes it challenging to obtain services provided by local 
authorities.  If one does not have a family book registered 
where one actually lives, it is difficult, among other things, 
to enroll one's children in local schools. 
 
¶6.  (SBU) Veterans reported that life in the NEZs tended to be 
harsher than elsewhere because NEZs were undeveloped, frequently 
 
HO CHI MIN 00000472  002.2 OF 004 
 
 
on land of marginal quality, and because local officials often 
imposed heavy labor requirements on those they deemed in need of 
more "reform through labor."  Although conditions generally 
became better over time, many NEZ residents left in the late 
1980's through early 1990's in search of economic and 
educational opportunities and also to cut ties with their 
problematic pasts.  Even veterans who were not sent to NEZs 
still left their homes to move to HCMC in an attempt to get away 
from local officials who held their pasts over their heads. 
About half of ARVN veterans interviewed for HR still lived in 
their pre-1975 communities.  A handful moved to a different 
rural area, usually in the Central Highlands.  The rest have 
either stayed in an NEZ or moved to a city. 
 
What kinds of discrimination were there? 
---------------------------------------- 
¶7.  (SBU) Most ARVN veterans who reported blatant discrimination 
in the 1980s said that this faded to almost nothing by the 
mid-1990s.  Few of them provide HRS interviewers details about 
the problems they faced in the past.  Unless they could obtain 
civil documents, they were unable to work in the formal sector 
of the economy or to have land.  The lack of civil documents 
also hampered access to education and health care.  Community 
pressure, a tool that local authorities routinely mobilized in 
the past, made ARVN veterans social outcasts while venerating 
NVA and VC.  These pressures led many with the means to do so to 
move to the city.  Those who could not often withdrew from 
society and became dependent on their children. 
 
¶8.  (U) It has often been reported that the children of ARVN 
veterans face discrimination too, but it is clearer that poverty 
has been their main problem.  Their parents' status probably 
exacerbated that poverty through the 1980s, in part because the 
lack of civil documents made access to health care and education 
more problematic, but veterans themselves seldom report that 
they are or were significantly poorer then their non-veteran 
neighbors.  It was very common for their children to have 
dropped out of school after two or three years, but when asked 
why, they report that it was because the children were needed to 
work and that the family could not afford to send them to 
school.  Their non-veteran neighbors routinely had to make the 
same sacrifice.  Veterans with more economic resources -- often 
relatives overseas -- could afford to keep their children in 
school through 12th grade.  It is common for ARVN veterans and 
others to allege that their children have been unable to attend 
college because of "family background."  Given the extreme 
competition for the few available college admissions slots in 
Vietnam, it is plausible that an ARVN family background is a 
negative factor, but it is difficult to determine whether it is 
decisive by itself. 
 
¶9.  (U) While relatively few senior ARVN officers remained in 
Vietnam after 1975, conversations with them and their children 
serve to illuminate how discrimination against the children of 
ARVN officers could flow from the policies described above. 
Because parents must present family registration documents when 
enrolling their children in public schools, for example, 
children of ARVN veterans faced additional challenges when 
attending school.  The lack of family registration documents 
could lead to similar complications in obtaining health care. 
In practice, denials of access to education and health care 
appear to have varied by region as well as on a case-by-case 
basis and could be circumvented if a veteran's children could be 
added to the family registration book of a less disfavored 
relative.  For those families who decided to return to the city 
rather than remain in one of the NEZ's, access to social 
services became doubly difficult since the family had no legal 
status in the city.  Once again, however, ordinary Vietnamese, 
and even VC and NVA veterans, who fled Vietnam's economic 
backwaters for its growing cities faced and continue to face 
these problems as well.  Whatever discrimination there was 
against ARVN veterans and their families gradually declined over 
time to the point where at least one son of an ARVN officer who 
was effectively denied schooling as a child in the late 1970's 
was nonetheless able to be hired as a teacher in the 1990's 
before going on to build a multi-million dollar business empire 
(ref A). 
 
¶10.  (SBU) ARVN veterans themselves have seldom found government 
employment, unless they supported the revolution before 1975 or 
had skills  such as medical doctor or helicopter mechanic that 
were in short supply after 1975.  Employment in sensitive 
positions and advancement to senior levels in routine government 
positions and in State-Owned Enterprises has only been open to 
Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) members.  Only the former set 
of ARVN veterans have been able to join the CPV.  The 
prohibition on CPV membership seems to hold true for the 
children of ARVN veterans as well.  However, veterans and their 
children with some combination of financial resources, family 
overseas, and enterprise have been able to do well in the 
 
HO CHI MIN 00000472  003.2 OF 004 
 
 
private sector, especially since 1994.  The growth of the 
private sector and the rise of private universities have made 
discrimination in state employment and university entrance less 
significant.  Post's own employees, including a sprinkling of 
ARVN veterans and many children of ARVN veterans, are another 
example; they are doing far better working for the USG than they 
likely would for their own government.  Some ARVN veterans have 
become millionaires (reftels).  At least one HR applicant ARVN 
veteran has too.  He asked his interviewer for advice on moving 
his multi-million dollar fortune to the United States. 
 
What kind of discrimination is there now? 
----------------------------------------- 
¶11.  (U) Perhaps the starkest differences in treatment ARVN 
veterans see is in how they fare compared to VC and NVA 
veterans.  The latter are considered to belong to "revolutionary 
families" that are given many preferences by the GVN.  With an 
officially revered status, disabled revolutionary veterans 
receive an array of official and semi-official support and 
recognition.  Aside from the privately-funded Tu Duc village in 
Ho Chi Minh City, there are no known special social services 
available to disabled ARVN veterans, and public recognition of 
their losses and sacrifices seems to be considered too sensitive 
to permit.  The large majority of disabled ARVN veterans are 
dependent solely on their families for support.  ARVN veterans 
often say they find it particularly galling that they get no 
government assistance because of their disabilities, while 
revolutionary veterans do.  Similarly, the numerous social 
activities for revolutionary veterans simply do not exist for 
ARVN veterans.  Many ARVN veterans are comfortable getting 
together and quietly reminiscing, but these are very low key 
events compared to the boisterous song (and drink)-filled 
reunions of their erstwhile opponents.  While revolutionary 
veterans are prominently featured in public and the media on 
national holidays, there is virtually no official public 
recognition that ARVN veterans exist. 
 
¶12.  (SBU) The majority of ARVN veterans interviewed in the last 
two years report little if any overt discrimination since the 
mid-1990s when compared to the general population.  As long as 
they do not do anything "foolish," authorities treat them the 
same as other citizens.  However, an identifiable minority still 
reports that local authorities discriminate against them.  Most 
of this segment lives in the central provinces stretching from 
Quang Ngai north through Quang Tri; others are from economic 
backwaters of the Mekong Delta.  Discrimination tends to be 
especially strong in old VC strongholds and former NEZs.  They 
can still face a gauntlet of unpleasant treatment when gathering 
the documents for Humanitarian Resettlement.  It appears that 
local officials in these places still regard ARVN veterans as 
traitors or potential traitors, particularly when they apply for 
Humanitarian Resettlement.  Two common features of these rural 
localities are that they have enjoyed little economic 
development and that local security officials have little to do. 
 By contrast, police and local officials in the cities and other 
economically vibrant areas are so busy that they either are 
scarcely aware of ARVN veterans as such, or they do not seem to 
consider ARVN veterans to be of much interest.  Veterans who 
could afford to do so have moved away from repressive localities 
to places offering more economic opportunity and more anonymity. 
 Those remaining, aside from being poor, find it difficult to 
blend in and escape the notice of security officials who may 
have been on the other side of the battlefield during the war. 
 
Other factors 
------------- 
¶13.  (U) The consequences of past discrimination coupled with 
the difficult circumstances faced by the general population in 
the 1980s and early 1990s bear on the present situation of ARVN 
veterans.  Hardships abounded in Vietnam only a few years ago 
and impacted most people in most places, not just ARVN veterans. 
 Dropping out of school for economic reasons was and still is a 
widespread problem, especially in rural areas where families 
need their children to work to support the family.  Among the 
ranks of ARVN veterans, enlisted soldiers and NCOs tended to be 
poor and so their children often had only two or three years of 
school.  Officers' families tended to be wealthier, so their 
children usually completed high school.  The lack of past 
education limits current economic opportunities much more 
clearly than family background. 
 
¶14.  (SBU) ARVN veterans often say there is a widespread bias 
against them and their children in job placement, hiring, and 
access to economic opportunities and favors.  If one probes the 
question more deeply, they usually attribute their troubles to 
their lack of ties to influential individuals with access to 
good jobs and powerful people, rather than their ARVN service or 
family background.  Other southerners, from ordinary citizens to 
members of "revolutionary families," commonly voice a similar 
complaint, namely that there is favoritism towards those who 
 
HO CHI MIN 00000472  004.2 OF 004 
 
 
have relationships with "decision makers," in other words, 
"northerners." 
 
¶15.  (U) This cable was coordinated with Embassy Hanoi. 
FAIRFAX