Patriots Illegally Detained on 'Devils Island'

Since 1965 the main focus of the New Zealand anti-war movement has been on calling for an end to foreign intervention in Vietnam and, more recently, openly supporting the Vietnamese national liberation movement. Comparatively little attention has been paid to the fascist internal politics of the Thieu regime and, in particular, the number of political prisoners held by that regime.

Vu Dinh summarised the present position as regards political prisoners in South Vietnam.

Before the signing of the agreements, the United States and the puppet administration detained many people and patriots in South Vietnam, including a lot of the neutralist forces Some 200,000 people were detained. Even before the signing of the agreements, the puppet administration transferred many of these patriots and political prisoners to other places For example they transferred 50,000 of them to Poulo Condore Island (Poulo Condore Island is 50 miles off the south coast of Vietnam. From 1908 on, the French used it as a concentration camp for political prisoners. Since 1954 the U.S. backed regimes in Saigon have used it for the same purpose. Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese patriots have been jailed on Poul Condore, which is known as the 'Devils Island' of Vietnam — Eds). They have also transferred political prisoners from one jail to another to try and mix them up. They still have plans to turn the political prisoners into civil offenders, for the purpose of eliminating the lot.

The puppet administration has committed violations of the Paris Agreements with regard to the political prisoners they hold. They have got to be forced to hand them over.