“Re-education” camp also known as the forced labor camp is a shortened term referring to the system of prison camps that was planned, advocated and operated by the Vietnamese Communist government right after the end of the Vietnam War in May of 1975. Its purpose was to detain former military officers, former government employees at all levels of the Republic of Vietnam in the South as well as civilians.
There were military officers, including some famous generals of the Army of The Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), who committed suicide after they heard the announcement of President Duong Van Minh on the radio asking them to surrender. The exact number is unaccounted for, but the total number of prisoners was estimated from 500,000 to 1 million. This system of prison camps was drawn from the experience of the Gulags in Siberia of the Soviet Union (1) and the program of forced labor camps in China (2). With sophisticated and inhumane methods of detention and repression techniques, this system of prison camps, organized as “forced re-education” has been spread across from the South to the North of Vietnam. This is both a means of revenge and a means of dissolving any resistance if any in the society that they have just absorbed: Prisoners are often hungry, their daily activities lack all the minimum sanitary conditions and they suffer long-term psychological-mental terror, year after year.
In May 1975, each specific South Vietnamese group received orders to report to the new government [named the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam, but internally it was commanded by representatives who were appointed from the Communist Party of Vietnam and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the North] that was established after the occupation of the South on April 30, 1975. Then in June of 1975, this new government has issued successive orders instructing people to enroll in “re-education” from mid-May onwards:
– Soldiers, non-commissioned officers, and low-ranking personnel of the former South Vietnamese government underwent a three-day “concentration of training and re-education” from the 11th to the 13th. June, 1975. They have to report in during the day and return home in the evening, and will take care of their own meals.
– Others were ordered to report to “re-education training” and held at the “re-education training” site until the end of the course, ten days for non-commissioned officers up to the rank of lieutenant and wards’ officials.
– Officers of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) from the rank of second lieutenant and above, along with low-ranking police officers and intelligence officers, were ordered to present themselves at various locations, carrying with them “enough paper, pens, clothes, mosquito nets, personal belongings, food or money for up to ten days” from the date they are gathered.
– Senior ARVN military and police officers, from major generals to lieutenant generals, along with middle and senior intelligence officers; members of the executive, judicial and legislative branches of the ARVN, including all elected members of the House and Senate; and finally, the leaders of the non-communist political parties, labeled “reactionaries”, in South Vietnam; all must obey orders to gather at different locations, bringing with them enough “paper, pens, clothing, mosquito nets, personal belongings, food or money for a month starting from the date of arrival. When they were told to bring a month’s meal allowance this indirectly indicates that they were only gathered to focus on their studies for no more than a month. But actually most of these prisoners have to endure at least 3 years of imprisonment in both the South and the North of Vietnam; some have been imprisoned continuously for 17-18 years.
More information about the causes, purposes, and nature of deception of the Vietnamese communist regime & the real life of prisoners in this prison camp system, can be found in the following books:
– Cùm Đỏ by Phạm Quốc Bảo, published by Người Việt 1983
– Đại Học Máu. Hồi ký về lao tù cộng sản by Hà Thúc Sinh, published by Nhân Văn 1985.
– Đáy Địa Ngục byTạ Tỵ, published by Thằng Mõ 1986.
– Những Người Tù Cuối Cùng by Phạm Gia Đại, 2011
References:
1) The Gulag Archipelago, by Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn 1973-1975.
2) The Legacy of Mao Zedong is Mass Murder, by Lee Edwards, Ph. D. February 2nd, 2010.
