Kumbukumbu ya miaka 50 tangu yatokee mauaji makubwa ya yanayofahamika kama My Lai yaliyotokea eneo la Son My nchini Vietnam.
Mnamo March 16, 1968 wanajeshi wa Marekani waliwaua watu 504 ambao walikuwa raia wa Vietnam na tukio hili lilitokea na kutambulika kama tukio la kutisha zaidi ambalo lilitokea wakati wa Vita ya Wavietnam.
Waliuawa wanawake, wanaume na watoto, huku idadi kubwa ya wanawake wakibakwa na kutendewa vitendo vya kikatili.
Mnamo March 16, 1968 wanajeshi wa Marekani waliwaua watu 504 ambao walikuwa raia wa Vietnam na tukio hili lilitokea na kutambulika kama tukio la kutisha zaidi ambalo lilitokea wakati wa Vita ya Wavietnam.
Waliuawa wanawake, wanaume na watoto, huku idadi kubwa ya wanawake wakibakwa na kutendewa vitendo vya kikatili.
-----
On March 16, 1968, Capt. Ernest Medina led his infantry company in an assault on the village of Son My, along the central coast of South Vietnam, as part of a mission to find and destroy a battalion of the National Liberation Front, also known as the Vietcong. One of the hamlets within the village was called My Lai.
Operating under the assumption that villagers of My Lai would be away at the market, Captain Medina planned an aggressive sweep through the area, ordering his men to destroy everything and to kill anyone who resisted. By the end of the day American forces had killed 347 to 504 unarmed Vietnamese women, children and old men, and raped 20 women and girls, some as young as 10 years old.
The massacre at My Lai was not the only time American troops committed war crimes against Vietnamese civilians, but it was the single worst instance; its severity, its cover-up and the eventual trial of just a handful of the unit’s leaders became a synonym for the entire American war in Vietnam. But while even today the massacre is often portrayed as having been perpetrated by a unit of misfits, the cause was a failure in leadership, from the commander of Captain Medina’s division, Maj. Gen. Samuel W. Koster, to the platoon leader most closely associated with the killings, Second Lt. William Calley.
The disaster at My Lai began even before Captain Medina’s company arrived the morning of March 16. The unit — Charlie Company, First Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment — had arrived in Vietnam in 1967. While still in Hawaii, it received high marks for preparedness and training.
But the unit had been hastily thrown together, and many of its experienced officers and noncommissioned officers, who had already served in-country, had to be transferred out of the unit as it prepared to deploy because Army regulations prevented them from returning to combat so quickly.
Statistically, Charlie Company was slightly above average among the infantry companies serving in Southeast Asia during the war. Eighty-seven percent of the remaining noncommissioned officers had graduated from high school, a rate 20 percent higher than the average for line infantry companies. Seventy percent of the men in lower enlisted ranks had graduated from high school, also slightly above the average for soldiers serving in Vietnam.
The unit was mixed demographically, with half of its troops being African-American, and the men came from geographically diverse hometowns. Other than the inexperienced men in key leadership roles, and the company’s experiences in the months before My Lai, there is little to explain why this particular group of soldiers committed the most horrific set of war crimes by American troops during the entire conflict.
Soon after its deployment in Vietnam, Charlie Company began to take heavy casualties from booby traps and snipers. Lieutenant Calley grew to hate and fear the local Vietnamese after losing his radio telephone operator, William Weber, to a sniper’s bullet while carelessly leading his men along the top of a dike between rice paddies to keep them out of the water. After that, all Vietnamese became synonymous with Vietcong guerrillas for Lieutenant Calley, and soon the rest of the company adopted his harsh attitudes.
Captain Medina and his officers tolerated Charlie Company’s abuse of Vietnamese