MOROCCAN GATE (BAB AL MAGHARIBA)
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This gate, lost in the middle of the Vietnamese countryside, bears witness to the shared history of Morocco, Vietnam and France.
Meeting of thethird kind: the Moroccan gate, lost in the middle of the Vietnamese countryside... It bears witness to a common history between Morocco, Vietnam and France. It was built between 1956 and 1960 by a group of Moroccan soldiers from Indochina who came to fight under the flag of the colonial power. Some of these soldiers had joined the Viet Minh, others had been taken prisoner. In 1954, after the end of the war, these Moroccans were grouped together in an agricultural cooperative, where they lived abandoned to their own fate. They built this monument, which was first named "Africa-Europe Gate", to mark their passage to these places, far from the shores of the Mediterranean. In 1965, they were moved to another village near Yên Bai, 160 km north of Hanoi. The 70 survivors of this odyssey were not repatriated to Morocco until January 1972. To learn about the history of these castaways of war, please refer to the book by historian Nelcya Delanoe, Poussières d'empire, Paris, PUF, 2002. In 2016, at the request of the Moroccan Embassy, the Hanoi city authorities initiated a project to restore and conserve the monument in order to strengthen the bonds of friendship between the two countries. This renovation work was completed at the end of 2018, with an official inauguration ceremony on November 10 of the same year. The gate has been restored to its original state, and its name is inscribed in Vietnamese, Arabic and English.
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