Re-education camp (Vietnam)


Re-education camp is a title given to the prison camps operated by the Communist government of Vietnam following the end of the Vietnam War. In such "reeducation camps", the government imprisoned up to 300,000 former military officers, government workers and supporters of the former government of South Vietnam as well as civilians, except some famous ARVN generals who committed suicide shortly after hearing President Duong Van Minh surrendered. Other estimates put the number of inmates as high as 500,000 to 1 million. :wikt:reeducation|Reeducation as it was implemented in Vietnam was seen as both a means of revenge and a sophisticated technique of repression and indoctrination, which developed following the 1975 Fall of Saigon. Thousands were tortured and abused. Prisoners were incarcerated for as long as 17 years, with most terms ranging from three to 10 years.

Meaning of ''học tập cải tạo''

The term :wikt:reeducation|reeducation, with its pedagogical overtones, does not quite convey the -mystical resonance of học tập cải tạo in Vietnamese. Cải and tạo combine to literally mean an attempt at re-creation, and making over sinful or incomplete individuals.

Historical background

In South Vietnam, the government of Ngo Dinh Diem countered North Vietnamese subversion by detaining tens of thousands of suspected communists in "political reeducation centers." This was a ruthless program that incarcerated many non-communists, although it was also successful at curtailing communist activity in the country, if only for a time. The North Vietnamese government claimed that over 65,000 individuals were incarcerated and 2,148 individuals were killed in the process by November 1957, although these figures may be exaggerated.
After the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese men, from former officers in the armed forces, to religious leaders, to employees of the Americans or the old government, were rounded up in re-education camps to "learn about the ways of the new government." They were never tried, judged or convicted of any crime. Many South Vietnamese men chose to flee on boats, but others had established lives and loved ones in Vietnam, so they did not flee, but entered these camps in hope of quickly reconciling with the new government and continuing their lives peacefully. Some ARVN generals and officers, such as General Lê Văn Hưng and General Nguyễn Khoa Nam who protect Can Tho and other Mekong provinces to keep under control of higher army morale, chose to sacrifice by suicide rather than fleeing overseas or risking for re-education camp.
The hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese who were imprisoned in re-education camps from 1975 basically fell into two categories:
1) Those who were detained in re-education camps from 1975 because they collaborated with the other side during the war, and
2) Those who were arrested in the years after 1975 for attempting to exercise such democratic freedoms as those mentioned in Article 11 of the 1973 Paris Agreements.
In other words, both categories of prisoners were held in direct violation of Article 11 of the 1973 Paris Agreements, an international treaty, and therefore of international law.

Government view of the reeducation camps

Officially, the Vietnamese government does not consider the reeducation camps to be prisons; instead, it views them as places where individuals can be into society through education and socially constructive labor.
The Hanoi government defended the reeducation camps by placing the "war criminal" label on the prisoners. A 1981 memorandum of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam to Amnesty International claimed that all those in the reeducation camps were guilty of acts of national treason as defined in Article 3 of the 30 October 1967 Law on Counter-revolutionary Crimes, which specifies punishments ranging from 20 years to life in prison or the death penalty. However, it was instead allowing the prisoners to experience "reeducation," which is applied in Vietnam because Vietnam says it is the most "humanitarian" system and because it is the most advantageous punishment for law breakers.

Registration and arrest

In May 1975, specific groups of Vietnamese were ordered to register with the new government that had established control over
the South on April 30, 1975. Then, in June, the new government issued orders instructing those who had registered in May to report to various places for reeducation. Soldiers, noncommissioned officers and rank-and-file personnel of the former South
Vietnamese government were to undergo a three-day "reform study," June 11–13, which they would attend during the day and they would go home at night.
The others who had been ordered to report for "reform study" were not allowed the same arrangement of attending during the day and going home at night, but were instead to be confined to their sites of "reform study" until the course ended. Nevertheless, there was some hope, for the government gave the clear impression that reform study would last no more than a month for even the highest-ranking officers and officials of the former government in South Vietnam, and ten days for lower-ranking officers and officials.
Thus, officers of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam forces from the rank of second lieutenant to captain, along with low-ranking police officers and intelligence cadres, were ordered to report to various sites, bringing along "enough paper, pens, clothes, mosquito nets, personal effects, food or money to last ten days beginning from the day of their arrival." High-ranking military and police officers of the ARVN, from major to general, along with mid and high-ranking intelligence officers, members of the ARVN executive, judicial and legislative branches, including all elected members of the House of Representatives and the Senate, and, finally, leaders of "reactionary" political parties in South Vietnam, were ordered to report to various sites bringing enough "paper, pens, clothes, mosquito-nets, personal effects, food or money to last a month beginning from the day of their first meeting."
The new government announced that there would be three days of reeducation for ARVN soldiers, ten days for low-ranking officers and officials, and one month for high-ranking ARVN officers and officials. Many teachers reported for reeducation, assuming that they would have to undergo it sooner or later anyway. Sick people also reported for reeducation, assured by the government that there would be doctors and medical facilities in the schools and that the patients would be well treated. However, the re-education camp lasted sometimes more than 10 years for some higher ranks ARVN generals and officers.

The camps

Indoctrination and forced confessions

During the early phase of reeducation, lasting from a few weeks to a few months, inmates were subjected to intensive political indoctrination. Subjects' studies included the exploitation by American imperialism of workers in other countries, the glory of labor, the inevitable victory of Vietnam, led by the Communist Party, over the U.S., and the generosity of the new government toward the "rebels". Another feature emphasized during the early stage of reeducation, but continued throughout one's imprisonment, was the confession of one's alleged misdeeds in the past. All prisoners in the camps were required to write confessions, no matter how trivial their alleged crimes might have been. Some prisoners of former ARVN generals wrote confessions about several battle and military campaign tactics before 1975. Mail clerks, for example, were told that they were guilty of aiding the "puppet war machinery" through circulating the mail, while religious chaplains were found guilty of providing spiritual comfort and encouragement to enemy troops.

The work

In the reeducation camps much emphasis was placed on "productive labor." Such labor was described by SRV spokesman Hoang Son as "absolutely necessary" for reeducation because "under the former government, they represented the upper strata of society and got rich under U.S. patronage. They could scorn the working people. Now the former social order has been turned upside down, and after they have finished their stay in camps they have to earn their living by their own labour and live in a society where work is held in honor." Thus, in the eyes of the Vietnamese rulers, "productive labor" was a necessary aspect in the overturning of the social order. Yet in examining the conditions under which this labor took place, it seems that there was also an element of revenge.
The labor was mostly hard physical work, some of it very dangerous, such as mine field sweeping. No technical equipment was provided for this extremely risky work, and as a result, many prisoners were killed or wounded in mine field explosions. Other kinds of work included cutting trees, planting corn and root crops, clearing the jungle, digging wells, latrines and garbage pits, and constructing barracks within the camp and fences around it. The inmates were generally organized into platoons and work units, where they were forced to compete with each other for better records and work achievements. This often pushed inmates to exhaustion and nervousness with each person and group striving to surpass or at least fulfill the norms set by camp authorities, or they would be classified as 'lazy' and ordered to do 'compensation work' on Sundays. North Vietnamese children were brought in to routinely pester prisoners, teenage girls stomping on the bare feet of former ARVN army officers as they marched to work. Sometimes prisoners who missed their quota were shackled and placed in solitary confinement cells.
Deaths from starvation and disease occurred frequently and bodies were often buried in graves on site which were later abandoned. The work was done in the hot tropical sun, by prisoners who were poorly nourished and received little or no medical care. The poor health, combined with hard work, mandatory confessions and political indoctrination, made life very difficult for prisoners in Vietnam, and contributed to a high death rate in the camps. Former prisoners describe the constant hunger that resulted from a lack of food while they were in the camps. The government deliberately kept the prisoners on low rations. The lack of food caused severe malnutrition for many prisoners and weakened their resistance to various diseases. Most common among the diseases were malaria, beriberi and dysentery. Tuberculosis was also widespread in some of the camps. Medical supplies were generally nonexistent in the camps and medical care was very inadequate, usually limited to a poorly trained medic and perhaps a few prisoners who had formerly been medical doctors. The result was a high death rate from diseases.

Rules and regulations

The authorities sought to maintain strict control over the thoughts of the prisoners, and forbade prisoners from keeping and reading books or magazines of the former government, reminiscing in conversation about "imperialism and the puppet south," singing old patriotic and love songs from the former government, discussing political questions, harboring "reactionary" thoughts or possessing "superstitious" beliefs.
It has been acknowledged by Hanoi that violence has in fact been directed against the prisoners, although it maintains that these are isolated cases and not indicative of general camp policy. Former prisoners, on the other hand, report frequent beatings for minor infractions, such as missing work because of illness. Violations of rules led to various forms of punishment, including being tied up in contorted positions, shackled in conex boxes or dark cells, forced to work extra hours or receiving reduced food rations. Many prisoners were beaten, some to death, or subjected to very harsh forms of punishment due to the cruelty of certain camp officials and guards. Some were executed, especially for attempting to escape. It was also forbidden to be impolite to the cadres of the camp, and this rule was sometimes abused to the point where the slightest indication of a lack of deference to the cadres had been interpreted as rudeness and was therefore harshly punished.
Longtime anti-Vietnam war and human rights activist Ginetta Sagan described conditions in the camps in 1982:
During the last three years friends and I have interviewed several hundred former prisoners, read newspaper articles on the camps as well as various reports of Amnesty International, and have studied official statements from the Vietnamese Government and its press on the re-education camps. The picture that emerges is one of severe hardship, where prisoners are kept on a starvation diet, overworked and harshly punished for minor infractions of camp rules. We know of cases where prisoners have been beaten to death, confined to dark cells or in ditches dug around the perimeters of the camps and executed for attempting escape. A common form of punishment is confinement to the CONEX boxes—air-freight containers that were left behind by the United States in 1975. The boxes vary in size; some are made of wood and others of metal. In a CONEX box 4 feet high and 4 feet wide, for example, several prisoners would be confined with their feet shackled, and allowed only one bowl of rice and water a day. "It reminded me of the pictures I saw of Nazi camp inmates after World War II," said a physician we interviewed who witnessed the release of four prisoners who had been confined to a CONEX box for one month. None of them survived."

Visitation

As of 1980, official regulations stated that prisoners in the camps could be visited by their immediate family once every three months. Family visits were important not only because of the personal need for prisoners and their loved ones to have contact with each other but also because the families could bring food to their relatives in some of the camps. It has been reported that the prisoners in these camps would not have survived without such food. The duration of the visits was not long, reported by former prisoners to last from 15 to 30 minutes. Moreover, family visits would be suspended for prisoners who broke the rules, and it has also been said that only families who had proven their loyalty to the government were allowed visiting privileges.
Most former prisoners who were interviewed have been in between three and five different reeducation camps. It is believed that the movement of prisoners from one camp to another was intended to prevent both the inmates and their relatives from knowing a specific camp's real location. That way, escapes from prison could be prevented, and prisoners' relatives could be prevented from visiting them.

The release of prisoners

In June 1976, the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam, in one of its last policy announcements before the official reunification of Vietnam, stated that those in the camps would either be tried or released after three years of imprisonment. But this promise was broken. The policy announced that those still in the camps would stay there for three years, but they would be released early if they made "real progress, confess their crimes and score merits".
Since there were no clear criteria for releasing the inmates from the camps, bribery and family connections with high-ranking officials were more likely to speed up release than the prisoner's good behavior. Released prisoners were put on probation and placed under surveillance for six months to one year, and during that time they had no official status, no exit visas, no access to government food rations and no right to send their children to school. If the progress of the former prisoners was judged unsatisfactory during this period, they could be fired from their jobs, be put under surveillance for another six months to a year, or be sent back to the reeducation camps. Faced with these challenges, many chose to flee the country and became boat people.
Some prisoners who had been imprisoned since the Fall of Saigon were released as recently as the year 2000. " It also said that some Vietnamese would be brought to trial, including those who deserted the NLF during the war, those who owed "many blood debts" to the people and those who fled to "foreign countries with their U.S. masters."
The U.S. government considers re-education camp inmates to be political prisoners. In 1989, the Reagan administration entered into an agreement with the Vietnamese government, pursuant to which Vietnam would free all former ARVN soldiers and officials held in re-education camps and allow them to emigrate to the United States. Thus began the third large influx of Vietnamese immigrants into the country.
The Vietnamese American Foundation began a program called "The Returning Casualty" in early 2006. It attempts to locate the graves of people who died in the camps, identify their remains and deliver them to their loved ones.

Partial list of camps