Saigon square

The article contains numerous pictures of yellow flags decorating the site of the event, and numerous people wearing yellow flag paraphernalia. There is no sign of the "supporters" mentioned in the article.

The article presents the story as representative of the entire Vietnamese community, instead of the entirely political story that it is:

• The people involved are unequivocally identifying themselves as a partisan political faction with the flags and paraphenalia.

• Any symbolism involving Saigon or the yellow flag are partisan political symbols, not representative of the Vietnamese community.

To claim that these symbols are representative of the community applies a political stereotype to the community and marginalizes nearly all of the community by painting a picture of the community that excludes them.

The story would be acceptable if it identified the people correctly as a partisan political faction and did not associate the faction or the symbols with the entire Vietnamese community. These people absolutely have a right to unveil their monument, but the media should identify correctly what it is a monument to. These people are not the boat people nor do they speak for the boat people or anyone outside of their political faction.

It would then be evident that the "museum" they are trying to build is a monument to the Saigon military dictatorship, not the boat people. It is not at all surprising that their fundraising efforts are failing.

The boat people are completely marginalized and removed from Canadian history by stories like this.

Footnote: we are aware that this group has formally organized an association called "The Vietnamese Canadian Community". That does not excuse the reporter from reporting what is common knowledge in the Vietnamese Canadian community and what should be common skepticism about anyone claiming to represent an entire ethnic community. It makes the CBC appear to be complicit in the propaganda campaign. Are they?

The Canadian Encyclopedia web site replaced a good, but short, article on the boat people with a much longer totally fake history. The title of this article is "Vietnamese Canadians" (Joy & Lambert, 2018).^[6] (there is a second article on the boat people elsewhere that is bad, but not quite as bad).

Heritage Minute

There is nothing wrong with the content of this article.

The problem is that it purports to be representative of a community (by being included in the "Heritage Minute" series) when it is not at all representative. It has, in fact, been carefully selected to exploit and marginalize the community it purports to represent.

This particular story has been characterized as representative in order to support the stereotype of the boat people as "victims of the fall of Saigon". This serves a political purpose of marginalizing the true boat people, who were victims of a different crisis. Almost anyone in the community could have told the reporter that this is how it would be perceived (but obviously not the members who were promoting this idea).

This family's story is a true story, but very few of the boat people in Canada are from Saigon, and almost none are former members of the Saigon military. Many are former members of the various groups that fought the Saigon military. That fight and the fate of former Saigon military officers was irrelevant to Canada's involvement in the boat people crisis. Setting this story up as an anti-communist statement in the teaser does not at all reflect what the boat people crisis was about.

In the context in which it is presented, this article is a bit of anti-communist, pro-Saigon-military-dictatorship propaganda. This is no fault of the people portrayed in the article -- they were put into this context by others. Taken out of the Heritage Minute context the article is an interesting and valid family portrait.