Word: saigon
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...neighboring?and ultrafanatical?Communist regime in Cambodia, and drifting at the same time into hostilities with another former friend, the People's Republic of China. The pro-American trend in Hanoi is all the more notable given the starchy posture of the victorious Vietnamese regime following the fall of Saigon in April 1975. For more than three years the government, headed by Premier Pham Van Dong, 72, insisted that the U.S. pay $3.25 billion in "war reparations" as an absolute precondition to any normal diplomatic relationship. Although Hanoi has yet to say so officially, that galling proviso has now been...
There is more bustle in the South, particularly in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). Motorcycles and motor scooters still crowd the streets, and there are such remaining signs of "bourgeois decadence" as beauty parlors and blue jeans. But the U.S. embassy building now houses Viet Nam's state petroleum agency; the enormous former U.S. AID compound is headquarters for Saigonese trade-union organizations. The notoriously sinful La Vie en Rose bar has been subdivided into small meeting halls. Night life in general has been thoroughly quelled by the rectitudinous Communists...
...unwholesome anxiety pervades over much of Cholon, Saigon's ethnic Chinese district, where on some streets half the shops are tightly shuttered. The Chinese have been particularly hard hit by a government crackdown on private enterprise that began in March. Most larger businesses were taken over by the government, and thousands of Chinese have fled the country or are waiting, miserably and without shelter, at the Viet Nam-China border for the chance to get out. An estimated 8,000 refugees?Chinese and non-Chinese?have found their way to Hong Kong alone since the fall of Saigon. Another...
...example is the case of Frank Snepp, the former CIA agent who was ordered by a federal judge last June to turn over to the Government any "ill-gotten gains" (at least $60,000 so far) from Decent Interval, his book charging the CIA with botching the evacuation of Saigon. The Government argued that Snepp jeopardized future intelligence operations by violating his secrecy oath; Snepp's defenders saw a discouraging precedent for future "whistle blowers...
...Chinese residents on a mass scale." To prove that charge, government officials organized press conferences for foreign newsmen in border areas where Hoa refugees were living in improvised camps. Meanwhile, China's official propaganda machine ground out endless grim tales. An old woman from Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) recounted how all her possessions had been seized. "Not even her wardrobe, beds, stools, bowls and saucers were spared," according to one report. She was also threatened with resettlement in one of the "new economic zones" where Hanoi proposes to place 10 million city dwellers. China charges that the zone...