\chapter[The Vietnamese massacre]{War and repression: the Vietnamese massacre}

\chapterauthor{François DERIVERY}

Although the significant and most spectacular events of the Vietnam Colonial War between 1965 and 1975 are well known, the general public is still largely unaware of the living conditions of the populations of the South during this period.
First under the direct rule of the occupier and then, during the so-called \enquote{Vietnamization} period inaugurated by Nixon in 1969, through his puppet Thieu who, supported by American logistics, will prove to be one of the bloodiest jailers in this region of the world, which was not lacking.
Thieu who, after Nixon's resignation in 1974, had to flee in April 1975 before the decisive and victorious advance of the FNL.

\section{Field operations}

In 1963, Thieu, supported by Eisenhower, took Diem's place as head of South Vietnam following a military coup. The National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (FNL), supported by the north of Ho Chi Minh, was born at the same time.
The United States, with Kennedy and then Johnson, massively engaged their country in the war. Thieu was finally supported by Nixon, who was elected President of the United States in 1968. He replaced Johnson in early 1969.

The increase in American involvement in the conflict, both in terms of men and equipment, is significant. July 1965: 125,000 men on the ground. December of the same year: 185,000. 
December 1966: 390,000 (plus 64,000 Australian, Korean and Thai allies). December 1968: 580,000. 

To these forces are added the 700,000 regulars and 200,000 militiamen of the Southern Army.

There were then 3,500 American helicopters. Bombing beyond the 17th parallel began in 1965, intensively, from airports in Thailand and Guam.
In three years of shelling, from February 1965 to April 1968, the Americans will have dropped 500,000 tons of bombs on the North and 200,000 tons on the South. In six months (1972) the impressive total of 400,000 tons of bombs dropped will have been reached.
On the ground, the \enquote{cleansing} operations are no less deadly, punctuated by particularly bloody events, such as the massacre of 500 peasants in My Lai in 1971, during which the section of Lieutenant Calley, invested with the interests of Uncle Sam, was no less illustrious, and in the same register, than had done on June 10, 1944 the Das Reich division in Oradour-sur-Glane.

After the episode of the replacement of Westmoreland by Abrams, the Paris Conference opened in January 1969.
Strongly contested at home, Nixon began his policy of \enquote{Vietnamization} which consisted of withdrawing US ground forces while intensifying air operations and strengthening South Vietnamese units with equipment and logistical and police assistance, in order to transfer to them the most dangerous operations. In 1972, the Army of the South thus grew to 120,000 regulars and 600,000 militiamen, often recruited by pressure, as we shall see. As for the air force, it has grown to more than 2,000 aircraft.

Under the pretext of controlling fnl supply tracks, Americans and South Vietnamese intervened in Cambodia in 1970.
As for the bombings on the North, they resumed massively in 1972, especially on Haiphong (port of arrival of boats from China and the USSR). The Paris Accords were finally signed in January 1973.
From the resignation of Nixon (1974), and in the face of the growing protest of American opinion against the war, the United States abandoned Thieu, butcher of its own people, who could only rely on himself.
He fled on April 21, 1975, to enjoy a golden retirement with his protectors. On April 30, FNL entered Saigon.

\section{Domestic repression}

An official U.S. death toll, which is very underestimated, shows that some 500,000 civilians and 200,000 South Vietnamese soldiers were killed between 1964 and 1973, and 55,000 U.S. killed.
These figures, which relate to war operations on the ground, do not take into account a much larger number of wounded and maimed for life on both sides and of course in North Vietnam.
The number of people killed in the Ranks of vietcong and North Vietnam was at least 725,000 between 1964 and 1973. Moreover, U.S. estimates say nothing about the victims of domestic repression and summary executions in the South.
Under the rule of Thieu, supported by American logistics, this repression was particularly fierce and bloodthirsty. To the bombs, napalm, phosphorus, we must therefore add all the deadly panoply of prisons, torture, abuse and psychological pressure measures.

This apparatus of repression and its methods shall be more precisely studied here.

In 1969, Nixon renounced to reconquer the liberated rural and mountainous areas. He ordered the systematic and uninterrupted bombardment of these regions, forcing millions of peasants to retreat to the cities.
On this population concentrated by force, and in particular in order to accelerate the recruitment of mercenaries, Nixon and Thieu reigned a regime of terror.

It is a matter of paralyzing all patriotic activity by liquidating militants and suspects, by incarcerating any real or presumed opponent; to terrorize the population, to force them to accept the administration that Washington imposes on them.
Physical and psychological pressure even intends, as is customary in dictatorial regimes, to force nationalists and resistance fighters to renounce their convictions in order to put them in the service of the occupier.

To this end, a whole apparatus of repression is put in place. A whole network of prisons, prisons, detention camps, a whole system of physical and moral torture has been set up, \enquote{modernized} by the care of experts and massive financial and technical assistance from Washington. 
The French and English colonial experience – notably with Robert Thompson, promoted to Nixon's supreme adviser – was put to good use and \enquote{improved} by the specialized American services.

\section{The Tools}

A repressive and invasive police network operates at all levels of South Vietnamese society. More than a dozen military and civilian services are authorized to make arrests.
In 1971, the police were detached from the civilian services to form a separate military command. Its leader, an army officer, reports directly to President Thieu.
This combination of civilian police and military functions reflects the views of Robert Thompson, President Nixon's top adviser on counterinsurgency repression.

The strength of the national police increased from 16,000 in 1963 to 120,000 at the end of 1972.
Its responsibilities range from the constitution of files for residents over 15 years of age to the interrogation of apprehended persons. It has an anti-Vietcong paramilitary branch (tanks and artillery) of 25,000 men.

The special police, a branch of the previous one, is responsible for the elimination of FNL cadres and the repression of pacifist and neutralist movements. It routinely practices torture of those arrested. SIt had to its credit a wave of mass arrests in 1972.

The police receive direct orders from the Presidency, the CIA, the Chiefs of Staff of the Saigon Army and the US Special Forces. It has under its command 20 provincial services that employ from 80 to 120 people, have 300 offices and an army of indicators.

A military security office is located in each unit of the army and its sphere of intervention extends around the military installations.

The secret services report directly to President Thieu. They carry out arrests and especially summary executions on the person of notorious opponents, often using the services of hitmen.

The police are not the only ones carrying out a task of surveillance and repression, all decentralized authorities are called upon to cooperate, willingly or by force.
This is the case for the village authorities, because the entire administration, up to the level of the municiplality, is designated by Saigon.
A people's militia is recruited in the cities mainly among idle children between the ages of 12 and 16, to whom automatic weapons are distributed. They are responsible for suppressing student protests and rallies.

The army, on the other hand, has all the rights, especially outside the cities. Any soldier can stop and interrogate whoever he wants.
All pressure is possible to make the peasants confess that they belong to the FNL or that they collect funds for it.
A large number of ordinary citizens are incarcerated in \enquote{shelters} during \enquote{Search and Destroy} operations conducted jointly by the U.S. military and the government military.
Others were rounded up during the pacification campaigns called \enquote{Phoenix} or \enquote{Swan}, as suspects of sympathy for the FNL.

The Civil Guards (Van De) are even more feared volunteers than the soldiers.  Poorly paid (half of a soldier's salary), they live on the exploitation and looting of rural populations. 
They work under the orders of a provincial chief (a soldier) and have their own prisons and torture rooms.

\section{The legal framework}

The laws that are supposed to regulate the procedures of repression are only intended to give a semblance of legal cover to arbitrariness. It is terror on a daily basis for the population.

Thus, according to article 1 of the new penal code, \enquote{Any individual, party, league or association guilty of any act in any form aimed directly or indirectly at promoting communist or pro-communist neutralism shall be outlawed.}

Or (article 17 of the Law on Administrative Internment): \enquote{Any person who commits any act aimed at undermining the anti-communist spirit of the nation or harming the struggle of the people and the armed forces shall be punished with forced labour.}

To compensate for the lack of evidence, a decree-law known as the \enquote{an tri} law (administrative internment) allows incarceration without trial and without appeal.
Article 19 of this decree-law (004/66) stipulates that any person \enquote{considered dangerous for national defence and public security} may be interned for a period of up to two years. This sentence is renewable.

Hoang Due Nha, personal advisor to President Thieu, could proudly boast, on November 9, 1972, the effectiveness of a police force equipped with these emergency laws, capable of arresting more than 40,000 people in two weeks.

In June 1972, several thousand people were arrested and directed to the island of Con Son — the new name of Poulo Condor, the prison of sinister memory.
In most cases they were only parents, wives and children of political suspects, as reported by several American newspapers (\emph{Boston Globe}, 24 June 1972, \emph{New York Post}, 28 June 1972).

At the same time, pressure is exerted on intellectuals; in 1972, most of the leaders of the universities of Hue and Saigon were arrested (\emph{Time}, July 10, 1972).

Parallel to the heavy fighting in the spring of 1972, along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, an unprecedented wave of civilian arrests took place:
roundups in student circles, hostage-taking in the families of well-known political activists, arrest of nationalist or religious groups hostile to the war and the American occupation.
The reason for these arrests, always the same, \enquote{sympathy with the communists}, is interpreted in the broadest way.

\section{Pre-trial detention}

Arrest is only the beginning of a journey that often leads to death. As long as his file has been lost, a prisoner can spend years in prison awaiting trial.
Before the latter, the prisoner is likely to be taken to an interrogation centre, which will extract from him — by the worst means if necessary — the signed confession necessary for his conviction. The method is proven.

\begin{quote}
A woman testifies to her internment in a Saigon police detention centre:

\enquote{During your interrogation you could hear the piercing cries of those who were being tortured. Sometimes you were made to witness the tortures to intimidate you and force you to confess what you wanted.

Two women in my cell were pregnant. One was beaten violently, the other was hit in the knees which later became infected.

A student tried to kill herself by smashing both wrists against the metal faucet in the laundry room, but she failed. She was then tortured by wrapping a thick strip of rubber around her head to compress her.
Her eyes were bulging and she was suffering from excruciating headaches...} (\emph{New York Times}, 13.08.72)
\end{quote}

\enquote{If they say no beat them until they say yes.} This was the rule known in the Saigon police.

\section{The Justice}

Judgments are no more impartial than the proceedings that precede them. The accused of political crime is defenseless (and moreover without a lawyer) before the omnipotence of government and his conviction is almost certain.
Depending on the outcome of the interrogations and the content of the intelligence service reports, the detainee may be brought before a military court or sent to a provincial security committee.

Sentences to hard labour, life imprisonment and the death penalty are most commonly imposed. Decisions are quick and without appeal.

The CPS (provincial security committees) are known for their arbitrariness. If it seems \enquote{clear} to them that \enquote{the suspect poses a threat to national security}, depending on their perception of the situation and the balance of power, they can impose his administrative detention without having to justify it legally.

As two American experts wrote: \enquote{The legal form, rarely observed during the recent period of South Vietnam, has been completely abandoned since the beginning of the enemy's offensive.
Although the government has not proclaimed anything, the normal laws governing the rights of the accused are virtually suspended.}
(Holmes Brown and Don Luce, \emph{Hostages of War}, 1972)

\section{Interrogation centers}

Phoenix prisoners are sent to provincial interrogation centers (PICs).
In these centers torture is as \enquote{administratively} applied as the \enquote{question} once was in French royal prisons.

Stories have filtered into the American press, such as these, laconic:

\begin{quote}
\enquote{Nguyen Thi Yen was beaten until he fainted with a log. When she regained consciousness she was forced to stand naked in front of ten torturers who burned her breasts with cigarettes.}
\enquote{Vo Thi Bach Tuyet was beaten and suspended by his feet under a dazzling light. Then she was locked in a cramped cell half flooded, mice and insects climbed on her body.} (\emph{New York Times}, August 13, 1973).
\end{quote}

Testimonials confirmed by others. According to the Dispatch News Service International of July 6, 1972, \enquote{More than 90\% of those arrested have been subjected to violent interrogations that include caning, electric shocks, nail pulling, ingesting soapy water.}

An American doctor, Dr. Nelson, certified before the House subcommittee on July 17, 1970, that he had examined tortured prisoners.
The president of the National Association of Students of South Vietnam, Huynh Tan Mâm, is crippled, becomes deaf and blind as a result of the abuse he suffers.
Similarly, the president of the Association of Secondary School Students, Le Van Nuôi, lost the use of his legs after several serious beatings.

Americans participate in the \enquote{anti-subversive} activities of ICPs.
According to journalist Theodore Jacqueney, \enquote{ICPs have relationships with their CIA counterparts and often with AID police advisers.} (\emph{Aid to Thieu}, 1972)

\section{Jails}

The policy of systematic terror pursued by the South Vietnamese government and its American ally is all the more violent as it fails to win the support or even neutrality of the population. The great weapon used is mass deportation. 
A real parking and a grid of the population is led by the regime of Thieu. Overloaded boats lead women children and old men to Con Son, without judgment. 1,500 during the month of April 1972 alone (according to \emph{Le Monde} of 10 January 1973). 
Intellectuals, Buddhists, students of Hue join them.

Nothing is generally known about missing persons. No \enquote{service} is competent to provide information. In reality, secrecy is the rule and covers a sprawling system of sidelining and eliminating opponents and widespread repression.

Thus, far from the romantico-nihilistic fantasies of \emph{Apocalypse Now}, a grinding machine works in the shadows, which is reminiscent in many ways of the Nazi death industry.

In 1970, according to official American sources, there were some 100,000 prisoners in South Vietnamese prisons (congressional session, July-August 1970).
During the same year, according to \emph{Le Monde} (November 10, 1971), there were 153,000 arrests.

The doubling of the US budget devoted to prisons in 1972 suggests that the number of prisoners has also doubled. In 1973, thousands of new prisoners joined the jails of Thieu. The US figures appear to be largely underestimated.
The GRP announced in 1973 that there were about 400,000 inmates in the entire South Vietnamese prison system. According to Amnesty International they are \enquote{at least 200,000} (November 1972).

There are more than a thousand official and secret places of detention in South Vietnam. They are found in every city, every province, every district.
The largest and best known are the prisons of Con Son or Con Dao (ex-Poulo Condor), Chi Hoa, in the suburbs of Saigon, Thu Duc, Tan Hiep and Cay Dua (on the island of Phu Quoc, near the Cambodian border).

The way prisoners are treated, known to Americans — especially since army officers work in prisons in close collaboration with South Vietnamese — evokes Nazi procedures.
Prisoners experience malnutrition, promiscuity and systematic physical and moral degradation.

\section{The Tiger cages}

\enquote{The Con Son National Correction Center,} as the South Vietnamese authorities put it advantageously, is located on a paradise island in the South China Sea some 220 km from Saigon.
It was built by the French in 1862 to serve as a penal colony. It has long been known as \enquote{Devil's Island}. The \enquote{tiger cages} of camp n\textsuperscript{c}4\rfootnote{Might be a typo and supposed to be "n\textsuperscript{o}4", we are not sure.} are one of the jewels.
Their existence has long been denied by both American and Vietnamese authorities, but we owe an edifying description to the American journalist Don Luce, already quoted, who published his report in several American newspapers.

In a secluded area of the camp, hidden from official visitors, there are small ceilingless cells that the guards watch from above, through an opening protected by a gate. 
In each of these small stone compartments of about 2.50 meters by barely 1.50 meters, three or four prisoners are piled up. A hygienic wooden bucket is emptied once a day.
The detainees bear marks of beatings, injuries, have lost fingers, they are in a state of exhaustion that prevents them from standing.

A bucket of lime, above each cell, allows the guard to \enquote{calm} the protests of prisoners who ask for food, they are sprayed with quicklime that still litters the ground.
With such treatment, prisoners spit blood and are afflicted with tuberculosis, eye and skin diseases.

An adjacent building houses identical tiger cages for women. There are five of them per compartment. The youngest inmate is fifteen years old, the oldest, blind, seventy. 

The kapos reign terror, relentlessly attack the weakest at the slightest complaint. Apart from official visits, prisoners remain chained to bars that cross the walls, twenty-four hours a day, even during meals, sleep and bathing, with prohibition to sit. 
The dilapidated tile roof lets water through when it rains, the uneven ground is littered with garbage.

The irons used at Con Son are manufactured by Smith and Wesson of Spingfield, Massachusetts. They are not molded and smooth (like those of French colonialism), they are made of F.8 iron, building material.
They have sharp veins that cut the flesh of the feet and cause a real torment. 

About 500 inmates languish for many months, many years, in tiger cages. On the whole camp there are more than 10,000.

When they are not in the tiger cages, the detainees can benefit from the hospitality of the \enquote{ox cages}, set up in former stables of the French administration.
They differ from the former only in their size and the number of residents who pile up there, about twenty, subject to the same regime as before.

In addition to the general regime, which is already unbearable, there are other practices to prevent prisoners from eating: they have three minutes to eat, gravel is mixed with rice, the fish is damaged.
There is a complete shortage of vegetables. The famine is such that the prisoners feed on insects, termites, ducklings, the only source of protein.

On the side of the jailers – more than 100 in Poulo Condor – a complacent leadership allows opiomania, orgies (the administration regularly brings from the coast convoys of prostitutes), gambling, rape and murder freely perpetrated.
It goes without saying that prisoners are also stripped of their money along with their clothes when they arrive.
Some kapos settle scores within the camp to appropriate the accumulated Jackpots, some amass nest eggs of 400,000 to 500,000 piastres\rfootnote{The piastre indochinoise refers to the currency from colonial times}.
As in the Nazi camps, ordinary prisoners are willingly used as extra torturers.

The situation in Chi Hoa, near Saigon, is not much better. On July 16, 1968, while the director was Nguyen Van Ve, the head of the \enquote{specialists} of the prison administration Lo Van Khuong (or Chin Khuong) ordered the transfer of 120 sick, tuberculosis, paralyzed or amputated prisoners to the \enquote{buffalo cages}. The buffalo cage area will now be called the \enquote{convalescent camp}. Far from being treated, as they had hoped, the 120 prisoners are crammed into cells 12 by 8 meters. To lie down, each has less than one square meter.
After refusing forced labor, the prisoners were left to eat only rice and nuoc mam (sour sauce). In two months, 50\% of the prisoners are affected by beriberi due to lack of fresh vegetables (Debris and Menras, \emph{Rescapés des bagnes de Saïgon} (Survivors of the prisons of Saigo)).

In Thu Duc, a women's prison, they are tortured, electrocuted, tortured with water, beaten to death by drunk thugs. The victim is hung by the wrists on a beam, he is then beaten with a club until fainting by six or seven policemen (this is called \enquote{plane trip}).
Many lose the use of their legs after this treatment. Particular attention is paid to female students and girls, who are gang-raped (Higher School of Pedagogy of Saigon, 4 July 1970).

In Tan Hiep there are some 1,500 permanent detainees to whom… there is nothing to complain about, except that they were rounded up by American troops during an operation.
They are essentially peasants, who sometimes languish for years without being tried, moving from one prison to another, and unaware of the reasons for their incarceration. Police officers often cut off detainees' fingers and ears with machetes.

In Cay Dua, Dr. Tran Trong Chau is tortured with electrodes until he loses consciousness. \enquote{I was locked in a dark dungeon of barely 3 square meters where I ate and relieved myself.
When it rained, the water flowed in and my feces floated everywhere. I had to stand with my back to the wall without being able to lie down to sleep.} (1971)

The considerable number of deaths victims of the Thieu prison regime and americans in South Vietnam is difficult to assess. 
Some figures have arrived. In 1971, 147 prisoners died in Phu Quoc camp as a result of ill-treatment; 125 also, between January and May 1972, for lack of care.
From 15 September 1971 special orders authorized the military police to shoot prisoners without notice. 200 dead and wounded immediately resulted.
Several prisoners commit suicide by opening their bellies. (\emph{News from Vietnam}, March 1, 1973, Canada)

Towards the end of 1972, the Thieu regime, in view of the progress of the Paris Conference, undertook a campaign of extermination in the camps. 
Indeed, if he wants to hope to survive politically after the ceasefire, he must make disappear all those who lived in his prisons and who could tell what they saw.
The signing of the Paris Agreements in January 1973 partly hampered these projects. Nevertheless, the Saigon administration made thousands of detainees in Con Dao  disappear; they are often presented as having been \enquote{released}.
Of course, nothing is known about their fate. \enquote{That of some 200,000 prisoners in the Thieu jails is being played out at the moment.} (Nguyen Dinh Thi, Paris, 21 March 1973)

U.S. assistance to the police has been a key part of the U.S. system in South Vietnam.
It consisted of financing without counting the repressive apparatus of the Saigon regime, of maintaining its specialized staff, of directing its operations through a corps of omnipresent \enquote{advisers}.

As is customary, colonialism delegates the dirty work to the most corrupt elements of the occupied country, preferring to remain in the shadows to pull the strings and thus not attract the too direct disapproval of human rights defenders.

Nevertheless, evidence of U.S. involvement in the most sinister campaigns of torture, detention and extermination abounds. Not content with pounding North Vietnam for years, setting the majority of South Vietnam on fire and bloodshed, burning tens of thousands of innocent people with napalm, destroying the country's crops and starving millions of peasants during the surface war, American neocolonialism waged another sneaky and bloodthirsty war against the national and political resistance of an entire persecuted people.

As a spokesperson for the Agency for International Development (AID) acknowledged:
\enquote{The AID supported the public security program in Vietnam from 1955 - The task of the IDA was to assist the national police in recruiting, training and organizing a force for the maintenance of law and order.
In all, more than 7,000 Americans worked for the \enquote{Public Safety} program in South Vietnam.} (\emph{Hearing on US Assistance})

From 1968 to 1971, more than \$100 million was spent, divided between the CIA, the Department of Defense (DOD) and the AID. The Vietnamese police system has been completely renewed in a few years. 
Of the 300,000 Vietnamese in charge of \enquote{maintaining order} in 1972, only 122,000 were allocated to Saigon's budget. The others are appointed by Uncle Sam. 
There are also a large number of secret agents of the political police, reporting directly to the CIA. (\emph{Liberation News Service}, December 6, 1972).

In requesting a \$33 million credit for fiscal year 1972 for the National Police (including \$22 million from Pentagon funds), the IDA stated in 1971:
\enquote{The Vietnamese National Police, one aspect of Vietnamization, is called upon to gradually take on a heavier burden: share with the South Vietnamese armed forces the burden of counter-revolutionary struggle and ensure daily peace and order in the cities and countryside.
Its current strength (100,000) will be increased to 124,000 in the fiscal year to enable it to assume a heavier responsibility in the future. Proportionate US aid is planned.} (Michael T. Klare, \emph{War Without End}, 1972).

Despite these figures, the U.S. government has consistently claimed that the treatment of prisoners is an internal matter in South Vietnam. And yet, as journalists Holmes Brown and Don Luce wrote:
\enquote{We created the Diem government and deposed it; we bombed without permission and \enquote{defoliated} their country, however out of respect for their independence we allow them to mistreat their prisoners.}

After two American observers revealed the existence of the \enquote{tiger cages}, the Government of Saigon began the construction of new solitary confinement cells, with prisoners to be used as forced labour.
Faced with the latter's refusal, the AID is obliged to enter into a \$400,000 contract with an American company, RMK-BRJ (\emph{Hearings on US Assistance}).

It must also be recognized that americans are masters in the art of interrogation and torture.
\enquote{American-run interrogation centers are notorious for their \enquote{refined} way of torturing.} (Ngo Cong Duc, \emph{Le Monde}, January 3, 1973)

After the Paris Accords, the Americans will continue to finance the Thieu police. The IDA has asked Congress for \$18 million and the Department of Defense about double. (\emph{Washington Post}, February 2, 1973)
\enquote{Only U.S. aid in men and dollars allows Thieu to continue the arrests, detention, torture and massacre of political prisoners.} (\emph{Saigon's prisonners}, USA, 1973)
The American press acknowledged the existence of the maintenance of \enquote{20,000 \enquote{civilian advisers} after the withdrawal of uniformed troops} after the signing of the agreements, and that \enquote{Operation Phoenix — soon replaced by the \enquote{F6 program} which pursues the same objectives — a program sponsored by the CIA to eliminate Thieu's adversaries and suspects, was still in full swing.} (\emph{Liberation News Service}, December 6, 1972)

Let us leave the conclusion to an American journalist, Michael Klare (\emph{Watching the Tricontinental Empire}, n°21, 1972):
\enquote{The assistance and direction of the Public Safety Division is so well developed that in reality the national police could very well be seen as a mercenary force of the United States rather than an indigenous institution.}

\rauthor{François Derivery}

François Derivery is a painter (DDP group). Author of numerous articles on aesthetics and criticism. Secretary of the journal \emph{Esthétique Cahiers} (1988-1997).
Currently Associate Editor-in-Chief of the journal \emph{Intervention}.
