Nearly 2% of the population imprisoned

After the announcement of a possible ceasefire in October the number of arrests soared. Most of them were carried out under the F-6 edict which sets quotas for the arrest of "suspected communist agents and draft dodgers". The pretext for an arrest under F-6 is tenuous: hundreds of South Vietnamese have been arrested for "failure to produce on demand a South Vietnamese flag", and a high U.S. official is quoted as saying that Thieu is "arresting anyone who has a third cousin on the other side". (Newsweek, November 13th 1972)

Estimates of the number of prisoners vary. The Committee for Reform of the Prison System claims that "nearly 2% of the entire population of South Vietnam, some 350,000 persons, are politica1 prisoners". Respectable organisations like the International Committee of Conscience and Amnesty International have produced figures which agree with this estimate.

Michael Klare writes of the 20,587 persons executed under the U.S. sponsored Phoenix Programme from 1968 to May 1971, that "all of these people, it must be remembered, were civilians suspected of political crimes (i.e. opposition to the Thieu regime), and not soldiers belonging to either the NLF or North Vietnamese forces".