Art performance held to mark 50th anniversary of liberation of Con Dao island
VGP – Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh on Saturday attended an art performance commemorating the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Con Dao island once known as the "hell o earth".
Revolutionary soldiers and former prisoners join the art performance commemorating the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Con Dao island. Photo: VGP
The event was jointly organized by the Central Commission for Communication, Education and Mass Mobilization, the Viet Nam Television, and Ba Ria-Vung Tau province.
Participants to the events include Head of the Central Commission for Communication, Education and Mass Mobilization Nguyen Trong Nghia, Secretary of the Party Committee of Ho Chi Minh City Nguyen Van Nen, former Vice President Truong My Hoa, Vice President Vo Thi Anh Xuan, and more than 700 former political prisoners and their relatives from nationwide.
Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh (3rd from left pays tribute to heroic martyrs at Hang Duong Cemetery in Con Dao Island, Ba Ria-Vung Tau province, May 3, 2025. Photo: VGP
Addressing the event, Prime Minister Pham expressed profound and infinite gratitude to great President Ho Chi Minh, revolutionary predecessors, heroic martyrs, wounded soldiers, revolutionary soldiers, comrades and compatriots who were imprisoned and tortured in the prison system in Con Dao island.
For more than a century, colonialists and imperialists turned Con Dao from a peaceful island with beautiful nature into a hell on earth to detain and torture brutally Vietnamese patriots and revolutionaries, Pham highlighted.
Despite all the vicious tricks, extreme torture and harsh labor, our revolutionaries and patriotic compatriots still shined with the spirit of wholehearted devotion to the nation, fighting for independence and freedom of the Vietnamese people, he stressed.
Con Dao has become a sacred historical site, a beautiful symbol of the fighting spirit, revolutionary heroism and ardent patriotism of the Vietnamese people, and a great and special revolutionary school that contributed to training and educating many leaders of our Party and State in the resistance wars as well as in the cause of national construction and development.
The liberation of Con Dao permanently eliminated the "hell on earth" that had existed for 113 years, said the Prime Minister.
Today, Con Dao has become a dynamic economy, with the annual growth rate 8.86 percent between 2020 and 2025.
As tourism has become a spearhead economic sector of the island, Prime Minister Pham urged local authorities to effectively exploit vast potential of Con Dao to turn the island into a major tourism hub of the nation and the world./.
