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[ndlr] A lire sur RFA, article sur le sort des blessés de guerre de l'ancienne Armée de la République du Viêt-Nam. Reported by Cat Linh and Hoa Ai for RFA’s Vietnam Service. Translated by Viet Ha. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.A Vietnamese activist group for disabled veterans has been lobbing American legislators to restart a program that would allow former South Vietnamese soldiers to resettle in the U.S. to escape poverty and discrimination they face at home for their participation in a war than ended four decades ago.[caption id="attachment_20845" align="aligncenter" width="474"] Soldats mutilés de l'ARVN © DR[/caption]Truc Ho and Hanh Nhon, co-founders of the Association for Disabled Veterans and Widows’ Relief, have met with American legislators for more than a year to convince them to take action so that 500 disabled military officers from the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) would be eligible to immigrate to the U.S. under existing law.When the Vietnam War (1955-1975) ended with the fall of Saigon, present-day Ho Chi Minh City, to the communist North Vietnamese Army, thousands of former ARVN officers were sent to reeducation camps because they had collaborated with the Americans. Some disabled veterans, however, were not sent to the centers.A few years later, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese war refugees started immigrating to the U.S. and other countries under the Orderly Departure Program (ODP) created in 1979 under the auspices of the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR). More than 458,000 Vietnamese citizens were resettled in the U.S. under the ODP between 1980 and 1997.Lire la suite : RFA, 07/01/2016.