Vietnamese Communist Prisons

Butvang magazine interviews Ms. Thuan Thi Do, the person who had been in jail three times under the Communist regime during the 80’s.

Question: I have heard that you had been put in jails by the Vietnamese communists. Could you tell us about your experiences there?

Answer: I was put in jails three times in total. The first time was in 1979, while my husband was in a concentration camp. He kept on telling me to flee the country with my son for the sake of his future. Therefore, I tried to escape, and when we were in a small boat that was carrying us to the large one, the police came in their boat, pointing their guns, arrested us and took us back to their place for interrogation, then put us in the jail at Binh Chanh. The second time was when we were trying to flee the country by boat from Ba Ria, but then the waves were too big for the boat to bear, and we had to come back to the shore. We were captured and put into the jail of My Tho. The third time was when I was at home with my son, and the police came to my house and took hold of me for being a connection for people to flee the country by boat. This time I was again held at Binh Chanh jail, because the person who denounced me was also kept there. After 2 months, they transfered me to a re-education camp, named "Trai Giao Duc Lao Dong" (Training and Labor camp). Two people who tried to flee by boat were also transfered to this camp. The people in this camp usually had to labor for two years before being released.

Question: So all three of your jaillings were related to your attempt to escape from the country?

Answer: Yes, I was captured two times for trying to flee the country, and one time for being a connection for others to find a way to escape.

Question: So, you must know well about two jails in Vietnam. Could you tell us more about them?

Answer: There were many things to say about the Binh Chanh jail, the place where I was held two times. So let me tell you about the jail at My Tho first, then I can tell you about the Binh Chanh jail later.

When we were taken to the My Tho jail, they searched us, and took all the jewelry we had, then put the men and the women in separate rooms. Later on, I knew that the young men were interogated harshly, and many were beaten to make them point who the owner of the boats was. The women were not beaten. The condition in this jail was very inadequate, because the guards dishonestly skimmed off our food. Therefore after 15 days in jail, when I was released, my body was very thin, weighting only about 34 kilograms.

Question: Please tell us more about the diet and the sanitary conditions in the jail.

Answer: The sanitary condition was very bad. Every morning we were allowed to wash our faces and pour some water on our bodies, after the two prisoners, chiefs of our room, took their baths. All the water was in a drum-shaped container. However, the chiefs used the water very unsparingly, leaving us just a little bit at the bottom of the tank,mixed with alga. I could only draw up a few cups of water, not enough to rinse off the sweats from my body. The same thing happened everyday. One time I felt so bad that I cried just because of this little matter. Regarding to the diet, it was also as bad... The guards stole most of our rice, thus each of us were given just a little. I was with my youngest son who was one and a half years old at that time. We had two meals a day, and for each meal, we had only half of a rice bowl, with a little vegetable broth. I had to feed my son first, and when he finished eating, I had only about two spoons of rice left. It was fortunate that their policy was not to keep the women who had small children, so they released us after fifteen days. Otherwise we both would not be able to survive on such a diet.

Question: Yes, these things were impossible for the people from outside to realise, and people might think that angry former prisoners exaggerated them. But they happened over 10 years now, so they were not from the grudges that you might still hold, but theywere the truth, weren't they?

Answer: Yes, of course they were the truth. A truth that is hard to believe. I also thought that this jail was only a temporary one for people, since if it was a prison, then no one could survive it. Later on, when I was released, the people who did not have small children were transfered to a labor camp. Perhaps, at the labor camp, the prisoners could have some supplemental foods from their families, or the new diet and sanitation was better for them, but I don't know for sure.

Question: Yes, so that was about the My Tho jail; now, how about the Binh Chanh jail?

Answer: The sanitary condition at the Binh Chanh jail was much worse... Although it was only called a jail (temporary prison), I have seen people kept there for 3 years. Nevertheless, they were very patient, for they considered themselves luckier than the people who were put into Chi Hoa prison. I assume that Chi Hoa prison must be very terrible to make them so fearful of it.

Question: Could you please tell us where the Binh Chanh jail was, the size of it, and the kind of people who lived in it?

Answer: This jail was in the Binh Chanh district, Cho Lon, near the West Bus Park of Saigon. The prison was very small but very crowded. This prison was meant to hold criminals only, and boat people like me were very rare, since Binh Chanh was not near the coast. I was held there with all kinds of people, such as thieves, prostitutes, pimps, illegal fuel sellers, bus ticket smugglers, etc... When I was sent there for the second time, the only room for women was very crowded. There were 36 people together in a room of about ten feet on each side. When people slept, they had to lie very close to one another, and it was so tight that they couldn't straighten out their legs. If people wanted to turn their bodies, they would have to do it very gently, since they might wake their neighbors up. There was only a small opening of the size of a paper, for the guards to look in. Only a chief of the room could lie next to the door to have some air coming in from the gap at the bottom of the door. The rest would suffer the sweltering heat. Usually we could only sleep after midnight, when the wind began to blow in under the waving cement roof and made the room cooler.

Question: So that was the room for women. How about the men's place?

Answer: It was even more pitiful for the men. There were three rooms totally, not counting the punitive ones. Two rooms were for men and one for women. The rooms for men were about 5 or 6 meters long for the sides, but each of them held more than 200 people, and sometimes nearly 300 people. When the guards called the prisoners out to eat, I saw them walking out in stooping. Everyone was so thin, their bones showed through. Their backs were bent, becaused they had to sit all days and nights under the hot cement roof of the crowded rooms. I think they suffered a lot physically. I could not understand how they could stand living there for up to three years. One time a man told me that, living in those rooms, each of them had a small fan to fan himself days and nights. They couldn't sleep at night, because they couldn't lie down: not enough room. But when too tired, they fell down on one another, and when it was too heavy for the person at the bottom, he would rise up suddenly, waking all others up, and they would continue to wave their fans mechanically until a hellish night was over.

Question: What about washing and bathing?

Answer: Each morning the guards allowed us to wash our faces and to relieve ourselves once. Afterward, some of us took turn to take the water from the pond into our room to clean up the cement floor, while others were eating outside in the yard. In the afternoon, we were allowed to bath in that same pond. The water in the pond was very dirty. After I was there for only a month, I already got scabies in my feet, and they were so painful that everyday I sat there with tears flowing out from my eyes. The policiers, when seeing that, thought that I was mad, so they told the "Controllers" when those people came to see us, and I was sent to "Go Xoai labor camp" afterward. I thought I was luckier than the people who had to stay at Binh Chanh jail.

Question: In this jail, was there any beating or mistreatment of the prisoners?

Answer: I myself was not beaten, but the first day when I got there, my roommates warned me to be cautious, because they had been beaten previously, only because in the morning they took a little bit longer than usual to do the toilet. The guards got mad and used the electric whip to strike each woman twice in the hand. I did not know what the electric whip was because I only heard of it. It was probably made of a tough piece of electric wire, and similar to a whip.

Question: And how was the labor camp?

Answer: At the labor camp, the beating of the prisoners was a regular thing, and that could happen any time.

Question: Could you tell us a typical case?

Answer: The first time that I witnessed the beating was just two days after I arrived. On that day, I was lucky to be allowed to stay at the camp to put the straws out into the sunlight to dry. In the afternoon, when the women came back from work, I saw that they had to line up and all of them had to lie down to be struck five times with a solid bamboo cane. I was so fearful to hear their painful screamings. Later, I learned that when they returned from work, a woman was missing. The guards got angry and beat the women for failing to watch out for one another, even though they knew full well that the women were very busy working, and it was impossible to keep an eye on one another.

The bruises on the buttocks of those women turned purple and remained there for a month. When I questioned one of them about her feeling, she told me that it was like being hit by a jack fruit that fell down from a tree. However, I understood that the panic, the fear, the humiliation, and the helplessness had wounded them much more than being hit by a falling jack fruit. It was such a blatant violation of human dignity. They beat the prisoners barbarically and senselessly.

The second time I has almost got a beating from them. When they came to check our blood to see if any of us had a venereal disease, two (to be) boat women avoided to have their blood taken because they were afraid that the needles were not well sanitated.

Unfortunately the guard wrote down the names of the people who had their blood taken. I let them take my blood and was left alone, but the two women were each punished by one cane struck. I thought those beatings were totally senseless, having no constructive purpose, but only to coerce us into their rules, no matter how unreasonable they were.

The third time that I saw a beating was when they caught the girl who had escaped the other day. Coincidentally the camp warden met the girl on a river crossing, so he called the police to arrest her and took her back to the prison camp. Even though it was a long time since the escape, the guards still resented her, because they had to run hard to look for her the other day. Therefore, they hung her hands up to the ceiling, and then took turn to strike her with a cane all over her body for over 100 times. The girl thus suffered bruises everywhere, and her knee injuries made her unable to walk, and for a month, she had to rely on a friend to carry her in and out everyday, on the friend's back, for her to do the toilet.

That was the beatings in the communist jails. I saw that these beatings were very common, and although it had been more than ten years now -- I was put in jail that time in 1987, 12 years after the communists took over the South -- I don't think that they made any change since then, since there was no one to defend the rights of prisoners under that regime, there was no freedom of press, no one to uncover such barbarity, and in Vietnam there was no justice, no lawyer to protest for them when they were treated brutally in prisons. I promised myself that when I go to another country, I would speak up of such horrible things, with the hope that the Vietnamese communists would stop mistreating their prisoners and make their lives more bearable. And who were those prisoners? those people did not commit grave crimes; some of them sold illegal gasoline, some were prostitutes, and some sold cigarettes illegally, etc..., and all that happened because of the difficult general economic situation that made them do such things.

The labor camp did not reform anyone, because when they were released after two years, they did not have any new skill, and they did not want to go back to farming, because farming was so hard. They would return to their old ways, and thus returned to jail again. The vicious cycle just continued. Prisoners in Vietnam were looked upon like a dog or a cat that a guard can beat up any time. Today my only hope is for those in power in Vietnam to change their policies, and to have a more humane way to treat their prisoners, to show that they deserve to lead the people of Vietnam during the 21st century, and not to bring the people of Vietnam back to the feudal time of several centuries ago.