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By Debra Hale-Shelton
CHICAGO (AP, 16/5/01) - Explosions and fire surround the North Vietnamese
troops. Dead soldiers lie on the ground; the label on one man's uniform says
``U.S. Army.''
``Quyet Chine, Quyet Thang,'' declares the multicolored propaganda block print
depicting the battle. Or, in English: ``Determine to fight, determine to win.''
The signature of the North Vietnamese artist is illegible. But the soldier's
print, found by a U.S. medic, and about 14 other artworks by North Vietnamese
and Viet Cong veterans are among more than 500 works on display at the National
Vietnam Veteran Arts Museum.
Most of the approximately 130 artists represented in the museum, located in a
gentrified neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, are U.S. veterans of the
Vietnam War. But works by three South Vietnamese veterans, as well as the enemy
veterans, also are included.
The artists all served in the same war, and many trudged through the same
elephant grass and rice paddies. But their art is very different.
The U.S. artists often paint harsh, grim commentaries of the war and its
aftermath. The enemies' works avoid emotional commentaries. Instead, they echo
government propaganda or depict scenes from the soldiers' daily lives.
``The Vietnamese are less likely than Americans to say something negative. They
like to put the best image forward,'' notes Ned Broderick, museum president and
a former Marine who spent 19 months in Vietnam.
The ``Quyet Chien, Quyet Thang'' print is still ``a beautiful piece. I don't
mind a little propaganda,'' the soft-spoken Broderick says.
There also are similarities in the art, starting with the sacrifices that
soldiers on both sides made. And those sacrifices are reflected in their art,
whether it shows the pain of a U.S. soldier returning home to anything but a
hero's welcome or the physical hardships the Viet Cong endured.
``To me, the similarity is the day-to-day life of living the difficult life in
that jungle,'' says Broderick. That was as foreign to the Vietnamese as to the
Americans.
In ``NVA on the Move,'' for example, a North Vietnamese artist depicts five
soldiers, their pants rolled up, wading through water and toting their guns. A
cave of elephant grass surrounds them, reflecting the color green that dominates
much of the Vietnamese art.
The North Vietnamese, heavier in infantry than the Americans, constantly lived
in the jungle, Broderick explains. ``Just the absolute preponderance of the
color green does begin to dominate the way you see the world,'' he says.
There is green, to a lesser extent, in the U.S. art, too. But there also is red,
as in the burning eyes of soldiers in a couple of Broderick's own works.
``I wanted to show how America's image of itself was wounded by the Vietnam
War,'' he says. ``The war was escalating so quickly at the time my friends and I
were there that there was just no rest. Battalions and companies were just being
bled white with no letup, and back home people were watching the war every day
at dinnertime on TV. ... It just became a tremendous universal wound.''
And there are more eerie colors - red, black, blue, even white - in works such
as Richard Yohnka's ``Memorial Day Parade.''
Yohnka, an Army veteran born in Chebanse, Ill., depicts two skeletal-looking,
barely human men in the 1980 pastel. One man carries the other on his back as he
marches forward; both seem to smile.
``They're people still functioning but blown apart,'' says Broderick. Yohnka,
who died in 1997, was depicting ``emotional pain, which he translated into an
aspect of physical pain,'' he says.
``People function under these conditions because they have no choice. Even if
they want to fall apart, they can't.''
The enemy art, however, focuses more on the physical elements of war: standing
guard on a rooftop or surviving in the jungle, for example.
That's particularly obvious in ``After the Battle,'' two black-on-white
watercolors painted by a Viet Cong soldier in 1968. In one, three Viet Cong are
shown butchering a wild boar for their next meal. In the other, Viet Cong
soldiers peel vegetables.
One work, by Cao Ninh, a South Vietnamese soldier who later moved to Chicago,
consists of shattered glass and, in its commentary on war, is more like an
American work. Titled ``When I Look in the Mirror Each Morning,'' the glass
reveals a distorted face. The artist, Broderick says, could not have exhibited
this piece in Vietnam.
The museum got the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong art in different ways. Some
paintings were found on the battlefield.
``Three pieces were in a tablet in an enemy soldier's backpack,'' Broderick
says. ``Others came to us from North Vietnamese soldiers who later sold or
donated them to someone for this museum.''
Amid the paintings and sculptures in the two-story museum, several U.S. and
enemy guns also are on display.
Where do they fit in an art exhibition?
``I look at it as the alpha and the omega,'' Broderick says. ``These were the
things that were used in the battles, and the paintings and art works are a
result of that.'' * Vietnam tries opposition group
BBC, 16/5/01 - The trial of 37 people accused of crimes against the state has
begun in Vietnam.
The defendants are alleged to be members of a group operating out of Thailand
and Cambodia that aims to launching armed attacks and distributing political
leaflets within Vietnam.
The group is run by an American citizen of Vietnamese origin, Nguyen Huu Chanh,
who is wanted by the authorities in Hanoi.
Under Vietnamese law, the 37 face sentences ranging from 12 years to death. It
is extremely rare for a criminal court in Vietnam to find a defendant not
guilty.
The trial, in the southern Ho Chi Minh City, is expected to last about 10 days.
Infiltration
Vietnam's state media said that the accused were among 50 members of the
Government of Free Vietnam organisation who were arrested in 1999 and 2000.
One of those detained is said to have died of Aids during detention, but the
fate of the others not facing trial has not been explained.
The organisation is said to have been infiltrating the country since 1999 with
weapons, explosives and leaflets aimed at causing political instability. None of
the attacks succeeded, media said.
Mr Chanh's group is one of several opposition organisations which have appeared
since the communist government in Hanoi gained control of South Vietnam in 1975.