Upon my request, our first destination was Hoa Lo Prison, the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" where American POW's, including John McCain, were held and severly tortured during the Vietnam War. Funny thing was, the museum DIDN'T MENTION THAT AT ALL! Instead, it showed American soldiers playing basketball and volleyball in the courtyard, feasting and celebrating at Christmas time, receiving packages from home, and overall enjoying a nice relaxing vacation there in Hanoi. They also featured a photograph of John McCain smiling on a hospital bed and showcases the pilot suit he was wearing when captured. Completely missing the irony, they use the title "Hanoi Hilton" as evidence that Americans were so comfortable there.
The other part of the museum was dedicated to Vietnamese revolutionaries who were imprisoned there during the time of French imperial rule. This section featured the terrible prison conditions, the way some heroic prisoners escaped through the sewers, and the guillotine (ah, la france) on which many of them lost their lives to the cause.
We did some online research afterwards because we weren't sure to what extend there had been a misrepresentation. As it turns out, Americans underwent extreme torture at the prison including, according to wikipedia, "rope bindings, irons, beatings, and prolonged solitary confinement." McCain was there for five and a half years and underwent torture to the point of making an anti-American "confession" that the North Vietnamese used as propaganda. That's also when he lost the use of his arms and when his hair turned white. He attempted suicide twice. Just two months after he was released in 1973, US News and World Report published his first-person account of his time there. They just put it online in January. You can read it here.
Although I'm not a fan of either the Vietnam War nor of McCain, my respect for him has increased. He visited the jail in 2000. It must have been a slap-in-the-face for him to see no acknowledgment of his horrific experience. I wonder if he is elected president (it hurts to even mention the possibility), what - if any - changes would be made in the museum. I also wonder what kind of policy changes he would make with regards to America's current position on torture. I'm skeptical. The amount of hypocrisy currently shown by America by decrying what was done to their own while perpetuating the same kind of torture, makes me sick. To the Vietnamese in 1968, McCain was just a terrorist-like intruder into their country. Yet they are also guilty of hypocrisy: torturing prisoners in the exact same space in which their own were mistreated. Maybe they don't see it as hypocrisy as much as that for the West, what goes around, comes around.
No comments:
Post a Comment