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Kieu Ha

 April 30, 1975 was an important event in Vietnam, but I really didn't know much about it because I was a little girl at that time. When I went to school, I studied Vietnamese history and learned about this event, but the teachers followed the books and didn't teach me the truth. The truth was that the Vietcong took freedom of speech away from Vietnam.

 As I grew up, I could see that Vietnamese people had no more freedom. There were no laws. The Vietcong could do anything they wanted to. We couldn't meet or do anything with people who were directly involved in resisting the April 30, 1975 Communist takeover. The Vietcong said they were criminals. We couldn't even listen to any love songs that talked about the cruelty of the war in Vietnam.

 More of the truth was that the Vietcong tried to make money from poor people by exploiting labor and from the rich people by confiscating personal property. Rich people therefore didn't trust the banks and always hid personal property someplace far away and acted like poor people.

 Before April 30, 1975, Vietnam was a nice country and we loved it, but afterwards everything changed. That's why many people left Vietnam to find freedom in another country.