Thieu's Political Prisoners

The Antiwar Movement's Campaign 

to Free Thieu's Political Prisoners

Political repression was a characteristic of the governments that the US sponsored in South Vietnam because of their limited popular support and the active role in the civilian population of the National Liberation Front and Third Force advocates of democracy.

This webinar will focus on the plight of political prisoners during the regime of Nguyen Van Thieu  from 1967 until 1975.   Because of US funding for the Saigon government, the issue became a driving force in the latter years of the antiwar movement, especially after the Paris Peace Agreement ended direct US combat. 

Estimates of the number of political prisoners in Thieu's jails vary widely. The Saigon government announced in July that it held 4321 political prisoners, a figure Newsweek magazine called "unconvincing." A few days later, a group of South Vietnamese students and clerics issued a statement claiming that the government held about 202,000 political prisoners.

Amnesty International, a widely respected humanitarian group based in London, estimates that Thieu holds about 100,000 civilians, a figure that presumably includes some criminals as well as political prisoners....

political imprisonment is not reserved for supporters of the National Liberation Front. The best known political prisoners are not communists, but neutralists, pacifists, or other opponents of Thieu. According to some observers, in fact, it's precisely non-communist and even non-political people that the Saigon government is most interested in imprisoning. ...

Conditions in Thieu's prisons are controversial. Thieu's government claims the prisons are humane "re-education centers," but it generally refuses to let journalists visit them freely. Former prisoners and letters smuggled out of prisons tell of a lack of food, frequent beatings, and torture of all varieties, with the the most popular apparently applying electric shocks to men's and women's genitals, subjecting prisoners to blazing lamps, sticking pins through their fingers, forcing bottles and other objects up women's vaginas, and forcing people to swallow large quantities of clear or soapy water and then jumping up and down on their stomachs.

By Seth M. Kupferberg, Harvard Crimson, October 10, 1973  https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1973/10/10/thieus-prisons-some-pows-cant-go/

Speakers  

Brewster Rhoads,  moderator, Indochina Peace Campaign

Don Luce, Indochina Mobile Education Project by video

Jane Griffith, Vietnam Director,  American Friends Service Committee

Jean Pierre Debris, political prisoner in Saigon

Jerry Elmer, Tiger Cage Vigil and Fast, US Capitol

 

1968-1970

Math teacher in DANANG (South Viet Nam) French lycée for the French foreign ministry.

 

July 25th 1970 - December 29^th 1972

Political prisoner at CHI HOA prison in Saigon after demonstrating against the war. 4 years condemnation by military tribunal.

 

1973 - May 15^th 1975:

Guest of the American anti-war movement:

·         Amnesty International (Joan Baez)

·         Minneapolis organization to free the political prisoners in South Viet Nam (as required by the Paris Peace agreement).

·         Indochina Peace Campaign (Tom Hayden/Jane Fonda/Dan Ellsberg/Leonard Weinglass in Los Angeles)

·         Indochina Mobile Education Project/ Indochina Resource Center (Fred Branfman/Don Luce/Sally Benson in Washington DC)

·         AFSC/Quakers (John McAulif/Philadelphia)

·         Cora/Peter Weiss (New York)

With their help, I directly confronted in Congress former POW John McCain, Secretary of state Kissinger and general Abrams, commander chief of the US Army in South VietNam, and also, ex Nixon general Attorney, Elliot Richardson, at the Smithsonian Institution.

 

1979

Married with Kim Hoa in Hanoi (who, incidentally, while living in Quan thank street, was actually bombed at that time in 1967 by John Mc Cain.

Author of the book: We accuse, 1973 (in French, English, Japanese, German, Italian...)

Jerry Elmer was a Vietnam-era peace activist who publicly refused to register for the draft when he turned 18 in August 1969.  During the 15 months after he graduated from high school, he publicly destroyed draft files at 14 local draft boards in three cities.  Jerry worked for the American Friends Service Committee from 1972 to 1987.  In 1987, he left AFSC to attend law school; as a result of his anti-war activity, Jerry was the only convicted felon in Harvard Law School’s graduating class of 1990.  From June 24, 1974 to August 24, 1974, Jerry was one of the coordinators of the Tiger Cage Vigil and Fast on the steps of the U.S. Capitol; the project was sponsored by a coalition of 16 national peace groups including AFSC.  His first book, Felon for Peace: The Memoir of a Vietnam-Era Draft Resister, was published in 2005 in the United States by Vanderbilt University Press and in Vietnam (in Vietnamese translation) by Thế Giá»›i Publishing House.  The Vietnamese edition includes an introduction by Professor DÆ°Æ¡ng Trung Quốc, then a member of Vietnam's National Assembly.

From  1970 to 1973, Jane Barton Griffith was the co-director of the American Friends (Quaker)

 Service Committee’s humanitarian projects in South Vietnam which included  a Rehabilitation Center

where Vietnamese were trained to make prosthesis for war-injured Vietnamese civilians. As a pacifist

 organization located in a fierce combat zone, the Center treated injured people from both sides of the

 conflict. The program included medical visits to prisoners, and in 1973 Jane secretly photographed political

prisoners, mostly women, who had been severely tortured. When Jane returned from Vietnam,

Amnesty International sponsored her on a speaking tour in the US and Europe and her photographs

were widely published nationally and internationally. Jane continued to work in the US for AFSC

Northern California office.

 

Jane’s later career included directing historic restoration projects and working for international

nonprofit agencies.  She served as the Chief Curator and Restoration Officer of the US Treasury

and Department of Justice, and an advisor to the White House on restoration.  She was awarded

a Presidential Design medal by President William Clinton, and was appointed by the governor

of New Jersey, Christie Todd Whitman,  as director of historic buildings including the

State House and Governor’s Mansion.

 

Jane has also held positions at the World Wildlife Fund, National Gallery of Art, National Trust for

Historic Preservation, UNICEF, and the Center for International Policy, as well as the Asian Art Museum in

Stockholm, Sweden. Jane was asked to create a national nonprofit for autism, now called Autism Speaks.

She has traveled to more than fifty countries.

           

She is the author of numerous articles, museum catalogues, and three books two cookbooks,

The Berkshire Cookbook and Knead It and large format art book, Shibori, about  Japanese textiles

which has been in continuous print since 1983 with a total of 25,000 copies to date. Harmony Books

contracted with Jane for background research in Vietnam for Francis FitzGerald’s Introduction to

the English translation of Last Night I Dreamed of Peace: Diary of Dang Thuy Tram, and to write

330 footnotes for the diary.

 

Jane’s memoir, called For Get Me Not, about a close Vietnamese friend will be released in March 2025