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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 36, Number 9. 1ts May 1973

American aid helps repression

American aid helps repression

A report in the Australian of January 1 gave indication of fresh mass arrest. The report noted that he had "ordered the arrest and neutralisation" of thousands of people if ceasefire negotiations were successful. The report noted that the word 'neutralisation' "can mean anything from covert execution to a brief period of detention. American officials discount the likelihood of executions, although they admit they are possible and the word neutralisation has ominous overtones".

Buddhist monks and women tear at a barbed wire barricade with their bare hands during an unit-government demonstration in Saigon

Buddhist monks and women tear at a barbed wire barricade with their bare hands during an unit-government demonstration in Saigon

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A later report from Thomas Lippman and Peter Osnos (Washington Post, January 24th) indicates how such a scheme might be put into operation. They write that part of the Agency for International Development (AID) Public Safety Programme was "assisting the National Identity Registration Programme (NIRP) to register more than 12,000,000 persons 15 years and over by the end of 1971".

The size of the numbers targeted for identification suggests the extent of the opposition to the Thieu regime. Saigon Judge Tran Thuc Linh writes that "during the last two decades about one million people have had an experience of the prison regime. Each detainee of course has a wife, children, parents and relatives—ten on average. We may thus say that the penitentiary regime is hated by at least 10 million human beings" (Prisons in South Vietnam, published by the Movement of Catholics for Peace).