Several online cemeteries have been established to commemorate deceased relatives, express gratitude to martyrs who have laid down their lives for the country’s independence, and help find their tombs.

The interface of nhomai.vn - Photo: nhomai.vn screenshot

The forum called nhomai.vn is regarded as the first online cemetery in Vietnam, and was opened by Nguyen Anh Tu in February 2008.

The forum has a total of 57,000 members with 12,000 tombs having been set up. With an advantage in land area, Nhomai.vn freely arranges tombs in separate areas for different groups like martyrs, children and artists, or for different religions.

There are candles, flowers and various models of tombs for the forum’s members to choose from. There is also a place for them to express their feelings and console each other.

“When visiting real tombs, we seem to meditate beside our dead relatives. When visiting online tombs, we can freely write out our feelings to share with a community of people like us on the internet,” Lan, a member of nhomai.vn, said.

“I signed in and established a tomb for my father. Instead of waiting until the lunar new year festival to return to my hometown and visit his tomb, I feel closer to him when accessing the forum…”

Some people have spent their free time establishing websites containing all available information about martyrs. One such person is Nguyen Sy Ho, a math teacher at Tan Binh High School in the southern province of Binh Duong.

Ho’s mother died in a bombing by the US in Huong Khe District in the north-central province of Ha Tinh in 1972. His brother took part in the Mau Than Uprising in 1971, and there has been no news about him since.

Though he is a good math teacher, Ho has never thought about giving private lessons, instead using his spare time to help bring the remains of martyrs back to their hometowns.

After connecting to the internet in 2008, Ho synthesized all the information he obtained in the process of searching for his brother on a personal website, http://teacherho.vnweblogs.com.

Visitors to Ho’s website can find more than 120,000 tombs with clear addresses and information in only a couple of hours, as they are sorted by province, cemetery and fighting unit.

Thanks to this website, Ho has helped find more than 1,000 martyrs’ tombs. He even helped 11 families from distant provinces with accommodations so they could find and reinter their relatives’ remains.

At present, thousands of people access the website every day.

Tri An (Gratefulness), an online martyr cemetery, officially came into operation at trian.gov.vn on April 27. It aims to digitize all martyr cemeteries in Vietnam.

Tri An has updated information of more than 50,000 martyr tombs in the north-central provinces of Quang Tri and Nghe An, and received more than 30,000 visitors in three months of operation.

Nguyen Hoai Son, head of the management board of the Tri An project, said that they are currently updating information on martyr cemeteries in other provinces. They want to make it a forum for families and comrades of the martyrs and cemetery management boards. They can thus connect with each other and share information about the martyrs.

The website www.nghiatrangtruongson.quangtri.gov.vn is currently regarded as the perfect martyr cemetery in Vietnam, as it shows the entire Truong Son Martyr Cemetery in Quang Tri Province, the resting place of 10,257 soldiers.



The home screen of www.nghiatrangtruongson.quangtri.gov.vn.

The website was established with a total of expenditure of VND1.3 billion (US$62,230), a present from Ho Chi Minh City to Quang Tri Province.

The project was carried out by the HCMC Department of Science and Technology over one year beginning in June 2010.

This is the first time Vietnam applied the Geographic Information System to establishing a website, with 3D images on an area of 40 hectares. More than 14,400 pictures were taken to make a 3D video clip of the entire cemetery.

These images show each tomb and even each cluster of flowers in the cemetery so that relatives of the martyrs can imagine the space where their relatives are resting in peace from every angle.

All visitors have to do is type the name of a martyr, and all information related to that person will appear, including birth date, hometown and fighting unit. The website also provides a guide to each tomb location.

Tuoi Tre