Information about martyrs and their relatives is collected in Hai Duong Province

PANO - Retired Lieutenant General Le Van Han, President of the Vietnam Martyr Families Support Association, accompanied State President Truong Tan Sang in his visit to the US.

The Lieutenant General's trip is expected to boost the association’s efforts to mobilize more international assistance for its work.

“The association proposed to work with USAID to set up cooperation and strengthen capacity building to search and identify the remains of unnamed Vietnamese soldiers,” said Nguyen Hung Phong, Permanent Deputy President of the Vietnam Martyr Families Support Association.

Searching for and identifying the remains has been a priority for Vietnam since the country was reunified.

“And Vietnam is active in this work without the assistance from other countries, because this is the work of conscience and responsibility,” he added.

So far, over 20,000 Vietnamese soldiers remain missing in action and 30,000 sets of remains have been reburied in cemeteries nationwide without having been identified.

The association was founded to help martyr families collect information to search for the remains. However, the result of the work is limited, despite the valuable support of the society.

“We are running against time to meet the demand of families who have burning desires to find the remains of their relatives,” he said.

“For us, managing to find an identified set of remains is very meaningful, as more information is lost as time passes by,” he added.

In fact, of the remains of Vietnamese soldiers is repatriated from Laos or Cambodia, the rate of those positively identified is just six to seven per cent. Moreover, the lack of equipment and financial resource is also a big barrier to identifying the remains, as the demand is very high.

Therefore, according to Mr. Phong, the association planned to promote its external affairs to mobilize more support from the international community and overseas Vietnamese.

So far, the association has met representatives of USAID and US MIA Office in Vietnam several time and some groups of Vietnam veterans from Australia and the Republic of Korea.

Apart from searching and identifying the remains of Vietnamese soldiers, the association is willing to share the information it has about the US MIA in Vietnam.

According to Mr. Phong, during President Sang’s visit to the US, the association also asked to visit and work with some other US societies to gain mutual understanding to boost the non-government cooperation on sharing information about those missing in action from the two sides.

Translated by Ngoc Hung