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Vietnam Re-education Camps
The re-education camp remained the predominant device of
social "control" in the late 1980s. It was used to incarcerate
members of certain social classes in order to coerce them to
accept and conform to the new social norms. This type of camp was
one feature of a broader effort to control the social deviant and
to campaign against counterrevolution and the resistance. The
concept of re-education was borrowed from the Chinese communists
and was developed early in the First Indochina War, at least in
part because the nomadic government of North Vietnam was unable
to maintain orthodox prisons. The process was continued in the
North in 1954, but it came fully to the world's attention only
after North Vietnam's takeover of the South in 1975. The camps
were administered by PAVN or the Ministry of Interior, but they
were not regarded as prisons and indeed were separate from the
prison system. They were considered to be institutions where
rehabilitation was accomplished through education and socially
constructive labor. Only those who "deserved rehabilitation" (as
opposed to those who deserved jail) were sent to the camps, where
their political attitudes, work production records, and general
behavior were closely monitored.
The re-education camp system, as it developed in the South,
was both larger and more complex than its counterpart in the
North. Three types of camps were created to serve three
purposes--short-term re-education, long-term re-education, and
permanent incarceration. The system was also organized into five
levels.
There were two levels of short-term re-education. The first
was the study camp or day study center which was located in or
near a major urban center, often in a public park, and allowed
attendees to return home each night. Courses, chiefly lectures to
"teach socialism and unlearn the old ways lasted about thirty
days." They were attended mostly by southern proletarians and
juvenile delinquents. These level-one camps, which instructed
perhaps 500,000 people, were the most common kind in the South in
the first few years after the end of the Second Indochina War,
but were phased out near the end of the 1970s. The level-two
camps were similar in purpose to level one camps, but they
required full-time attendance for three to six months, during
which time the inmate was obliged to supply his own food.
Security was minimal, and it was possible simply to walk away
from the camp, although later arrest was likely. During the
1970s, there were some 300 of these level-two camps in the South,
with at least 200,000 inmates. Some level-two camps remained in
the 1980s, although most had been phased out.
Long-term re-education was undertaken at level-three camps.
Termed the collective reformatory, level three had thought reform
as its purpose. Whereas re-education of individuals in the first
two levels of camps was regarded chiefly as a matter of informing
them of the "truth" and making them aware of facts about the new
social order, reforming the thought of those in level-three camps
required a process of deeper examination and analysis. The
orientation was both more psychological and more intellectual.
Although the inmate was apt to be better educated, and thus less
susceptible to manipulation, than most Vietnamese, the system
considered him salvageable. The level-three camps at their most
prevalent, in the late 1970s, were found in every province in
southern Vietnam and dealt with at least 50,000 persons. Although
the camps were still in use both in the North and South, by 1987
the number had decreased.
The third type of re-education camp, the socialist-reform
camp, was intended for permanent incarceration, and re-education
involved indoctrination and forced labor. When these camps were
first established in the South, individuals were assigned
according to the probable time that each person's re-education
would require. Level-four camp inmates were said to require three
years and level-five camp inmates, five years. For this reason
the two were commonly termed "three-year-sentence" and
"five-year-sentence" camps. Their true purpose, it became
apparent eventually, was to incarcerate certain southern
individuals--including educators, legislators, province chiefs,
writers, and supreme court judges--until the South was judged
stable enough to permit their release. In 1987 at least 15,000
were still incarcerated in level-four and level-five camps. When
the three-year or five-year period expired, they were simply
sentenced to three or five more years of re-education.
Initially, the five levels of re-education were structured in
ascending order of perceived individual recalcitrance and
ascending length of incarceration. In 1987, however, only the
level-three camp remained dedicated to its original purpose. The
level-four and level-five camps were simply detention centers for
those judged potentially dangerous to the system. Camp conditions
were reportedly poor, with little food, no medicine, and a high
death rate.
Data as of December 1987
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