Esecuzione del prigioniero

Il Generale Nguyễn Ngọc Loan mentre giustizia un prigioniero Việt Cộng a Saigon (General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan Executing a Viet Cong Prisoner in Saigon) è una fotografia presa da Eddie Adams il 1º febbraio 1968 che mostra il capo della Polizia Nazionale della Repubblica del Vietnam Nguyễn Ngọc Loan giustiziare l’ufficiale Viet Cong Nguyễn Văn Lém a Saigon durante l’Offensiva del Têt. La fotografia di Adams mostra il momento in cui il proiettile è stato esploso; il Việt Cộng morto, con la bocca contratta in una smorfia ed i capelli ancora mossi dallo sparo, non ha ancora cominciato a cadere. Il fatto venne immortalato anche da un cameraman dell’NBC, ma la fotografia di Adams rimane l’immagine del fatto per antonomasia, che fece il giro del mondo sulle prime pagine di tutti i giornali. La vedova di Lém confermò che il suo marito era un membro dei Việt Cộng e che non lo vide più dopo che l’offensiva di Tết cominciò. Benché alcuni critici ancora sostengano che l’azione di Nguyễn Ngọc Loan ha violato la convenzione di Ginevra per il trattamento dei prigionieri di guerra (Nguyễn Văn Lém non stava portando un’uniforme né stava combattendo contro presunti soldati nemici, così è risultato dalla commissione contro i crimini di guerra), i diritti di prigioniero di guerra venivano accordati ai Việt Cộng a condizione di essere catturati durante le operazioni militari. Quelli considerati come guerriglieri erano soggetti soltanto alle leggi del governo sud-vietnamita, che in ogni caso non prevedevano la morte senza processo per i prigionieri. Durante l’offensiva del Tết, Loan e la sua polizia mantennero buona parte di Saigon fuori dal controllo dei Việt Cộng fino alla conclusione della guerra. Durante la difesa di Saigon, Nguyễn spostò le sue truppe dalla difesa dell’ambasciata americana al palazzo presidenziale, un atto per cui gli Americani nel Vietnam non lo perdonarono mai. Quando venne interrogato da Oriana Fallaci, durante la sua degenza in ospedale dovuta ad una ferita alla gamba, sul motivo dell’esecuzione del prigioniero, la risposta fu la seguente: “[…] Non aveva l’uniforme. E io non riesco a rispettare un uomo che spara senza indossar l’uniforme. Perché è troppo comodo: ammazzi e non sei riconosciuto. Un nordvietnamita io lo rispetto perché è vestito da soldato come me, e quindi rischia come me. Ma un vietcong in borghese… […]” La fotografia di Adams vinse il premio Pulitzer nel 1969, benché successivamente il fotografo disse di rammaricarsi dell’effetto che poi ebbe, l’immagine si trasformò in un’icona pacifista:

Per quanto riguarda il Generale Loan e la sua famosa fotografia, Eddie Adams in seguito scrisse sul Time:

Adams, anni più tardi, chiese pubblicamente scusa a Loan ed alla sua famiglia per il disonore che aveva provocato loro. Quando il Generale Loan morì, Adams lo elogiò come eroe di una giusta causa. La foto fece comprendere al pubblico americano, più di ogni altra inchiesta, che il governo sud vietnamita non era un governo democratico, ma una dittatura corrotta e militarista, in cui il valore della vita umana non godeva di alcuna considerazione. Accuse che potevano essere legittimamente rivolte anche al Vietnam del Nord, ma proprio questa indistinguibilità morale, agli occhi dell’opinione pubblica americana, contribuì a rendere la guerra del Viet Nam un inutile sperco di vite umane e di denari dei contribuenti.

L’autore spiega lo scatto

L’esecuzione ripresa in video

English version

Eddie Adams (June 12, 1933 – September 18, 2004) was an American photographer and photojournalist noted for portraits of celebrities and politicians and for coverage of 13 wars. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1969. Combat photographer Adams served in the United States Marine Corps during the Korean War as a combat photographer. One of his assignments was to photograph the entire Demilitarized Zone from end to end immediately following the war. This took him over a month to complete. Pulitzer Prize winning photograph Adams’ photograph of Nguyễn Ngọc Loan executing Nguyễn Văn Lém on February 1, 1968 It was while covering the Vietnam War for the Associated Press that he took his best-known photograph – the picture of police chief General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan executing a Vietcong prisoner, Nguyễn Văn Lém, on a Saigon street, on February 1, 1968, during the opening stages of the Tet Offensive. Adams won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography and a World Press Photo award for the photograph (captioned ‘General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a Viet Cong prisoner in Saigon’), but would later lament its notoriety. Writer and critic David D. Perlmutter points out that ‘no film footage did as much damage as AP photographer Eddie Adams’s 35mm shot taken on a Saigon street … When people talk or write about [the Tet Offensive] at least a sentence is devoted (often with an illustration) to the Eddie Adams picture’. Anticipating the impact of Adams’s photograph, an attempt at balance was sought by editors in the New York Times. In his memoirs,[8] John G. Morris recalls that assistant managing editor Theodore M. Bernstein “determined that the brutality manifested by America’s ally be put into perspective, agreed to run the Adams picture large, but offset with a picture of a child slain by Vietcong, which conveniently came through from AP at about the same time”. Nonetheless, it is Adams’s photograph that is remembered while the other far less dramatic image was overlooked and soon forgotten. In Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag is disturbed by what she sees as the staged nature of the photograph. She writes that ‘he would not have carried out the summary execution there had [the press] not been available to witness it’.[9] However, Donald Winslow of the New York Times quotes Adams as having described the image as a ‘reflex picture’ and ‘wasn’t certain of what he’d photographed until the film was developed’. Furthermore, Winslow notes that Adams ‘wanted me to understand that “Saigon Execution” was not his most important picture and that he did not want his obituary to begin, “Eddie Adams, the photographer best known for his iconic Vietnam photograph ‘Saigon Execution’’ On Nguyen Ngoc Loan and his famous photograph, Adams wrote in Time in 1998: “     Two people died in that photograph: the recipient of the bullet and GENERAL NGUYEN NGOC LOAN. The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful weapons in the world. People believe them; but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths. … What the photograph didn’t say was, ‘What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American people?’…. This picture really messed up his life. He never blamed me. He told me if I hadn’t taken the picture, someone else would have, but I’ve felt bad for him and his family for a long time. … I sent flowers when I heard that he had died and wrote, “I’m sorry. There are tears in my eyes. Adams later apologized in person to General Nguyen and his family for the irreparable damage it did to the General’s honor while he was alive. When Nguyen died, Adams praised him as a “hero” of a “just cause”.On the television show “War Stories with Oliver North” Adams called Gen. Nguyen “a goddamned hero!” He once said, “I would have rather been known more for the series of photographs I shot of 48 Vietnamese refugees who managed to sail to Thailand in a 30-foot boat, only to be towed back to the open seas by Thai marines.” The photographs, and accompanying reports, helped persuade then President Jimmy Carter to grant the nearly 200,000 Vietnamese boat people asylum.[He won the Robert Capa Gold Medal from the Overseas Press Club in 1977 for this series of photographs in his photo essay, “The Boat of No Smiles” (Published by AP).Adams remarked, “It did some good and nobody got hurt.

Eddie Adams Talks About The Saigon Execution Photo

Execution video