One out every three Saigon families has a member in one of the camps, according to French journalist Jean Lacouture, who made an automobile trip from Hanoi to Saigon in 1976. After a visit to a new economic area for former Saigon near Phan-Thiet, Lacouture wrote that it was “a prefabricated hell and a place one comes to only if the alternative to it would be death.”
Camps for former officers and functionaries of the Saigon government are usually located in malaria infested jungle areas. Thousands of camp inmates have died from lack of food, medicine, or clothing. Thousands have committed suicide some have been secretly liquidated, others perish through staged “accidents”: For example, former officers are forced to de-activate minefields with their bare hands, so the regime will not have to waste valuable bullets on them.
After the officers had mostly “been taken care of, it was the turn of the intellectuals some 2,500 of whom were sent to re-education camps. Among them are journalists, authors, scholars, professors, Western-educated technicians, student leaders, “Third Force” leaders. The list of prominent Vietnamese now either in prison or in concentration camps includes Catholic Bishop Nguyen Van Thuan; a 72-year-old Hoa-Hao Buddhist leader, Luong Trong Tuong; and 17 members of his family Harvard-educated Tony Nguyen Xuan Oanh; lawyer Tran Van Tuyen.
