Praise for McCain in Vietnam
– Hanoi paid tribute yesterday to former US Senator John McCain, a onetime foe who helped heal the wounds of the Vietnam War after spending years as a prisoner in the city.
Residents and US officials laid flowers near a concrete sculpture of McCain by the capital’s Truc Bach lake, commemorating the site where the former navy pilot, who died on Saturday aged 81, was shot down and detained during the Vietnam War.
McCain spent more than five years detained in the infamous “Hanoi Hilton”, where he was put in solitary confinement, beaten and tortured.
Hanoi
But in the decades after the conflict ended, the Republican presidential candidate was known in Vietnam for his transition from prisoner of war to peacemaker. His death was front page news in Vietnam’s state media and drew tributes from across the country.
Veterans who fought in the war were among those who travelled to the US embassy in Hanoi to pay their respects.
“I admire him for having recognised the right thing ... being united with Vietnamese people, so that the two countries could set aside the past, building up the future,” said 81-year-old veteran Pham Minh Chuc.
“It was a pity that we confronted each other on the battlefield,” a woman named Nguyen Thi Bich Ngoc wrote in the embassy’s condolence book. “But I think we had a chance to understand each other more after the war and you made a major contribution to building up that link.”
Vietnam’s Deputy Prime Minister Pham Binh Minh wrote that McCain helped heal the “wounds of war”.
About 2.5 million northern Vietnamese fighters, 58 000 American servicemen and some three million civilians died in the war which ended in 1975, two years after McCain was released. –
Chrystia Freeland Canadian Foreign Minister