Page Eight
THE SUMMER DAILY
Tuesday, June 26, 1973
Page Eight THE SUMMER DAILY Tuesday, June 26, 1973
Thousands st
By DENNIS NEELD
SAIGON (I - Police went to
the two-story, middle-class home
of Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao at 3
a.m. on Jan.'23. In a stack of her
books, they found the lyrics to
songs extolling peace. She was
arrested.
It was four days before the
signing of the Vietnam cease-
fire agreement in Paris and a
month since Thao had celebrated
her 14th birthday. She is still in
jail and no formal charge has
been filed against her.
"ACCORDING to police regula-
tions it is an offense to distri-
bute subversive literature or to
possess it, a government offi-
cial explained. "These songs she
had in her possession . . . they
were written by a man who is
now in North Vietnam."
The songs have been played on
Saigon television since the cease-
fire, but the government official
said that at the time of Thao's
arrest they were banned.
Thao, who is in the eighthi
grade in school, is in a cett at
Than lim) Prison osI de Saigot
along ,Asitlh a doe n tother girts.
H tiiissarc oed to visit
St. IS. i oo o i be afrai ,"
r thr says. -Shc smivs she
Was bea ten until shie voited
blood." The father, Nguyen Duc
Duong, a writer, served a three-
year jail term on unspecified
charges beginning in 1967 and
her brother is serving a 20-year
term now as a suspected Viet
Cong.
Thao and her brother are
among thousands of prisoners
classified by the South Vietnam-
ese government as either Com-
munist offenders or common cri-
minals. Others say many of them
are political prisoners held in
violation of the cease-fire agree-
ment.
'There are no political prison-
ers in South Vietnam," says the
chief government spokesman,
Pham Duong Hien.
CLASSIFIED AS Communist
offenders are not only saboteurs,
terrorists and Viet Cong, but al-.
so those suspected of Communist
sympathies and of spreading
Communist propaganda.
President Nguyen Van Thieu's
regime presented to the Viet
fiong a list of 5,081 of Common
ist offenders which it was will-
iug.lto exchange fur Sooth Viet-
naiese giivernment prsonnet
altgedls in Vir.e o nd Nirtti
V ictnamese hands.
It s-ys ther care 67,tt of
thci. Thc Vies ('ngt claims it
Sisv hut Is inly 252, i%,ile main-
taining the tsighn authorities
W captive in Vietnam
have "hundreds of thousands" of ing as many as 200,000 political officials report about 6,000 civi-
civilians in jails and detention prisoners. "That figure is just lian prisoners have been released
camps for pro-Communist acti- wild," says one U.S. official. this year.
vities. "But it's been repeated so many Politicians and religious groups
times that it's taken a life of its opposed to the Thieu regime dis-
THE PARIS peace agreement own. South Vietnam just doesn't pute this. They contend no ac-
refers to "all persons arrested have the prison space to hold count is taken of scores of local
and detained during the period that number. police stations, prefecture head-
of hostilities for having in any "The whole push is the other quarters, provincial detention
way contributed to the political way. The trend is downwards, centers, military stockades and
and armed struggle between the the pressure to reduce.' U.S. See VIET, Page 9
two parties."
Under the original agreement,
they should have been freed by
April 27. The latest accord work-
ed out between Henry Kissinger
and Hanoi's Le Duc Tho says a
they should be released within
45 days - by July 28.
Most foreign observers dis-
count Saigon's claim that the
Viet Cong are holding 67,000 ci-
vilian prisoners. The figure may -
represent the number of officials '
who are missing, but most are
likely either to be dead or as-
similated into the structure of
Communist-contr led ar=as.
THEY EOUAIIIY dits7- gv
ernment claiss hat thr are no
non-Coiunist politicuIp l'1 pmsrisonf
ers. Jtnt stins'mInateIsust howsmty
diffr s'tl ac-_turuting 'Ii t phtu-
ticaI persuusiuu
Amsericasoui'rces put Suh Vt
st1am' alt'lII risn ssuulat
sit 43,717 tut ste first sit thn yva
Gutsverunmcent fiues ptta te
is. Ne larit tith uer hldon
Csin Out telsld ith Sot C
tna Se'a, 140 miut-s suhato
8,ttO Isrisutners lusts beets r5Ic
ing current breakdown: 19,00
common criminals, 4,300 C(o t
monist offenders, 6,000 military
offenders in civilian jails, and A Photo
4,000 prisoners awaiting trial. A VIETNAMESE CITIZEN suspected af being a Vietong guerilla
* * peers through barbed wire in the prisoners' compound at Cai Cai,
THE VIET CONG and Vietna- South Vietnam. Thousands of political prisoners and "Communist
mese charge that Thieu is hold- offenders" are still held captive by the Thieu government.
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