The Cages of Con Son Island

Con Son is the largest island of an emerald archipelago 50 miles off the coast of South Viet Nam in the South China Sea. Sometimes called Poulo Con-dore after its Portuguese discoverer, the lush, Manhattan-size territory was made into a penal colony by the French in 1862 and became known as the Devil's Island of Southeast Asia, from which no one returned. But many did, including nearly all the current top leadership of North Viet Nam and several senior South Vietnamese statesmen who served time there under the French.*

Asia is not exactly noted for enlightened penal systems or livable prisons. Yet. thanks in part to several million dollars in U.S. aid, Saigon authorities boast that most of Con Son's 9,500 prisoners now enjoy work in vegetable gardens and craft shops as well as supervised surf bathing. But it was something else that Democratic Congressmen Augustus F. Hawkins of California and William R. Anderson of Tennessee were looking for last week when they visited the island as part of a congressional fact-finding team.

Lime Showers. The Congressmen hired as interpreter Don Luce, 35, an American who had spent six years in Viet Nam with organizations such as the Y.M.C.A. and the Boy Scouts. A strong opponent of the war, he has been working for the World Council of Churches since 1967. Luce had detailed information from former inmates on conditions at Con Son, and what he and the Congressmen really wanted to see were the French-built "tiger cages," the maximum-security block where some 400 hard-core political prisoners, including women, were reported suffering gruesome mistreatment.

Despite efforts by their U.S. guide and the South Vietnamese prison commandant to keep them away, the Congressmen found what they were looking for: two low-slung buildings containing 80 windowless cells with bars in the ceilings. Luce and the Congressmen described the cells, each of which held three to five prisoners, as 5 ft. by 9 ft., though U.S. officials insist they are 12 by 15. Buckets of lime lined the catwalk. The commandant claimed they were to whitewash the walls, but the prisoners shouted through the bars that the lime was dumped on them as a disciplinary measure. The prisoners also complained of bad food, insufficient water, frequent beatings and being shackled for days on end.

Back in Saigon, the Congressmen produced statements from five former inmates, all students imprisoned as suspected Communists after antigovernment demonstrations. The students told of being beaten, urinated on from above by guards and fed rice mixed with sand. One of the students said they were so thirsty "we would all urinate in a bucket, then divide it up and drink it," and so hungry they snared lizards and beetles that strayed into their cages and "ate them alive, biting off and sharing pieces." Congressional colleagues of Anderson and Hawkins were not happy about the trip to Con Son, however, and only a few lines on the prison got into the official committee report.

Hanoi's Paris negotiators seized on the accounts and, during negotiations last week, condemned the "penitentiary regime" in Con Son. The Communists did not mention that North Viet Nam has few if any political prisoners be cause most enemies are simply exterminated, as at Hue in 1968. In Geneva, the International Commission of Jurists called for an investigation, and Saigon lost little time in sending a ten-man team to the island.

Voracious Ants. Investigators would certainly find South Viet Nam's prisons overcrowded: 32,000 inmates, more than half classified as Communists, are confined in 37 provincial and four national prisons, which certainly need both reforms and improved facilities. They are not likely to conclude, however, that the tiger cages are characteristic of Saigon's entire penal system or even that the Vietnamese have outdone the French. French jailers in Con Son specialized in such techniques as placing red ants in the securely fastened pantaloons of female prisoners or slashing the soles of inmates' feet, pouring alcohol in wounds and setting them aflame.

* Including Hanoi's figurehead President Ton Due Thang, Premier Pham Van Dong and Mrs. Nguyen Thi Binh, head of the Viet Cong delegation to the Paris peace talks. Alumni from Saigon include Phan Khac Suu, chief of state in 1965, and Truong Dinh Dzu, unsuccessful peace candidate in the 1967 presidential elections.

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