Page 156 - Communism in Ambush

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North Vietnam
under
Communist
rule, 1968

Communist Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh, the founder of North Vietnam, and
those who followed him did not hesitate to torture their own people and
subject them to severe oppression. Between 1975 and 1977, a Vietnam
writer opposing the regime wrote a letter in which he described the con-
ditions of the country:
Conditions inside the prisons are unimaginably bad. In the Chi Hoa
prison, the official Saigon prison, 8,000 people under the old
regime were kept in conditions that were universally con-
demned. Today there are more than 40,000 people in the
same prison. Prisoners often die from hunger, lack of air, or
torture, or by their own hand… 110
There are two sorts of prison in Vietnam: the offi-
cial prisons and the concentration camps. The latter are
far out in the jungle, and the prisoner is sentenced to a
lifetime of forced labor. There are no trials, and hence
no possibility of using a legal mechanism in their de-
fense.
Ho Chi Minh, the
dictator of North
Vietnam.