So I was watching "Last Days in Vietnam" recently on YouTube, and one comment made me curious about this. About 30,000 people were crammed onto boat fleeing Saigon and S. Vietnam in order to flee the country, and one of the American special forces advisers said he was confident at the time that all of the refugees would be executed by the NVA if they had told the refugees to go back.
While I understand that the NVA had, for example, executed 'American collaborators' in Hue City during the Tet Offensive, I'm curious about what we actually know about atrocities (if any) that were committed during the collapse and conquest of S. Vietnam.
It seems clear to me that the NVA didn't go through any sort of massive ethnic cleansing campaign, but they did create 're-education camps' which seemed to be similar to what China had during Mao's regime.
The problem is that South Vietnam is always the richer part of the country, and the ability to endure hardship of its citizens are much much lower. Also the cause of the Vietnam War: the North had to attack relentlessly to kill off the surplus population of North Vietnam. And a victory was the best outcome to expect.
Think Russians vs Americans.
The "American collaborators" killed in Hue weren't even collaborators, rather random killings. That's what they've been complaining so far.
And bonus info: The American Gov, especially the retired and hated Richard Nixon, had worked tirelessly, with the Soviet backers of North Vietnam, to ensure a better fate for those left behind. That privilege didn't extend to the remnants of "neutral" Cambodia, who was run by the Khmer Rouge.
It's unclear, statistically-speaking, the extent to which the NVA actually murdered South Vietnamese collaborators post-75. Naturally, the Hanoi government denies any wrongdoing, but admitted that "reeducation" or prison camps did exist. They maintain that these camps taught its residents the error of their ways in supporting the US, promoted the ideals of socialism/communism, and forced them to complete heavy labor as part of their punishment.
By contrast, the SVN who left Vietnam report a wide variety of stories. Those vets I've spoken with have provided harrowing accounts of being made to stand in deep holes filled with water for days under armed guard, seeing friends shot and killed at the reeducation camps, and being forced to endure horrible conditions such as rotten food, bug-ridden and inadequate shelter, and the standard beatings/torture/maimings. Deaths of "traitors" postwar have been estimated by Viet-Americans at around 2 million.
Those SVN who did not leave usually don't report so many deaths, but the reeducation camp stories are similar. In addition, they also report that once they were released, they were prevented from practicing in high income fields (docs, lawyers, etc.), their families also had difficulty finding any work, and they suffered harassment by authorities for many years.
So, wherein lies the truth? Somewhere in the middle, I suppose, to give an unsatisfactory answer. For the NVN, naturally they viewed SVN as traitors after the war and they probably didn't treat them very well. Deaths more than likely occurred, and those with new power (NVN moved to officials positions in SVN) probably abused this power. Reeducation camps were probably no nicer than Gitmo, and this was in a country whose economic system was heavily damaged and just about to bottom out into the Subsidized Period when having one egg a week was a luxury. You do the math.
As for sources, I'm pretty sure that Nick Turse's book didn't go that far into things. Most of the details you can locate are memoirs from overseas Vietnamese (see Sucheng Chan's book) as well as works like Bao Ninh's The Sorrow of War, which tells about postwar Vietnam from a northern perspective. I'd watch the film Journey from the Fall if you want to see how Viet kieu tell the story. Le Ly Hayslip may have covered this topic, and certainly there are plenty of others if you google "Vietnam reeducation camps."
IMHO, the film "Last Days in Vietnam" is only garnering positive attention because it does not challenge the standard narrative of the US abandoning SVN, to the dismay of good-hearted American soldiers who felt very guilty about leaving. Being a Kennedy as well, the filmmaker has easily grabbed attention that it might not otherwise.
Apologies for any typos - shot this one off quickly