JAILERS' CORPS CELEBRATION
O
n November 6, the Nhan Dan (People) daily newspaper reported that the Public Security Ministry held a solemn ceremony to memorize the 50th anniversary of the prison guard force and awarded the force the Medal of Independence First Class. According to the newspaper, the department of jailers' corps known officially as Prison Guard and Rehabilitation Center or Department V26, was established on November 7, 1950.The newspaper praises the corps members as "Cadres and staff of different periods of the V26 have overcome many difficulties and challenges to fulfil their task of management and education of culprits and criminals delinquents and contributed to converting and educating them to be good citizens over the past 50 years."
The V26 founding anniversary was one of the many celebrations scheduled for the year 2000. Some are important celebrations such as the founding anniversaries of the Vietnam Communist Party (VCP), of its government, of its army and other major organizations, which are held every year. However the VCP marks the end of the 20th Century and the beginning of the 21st with celebrations as many as it could think of, disregarding the fact that some of them are not a bit significant.
Usually in an anniversary of an institute or organization, VCP government would release statistics concerning its achievements to show how successful it has been. But Hanoi couldn’t do so for the V26 anniversary.
If Hanoi were to disclose the true figures, the statistics would have to respond to the following questions:
Of course Hanoi will never tell the truth, saying that such figures are classified as "national secrets."
To a better understanding of the issue, it should turn back to the days of 1945. Though Ho Chi Mnh was extremely busy of forming his first cabinet after his men seized power in late August 1945, he was still doing his best to look for the right persons to install them in the seats of provincial Public Security Department Chiefs. The story could be found in many memoirs and stories about the events that followed August 1945, in numerous books, magazines and newspapers published by Hanoi after Apr 30, 1975.
He knew better than anyone that his regime would survive only under the protection of an effective security force. Since his first days in power until nowadays, Public Security has been treated with best attention by VCP top leaders. Their army only takes the second place.
The Public Security Ministry has many departments such as the Political Protection, the Cultural Protection, the Diplomatic Corps Services, the Economic Protection... and the V26 mentioned above.
The prison guard force is a particular corps, organized and trained in special ways to serve the prison camps. It has actually existed since the beginning of the regime, but only officially established since 1950 when the Lao Dong Party (undercover name of the Communist Party) began its overt activities.
Prison system has been the strongest pillar to prop up the VCP regime. Many, if not all commanders of the camps were also selected by Ho Chi Minh himself. One of the most terrible camp chiefs whose reputation has been imprinted deeply in the minds of people living in the region of his camp and later spreading nationwide, was Ly Ba So. He was allegedly known as Ho Chi Minh's favorite.
The camp, so-called Production Camp #5, renamed Re-education Camp #5 (or Camp Thanh Phong) after 1954, still exists in Thanh Hoa province. Most people including children in provinces around Thanh Hoa in the late1940's and the 1950's knew well what were Camp 5 and Mr. Ly Ba So and what the names meant. How many people have spent a term and how many of them pass away in Camp 5 are unknown. Some estimate at a million inmates and tens of thousands of those who fell dead on the camp's fields and its poorly equipped dispensary.
Discipline in the camps has always been strictly enforced by jailers who have learned many techniques to deal with every type of inmates. They are taught to appraise brutality, torture or exploitation of the prisoners' labor to the largest extent as honor tasks to serve the party and the country, out of patriotism and the faithfulness to the party.
A basic lesson delivered to the jailers' corps reads: "... during the two world wars, the European and American Imperialist armies killed all prisoners of war to save money for their national budget. Meanwhile the Soviet Union army was practicing a more humane and productive policy. That is to use POWs for the purpose of production instead of killing them..."
They are indirectly taught that criminals in the camps are discarded by the society. So their responsibility is to "reform" them as much as possible; if not, just forget it and do whatever possible to make best use of the prisoners' productive labor for the interests of the society. Because of this notion, many jailers freely vent their sadism on poor prisoners who violate regulation of the camps.
Prison guards in North Vietnam especially before 1975 were very brutal to inmates. A trifle violation sometimes cost a prisoner his life. At least he will suffer a beating or caning that might break his ribs or arms in many cases. However, since the 1980's, after working or visiting South Vietnam for some time, many of them have become less cruel to prisoners.
People in South Vietnam have taught them true democracy which they haven't learned at schools and training centers. Besides, a lot of prison guards have been brainwashed by political prisoners. The large number of former South Vietnamese army officers and government officials who were put in re-education camps since 1975 have shown their jailers that the former Saigon regime had been much better than the Hanoi tyranny in every aspect.
Since 1985, treatment of political prisoners has been better, one of the reasons is corruption. With not much money, a prisoner could be allowed to meet his family any time, receiving eatables or buying almost everything sold by jailers. The low morale among party members has also softened the ill-treatment of prisoners, political and criminal as well.
In the history of wars in Vietnam, prisons under the French Colonialist government were notorious for horrible torturing techniques, but they were second to that under Vietnam Communist Public Security branch.
There are many dozen of books (memoirs and other non-fiction) written about life in Vietnam Communist prisons. The best of them are published only in Vietnamese language. They should have been translated into other languages so that people in the world could have a more accurate notion on the conflict in Vietnam. Without supports from sponsors, no translators could be able to work on such a book of 200 to 400 pages.
One of the best is probably the "Chuyen Ke Nam 2000" or "Tales for the year 2000." Bui Ngoc Tan, the author, was a Communist faithful member and a writer when he was arrested and sent to prison. He was suspected of writing anti-Communist work that he didn't. He wrote about many type of prisoners and of the guards, daily life in and out of prisons. His description is so skillfully and artistically that readers could easily figure out what are happening every day in the North Vietnam prisons.
The book was published in August 1999 by Thanh Nien Publisher in Vietnam, but was confiscated and banned not long after circulation. In April 2000, it was published by Thoi Moi in Toronto, Canada.
The book provides the most valuable information, indispensable to scholars in their studies of Vietnam.
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