The Vietnamese diaspora has mourned our homeland’s loss for 50 years – and our ghosts can return at any moment | André Dao

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon , 30 April 1975 .

This is a half century of mourning the loss of family and friends and a homeland.

In Vietnam , the victorious government celebrates the date as the anniversary of liberation there is no space for unofficial remembering.

But in honouring our own dead, we do so to the exclusion of others’ ghosts.

André Dao is the author of Anam , which won the 2024 Prime Minister’s Literary award for fiction.

He is also a postdoctoral research fellow at the Melbourne Law School .

Dao: As we remember mass graves in Hu , we must also remember and condemn mass graves at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis and Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza .