Theyare Us, Were We Vietnamese

What can be known about old sufferings in the new Vietnam TheyAre Us, Were We Vietnamese Theodore Jacqueney rim accounts of human rights violations in suffer from limb paralysis, vision loss, and infectious G Vietnam, once fragmentary and uncon- skin diseases like scabies caused by long-term, closely firmed, are now increasingly provided by consistent packed, dark living conditions. They also witnessed eyewitness accounts. Opponents of the former Saigon cases of reeducation camp insanity brought on by a regime-some of them victims of its police and prison combination of oppressive living conditions and inces- atrocities-are now in “reeducation” detention cent& sant demands for “confessions. ” Prisoners are forced to and prisons throughout Vietnam. Others imprisoned detail page upon page of minute information over and include largely nonpolitical artists, writers, journalists, over again until the authorities are satisfied. However, lawyers, professors, and doctors. Judges and civil ser- with detention camps scattered throughout Vietnam, vants who once held apolitical jobs are also detained. conditions may vary, and not all eligible for “reeduca- Reports of massive detentions with widespread prison tion” were ,detained. Some refugees recall reeducation misery paint a cruelly different picture from Hanoi’s as nothing more than a few boring classes and “self- claims that most Vietnamese “eligible for reeducation criticism” confessions while they lived at home and have had their full civil liberties restored.” Hanoi says continued their jobs. that those still imprisoned are former high ranking Vietnamese detention camp accounts contrast with military and civilian officials, all of whom are humanely those of some former humanitarian relief workers who treated. Refugees so desperate they flee Vietnam on remained in Vietnam after Hanoi’s victory. They report barely seaworthy coastal fishing boats or even in row-: hearing of no human rights violati ns and believe none boats bring out most of the information critical of Hanoi. could have occurred without their9. knowledge. One Other information filters out through clandestine corre- former Ford Foundation American employee, Jay Scar- spondence or comes from recent Western visitors. Some borough, was even detained with Saigon army soldiers of these sources have helped me prepare this report, for a few months. He saw nothing worse than “bore- including former prisoners with family and friends still dom,” he told me, although he noted that he had been in Vietnam. imprisoned months before the reeducation program offi- Gulag-like conditions prevail in many camps, accord- cially began and was released shortly after, it went into ing to ex-prisoners. Many detainees have died. Unlike effect. A few Westerners permitted to visit selected political prisons under the old Saigon regime, “people camps near Saigon, Tay Ninh or My Tho, describe now do not perish from torture or beatings, but from adequate treatment, although as one observer of current overwork and disease,” one detention camp escapee told Vietnam human rights tragedies noted, “Hitler too me. Former internees describe deaths from malnutrition, allowed the Red Cross to visit his model camps.” Other beriberi, dysentery malaria, forced-labor-induced Western visitors to the camps relate dramatically differ- exhausticn, requiredhine-field sweeping, and suicide. ent impressions. Patrice De Beer, a Le Monde corre- Former prisoners say that camp inmates commonly spondent once highly sympathetic to the National Liber- ation Front, reported in December seeing in a detention camp “an atmosphere of misery,” with some inmates THEODOREJACQUENEY worked in Vietnam for the U.S. State obviously “nervous and frightened” and others reciting Department’s Agency for International Development. resign- apparently rote-memorized reeducation lessons for him ing in disagreement with U.S. support for Nguyen Van Thieu’s 197 I reelection. He later publicized Thieu regime repression to the surprise of his official guides. and political prisoner abuses as a newspaper editorial page Western journalists, diplomats, humanitarian and editor and as head of an ex-AID employees’ Vietnam issues religious organizations were expelled from southern‘ protest group. He now directs DEMOCRACY International, a Vietnam as Hanoi consolidated its administration in project IO launch a new human rights magazine. 1975 and 1976. Curtaining the South from outside’view 10 THEY ARE US, WERE WE VIETNAMESE I 11 signaled a tightening repression, ex-prisoners charge. camera. New ones had to be written twice each month, Reflecting on his most recent Vietnam trip, French both in reeducation and in prison. If they found you had journalist Jean Lacouture, long sympathetic to Hanoi’s left something out that you had included earlier, you cause, concluded: “It is better for someone trying to were in trouble. You would have to’write a whole new preserve intact his admiration for a revolution not to one. Some people were forced to write new confessions know’iti victims.” One victim I interviewed, a doctor, many times each day. Each confession wjs about twenty was detained for two months in reeducation camp in pages, handwritten,” one prisoner reported. Ninh Hoa district, about thirty kilometers from Nha “Sometimes people went crazy from these confes- Trang, and then for eight months more in Nha Trang. sions, living under these conditions,” said the doctor. “At first,” he said, “we were provided 400-500 grams ‘‘I saw many such cases-screaming, yelling people. I of rice each day for each prisoner. Then suddenly it was could not treat them with any form of psychotherapy. cut to 200. Two meals a day, only one bowl of rice each They would not permit it. We had to keep silent in the meal. No meat, no niioc mam [a fish sauce staple of camps and in prison; the only thing we were allowed to Vietnamese diet], no vegetables, no fat. Very rarely discuss was the reeducation lesson‘. I could not even there were small amounts of fish, the kind fishermen discuss with my fellow priso&-s’fwhy they were in throw away.” prison.” Treatment in the Nha Trang prison was worse, the doctor said, although he never knew why he was trans- HOW MANY DETAINEES? ferred and was not permitted to inquire. From a rea- sonably habitable reeducation camp ward housing eighty Estiniates vary on the number of prisoners. “More than people the doctor was put into a crowded jail cell with 200,000” were in the camps, a Vietnamese official an- fifty other people in a small room, about four-by-eight nounced last spring. “Only about 50.QOO” continue to be detained. Vietnam’s ambassador to Paris said early this meters. “All doors and windows were closed, opened year. No recent Vietnamese refugee accepts Hanoi’s im- only twice each day to give us food. There were eight to plicit claim that 75 percent of those imprisoned last year are ten other such rooms in the prison that I saw holding now released, however. Some state that while a few about the same number of people. The lavatory was one prisoners were set free. many new arrests occurred. small pan per cell, which prisoners were permitted to “Perhaps 40,000’’are now held, according to a Corliss empty twice each day, and which slopped over onto cell Lamont-coordinated New York Times political advertise- floors. ment in January that hailed Hanoi for its “moderation.” “Reeducation meant four lessons. Firsr: how to hate thus understating even official Vietnamese figures. Euro- the U.S. Second: the sins of the U.S. and Thieu gov- pean journalists Jean Lacouture and Tiziano Terzani, friendly toward the National Liberation Front during the ernments. Third: write self-criticism confessions truth- war but troubled now by Hanoi’s human rights policies, fully and you will be released. Foiirrh: do forced labor, have estimated that the figure may exceed 300.000. a including digging wells and agricultural work,” the judgment shared by U.S. analysts. doctor continued. Prisoners had to discuss each para- Although there is some news of execulions. there are no graph in a reeducation book of about a hundred pages for reports of “bloodbath” firing squad reprisals. Hanoi’s days at a time. “In the two months I was in reeducation advocates claim this is evidence of Vietnamese Govern- we only went these four lessons into the book, with each ment humanitarianism. Others find reports of prison condi- half of the group studying fiom 8:OO to I1:OO in the tions and the number of prisoners deeply disturbing. The morning, 1:OO to 500 in the figures are “unprecedented.” Lacouture wrote last May in in the evening. Half Le Norivel Observareur: “Neve‘r have we had such proof of worked,” he recalled. so many detainees” after a civil war. “[Not] in Moscow in 1917. nor in Madrid in 1939, nor in Parisor Ronie in 1944, “The reeducation process had three steps,” explained nor in Peking in 1949, nor in Havana in 1959, nor in another refugee who experienced it and, after release. Santiago in 1973.” discussed the program Kith a Communist official. “The When will they be released? Perhaps in two niore years. first is the ‘confession, where you write down every- Saigon radio announced last spring. When most reeduca- thing that the Communists want to know about, and tion camp detainees were ordered to the camps in June, every ‘crime’ they want you to admit. It really is a way to 1975. they were told to pack food and clothcs for only a few obtain information for some future use against prisoners weeks. and to break your spirit. The second step they called -T.J. ‘assimilation’-they measure what you have ‘learned’ during the reeducation process. The third step they The doctor observed no instances where the Com- called ‘recognition’-they measure the capacity of the munists employed the lime-in-the-eyes.

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