Vietnam’s top leaders including Communist Party Chief Nguyen Phu Trong, third from left, President Truong Tan Sang, third from right, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, second from left, and National Assembly’s Chairman Nguyen Sinh Hung, right, move to take their seats on a podium prior to a parade marking the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon in Ho Chi Minh City on April 30, 2015. Vietnam marked the 40th anniversary of Saigon’s fall with a huge military parade to celebrate the moment communist forces ended a decades-long conflict and delivered a painful blow to American morale and military prestige. (AFP Photo/Hoang Dinh Nam)

Ho Chi Minh City. Vietnam’s premier on Thursday hit out at the “barbarous crimes” of its wartime American foe as the nation marked four decades since the fall of Saigon, an event that delivered a communist victory and a painful blow to US moral and military prestige.

The central streets of southern Ho Chi Minh City — formerly Saigon — were filled with a forest of hammer and sickle flags of the Communist Party, as regiments of goose-stepping soldiers filed past the country’s top leaders.

In front of Independence Palace — whose gates northern tanks clattered through in one of the iconic moments of the 1975 victory — Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung struck out at the US attempt to contain the spread of communism in Southeast Asia through war in Vietnam.

“They committed countless barbarous crimes, caused immeasurable losses and pain to our people and country,” he said in an address.

The war killed millions of Vietnamese — both civilians and combatants from the divided North and South — and left hundreds of thousands more wounded.

The physical effects of conflict still linger, including through deformities that Vietnam says are caused by the dioxin Agent Orange, sprayed by the US air force to pare back the thick jungle used as cover by the northern guerilla forces.

Some 58,000 US servicemen also died in a war that remains seared into the consciousness of the American public, most often as a tragic waste of young lives and a symbol of the over-extension of power.

It was the first Cold War conflict to be extensively covered by the Western press — and the first to be lost by a modern superpower that thought itself unbeatable.

The communist victory was one of “ardent patriotism,” Dung said, hailing the reunification of Vietnam, which was cleaved apart in 1954 into the communist North and the US-backed South.

Veterans at the parade spoke of their pride at having fought the Americans.

“An event like this is necessary to help young people understand the glorious history of our country,” 72-year-old Nguyen Van Hung told AFP, wearing his old army uniform.

But divisions remain — up to a million “boat people” fled the South in the aftermath of the conflict and now form a vocal diaspora, staunchly opposed to Vietnam’s authoritarian one-party state.

Domestically, the Communist Party is also facing rising public discontent over high-level corruption, growing inequality and its continued efforts to smother criticism.

Soldiers carrying flags march during a parade marking the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon in Ho Chi Minh City on April 30, 2015. (AFP Photo/Hoang Dinh Nam)

Victory means ‘legitimacy’

An embassy spokesman said the US envoy will attend a low-key ceremony at the consulate in Ho Chi Minh City later Thursday.

Ties between the wartime enemies have warmed in recent years, with Washington drawing closer to Hanoi in the face of growing Chinese assertiveness in the region.

Communist Vietnam has also long since abandoned the Soviet model and embraced the market capitalism of its one-time enemy, ushering in a period of prosperity and growth.

With public discontent rising, the authoritarian state relies heavily on its past military victories to legitimise its rule, observers say.

People used to see the war “as one for national liberation and unification”, Tuong Vu, an associate professor of political science at the University of Oregon told AFP.

“These days most Vietnamese perhaps believe that the war was a tragic event during which Vietnamese killed other Vietnamese… the Communist Party is no longer seen as patriotic or invincible,” he said.

But local media, which is entirely state-run, has published fawning stories ahead of the anniversary, heavy on wartime heroism.

That official narrative still chimes with many among the older generation, but increasingly the public is indifferent or even hostile to such shows of official patriotism.

“Let the past go, it’s been 40 years,” wrote businessman Tran Minh Chien on his Facebook page in a typical social media reaction the anniversary.

Some residents in Ho Chi Minh City were also left unimpressed by the show of pomp.

“I don’t care about this parade — it’s bad for business,” said Nguyen Thi Dieu, 25, a vendor who sells cold water and snacks in the city center told AFP.

Agence France-Presse

The post Vietnam’s PM Attacks ‘Barbarous US Crimes’ on War Anniversary appeared first on The Jakarta Globe.

Kano, Nigeria. A girl thought to be as young as 7 years old killed herself and seven others in a suicide bombing in northeast Nigeria on Sunday as President Goodluck Jonathan conceded his government had initially underrated the Islamist extremist group Boko Haram.

The attack on a market in the city of Potiskum, the commercial capital of Yobe state, was the latest in a string of suicide strikes in which children have been used.

The initial death toll given by witnesses and hospital sources was 6 — the bomber and five others — but medical sources at the state-run hospital in Potiskum said later two of those injured had also died.

Previous attacks have been blamed on Boko Haram.

Nineteen people injured in the blast were taken to the hospital, a local vigilante leader, Buba Lawan, told AFP.

The bombing highlights the severe security challenges facing Nigeria in the run-up to presidential and parliamentary elections on March 28.

During a swing through neighboring Chad, Cameroon and Niger, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius on Sunday urged Nigeria to entirely commit itself to battling Boko Haram.

“It is necessary that there be full commitment from Nigeria in the fight against Boko Haram,” Fabius told reporters in Niger’s capital, Niamey.

On Saturday in the Chadian capital N’Djamena, Fabius visited a coordination cell set up on a French military base to liaise between Cameroon, Chad, Niger and France.

Paris has promised to increase intelligence-sharing and other assistance to the armies of Nigeria and its three neighbors, which banded together to battle Boko Haram after the extremists expanded their campaign across the region’s borders.

‘Underrated Boko Haram’

President Goodluck Jonathan, who has been in office since 2011, is engaged in a tough re-election campaign against ex-military ruler Muhammadu Buhari.

Voting initially scheduled for Feb. 14 has been delayed for six weeks to give Nigeria’s military time to secure the country, despite its failure to beat back Boko Haram in the previous six years.

Jonathan admitted in an interview published on Sunday that early on in their rise he had underestimated the Islamists, who have overrun swathes of the northeast.

“Probably at the beginning, we, and I mean myself and the team, we underrated the capacity of Boko Haram,” Jonathan told newspaper ThisDay.

He said the military had recently acquired more arms and ammunition to battle the Islamists, and vowed their defeat was imminent.

Sunday’s bombing in Potiskum was the second suicide attack in or near the market where new and second-hand phones are sold and repaired.

The first attack occurred Jan. 11, when two suicide bombers — one of whom appeared to be aged around 15 — blew themselves up outside the market killing six people and injuring 37 others.

Before Sunday’s strike, suspicious security guards and vigilantes said they tried to prevent the girl — who witnesses said appeared around seven — from entering the market.

“We sent her back four times, because given her age, she did not have anything to do in the market,” Lawan said.

“When we were screening people, she bent and tried to pass under the ropes, some distance from our view. That was when the explosives went off.”

In a sign of the distrust generated by the suicide bombings, Lawan said “we have barred women from entering the market to prevent further attacks.”

Over 13,000 have been killed while more than one million people have been left homeless since 2009 as the Boko Haram militants try to carve out an Islamic state in Nigeria’s northeast.

Nigeria’s military said on Sunday that the offensive against Boko Haram was making progress, claiming soldiers had recovered stocks of weapons abandoned by insurgents fleeing the recaptured town of Baga.

Nigerian military claims to have re-taken Baga from Boko Haram came more than a month after it was overrun in what is feared to be the worst massacre in the six-year insurgency.

There was no independent corroboration that Baga had returned to army control.

Agence France-Presse

The post Young Girl Suicide Bomber Kills Seven in Nigeria appeared first on The Jakarta Globe.