The Other Prisoners

While Americans' attention has quite understandably been focused on the release of the 576 U.S. prisoners of war, a much larger, more complicated and more rancorous exchange of captives has been taking place among the Vietnamese themselves. From both sides, prisoners are emerging with tales of torture and suffering that go beyond any told by returning Americans, but that seem nonetheless to be accepted as almost commonplace in this cruel war.

The first stage went smoothly enough, with the North releasing 1,032 captives in return for some 7,000 Communists held in the South. The second swap was delayed for more than a week as the two sides quarreled over the accuracy of each other's lists. Saigon says it holds 27,000 Communists, but the Viet Cong says the true number is many times larger. Similarly, the Communists say they hold 4,785 Saigon troops, but Saigon says the real total is 36,603. By week's end some 1,500 more Communists had been released as part of the belated second stage, with Saigon pledging to free an additional 4,800, and the Viet Cong a total of 1,200, in coming days.

In all the squabbling, the sorest point of all is the status of "political prisoners." Despite the Paris settlement calling for the release of all "civilian internees," both sides are using their own vague definitions of when a nonmilitary enemy sympathizer becomes a political prisoner. Saigon says Hanoi holds 59,118 of them, while Hanoi says Saigon has more than 200,000. Whatever the true totals, neither side is ready to release political prisoners on the same schedule as the official P.O.W.s. Victims of torture on both sides, they languish in a legal never-never land, protected by neither the Paris Accords nor even the status of common criminals. Late last month, amid rumors that peace-keeping teams would inspect the notorious "tiger cages" on the South Vietnamese prison island of Con Son, Saigon set free 124 victims of "political re-education." TIME Correspondent David DeVoss interviewed several of them at a Cholon hospital and cabled this report:

It is not really proper to call them men any more. "Shapes" is a better word--grotesque sculptures of scarred flesh and gnarled limbs. At lunch at the hospital, they eat rice, fried pork and bananas, and as their chopsticks dart from bowl to mouth, they seem almost normal--but they are not. When lunch is over, they do not stand up. Years of being shackled in the tiger cages have forced them into a permanent pretzel-like crouch. They move like crabs, skittering across the floor on buttocks and palms.

They are of all ages and backgrounds. One was arrested in 1966 during Buddhist riots. Another was caught in the 1968 Tet offensive. Now all are united by deformity. "I was arrested one day in the park with my wife and children," one man says as he rubs the shackle sores on his legs. "The police attached electrodes to my genitals, broke my fingers, and hung me from the ceiling by my feet. They did these things to my wife, too, and forced my children to watch. But I never gave in."

Those who refused to renounce the Communists were carted off to the French-built Con Son, 140 miles south of Saigon in the South China Sea, for political reeducation. Of the 8,945 prisoners there, 6,467 are considered Communists. Due to a steady diet of beatings--as well as sand and pebbles in the rice--dysentery, tuberculosis and chronic stomach disorders were common. Water was limited to three swallows a day, forcing prisoners to drink urine. Those who pleaded-for more food were splashed with lye or poked with long bamboo poles.

Things have been especially bad since the ceasefire. When told of the Paris settlement, the prisoners cheered, only to be stopped by doses of lye and bamboo. "We had hoped to begin the New Year with happiness," said one. "But my New Year began when I was doused with excrement."

So far, the government response to these accounts has been one of complete denial. Government sources say the prisoners are impostors, hired to discredit them prior to President Thieu's trip to San Clemente. Some in the government seem genuinely to doubt that the men really exist. "How can these men be alive?" asked one knowledgeable and honest government security officer. "No one ever comes back from the Con Son tiger cages alive."

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