“A short distance away to the north of the highway, we find the old South Vietnamese national military  cemetery, called the Bien Hoa cemetery. At one time, this was the largest cemetery in southern Vietnam. Now it is surrounded by a high cinderblock wall topped by rolls of barbed wire and overseen by watchtowers. A sign warns visitors not to take pictures. Even a nearby hillside temple, where one might normally begin a paying of respects, is off limits.
Next to the cemetery we see what looks like a few hundred new Vietnamese army recruits doing laundry and planting vegetables. Why are so many troops needed at such a spot? Why does the cemetery look like an armed camp?

“These young soldiers based at the cemetery—born after the end of the Vietnam War—can no longer be threatened by the South Vietnamese “reactionaries” who lie by the thousands in the ground here. These dead South Vietnamese soldiers, called “puppets” by the Communist Party, are given no recognition in official histories or museums.

Through gaps in the cinder block wall, we see that some of the graves are surrounded by tall weeds. A videotape reaching Vietnamese in the United States more than a year ago showed some gravestones to be damaged. Parts of the cemetery appear to have been vandalized.

Why was this allowed to happen? Why the high walls and watchtowers? What does the government fear?

Is this a prison for ghosts? “

Maggy Sterner (Vietnam Diary 4: Honoring the Dead) - 15/7/2005