the presence of France “underlines the interest of a memory which is only beginning to be shared” with Vietnam, according to French Souvenir

The president of Souvenir français, Serge Barcellini was invited on Tuesday to France Inter.

A first which “underlines the interest of a memory which is only beginning to be shared”. Guest of France Inter, the president of French Souvenir, Serge Barcellini, reacts to the participation on Tuesday May 7 of French political leaders in the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the battle of Diên Bien Phu, in Vietnam. They are Sébastien Lecornu, the Minister of the Armed Forces, and Patricia Mirallès, the Secretary of State for Veterans and Memory.

“The 70th anniversary is particularly important, because it is the last major ten-year anniversary for which there will still be both Vietnamese veterans and some French combatants”, adds Serge Barcellini. The battle of Diên Bien Phu left 3,000 dead or missing on the French side, up to 10,000 on the Vietnamese side. Not all the bodies could be recovered. “We believe that there are still more than a thousand bodies in mass graves”he says.

“A progression of commemorative life”

How can we explain that France did not participate in this commemoration earlier? Is it because Vietnam didn’t want to invite her, or because she still has the memory of a crushing defeat? “I almost want to tell you both, but above all I believe that we are witnessing a progression of commemorative life in Vietnam”believes Serge Barcellini.

After this battle, which sealed the emergence of Vietnam as an independent nation and the end of the French presence in Indochina, the country “then had to face a war with the United States, with a war with the Chinese” And “I tend to think that perhaps he had other things to do than memorial life”, he recalls. Since then, things have changed. Vietnam “has the desire to make the Diên Bien Phu site a major memorial site”.

70 years after the battle, Serge Barcellini is “completely convinced that there are still things to learn”. He cites the example of the Diên Bien Phu museum, “totally Vietnamese”. For him, “not everything is said, not everything is written. The aid provided by China, for example, does not appear, even though we know very well that if Diên Bien Phu was a Vietnamese victory, it was was also a tremendous Vietnamese and Chinese victory. “This is not completely written”he concludes.