From 1954 to 1955, individual arrests and murders were frequent, and people killed in such circumstances were numbered by the thousand. Some were summoned before the communal council or the district administration, and never came back; others were secretly arrested at night-time, and taken to unrevealed places; others were arrested by the authorities while going to their fields, to market, to fishing ponds or to work in the forests. All were submitted to atrocious tortures before being killed, jailed or sent to a concentration camp.
Some typical cases are given hereunder:
The murder of Mr. Tran Nguyen
Messrs. Tran Nguyen, Mai, Toai, Tien, Dan and Dieu in Bang Son, Cam Lo district, Quang Tri province, were all former resistance members. On December 12, 1954, Le Dinh Phap, Chief of Cam Lo district, Thai Hanh, a civil official, and Dat, Chief of the district police, ordered Mr. Tran Nguyen to be arrested and strangled. Then they had Messrs. Mai and Toai arrested and savagely tortured into declaring themselves to be ‘members of an assassination committee’ of the Government of the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam, and authors of ‘the murder of Mr. Tran Nguyen’. On December 14, 1954, the authorities set up a ‘military court’, which sentenced to death Messrs. Mai and Toai; the same sentence was passed against Messrs. Tien, Dan and Dieu in their absence.
On the other hand, the south Viet Nam administration lodged a complaint with the International Commission charging the Government of the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam with responsibility for the ‘murder’ of Mr. Tran Nguyen.
On this case, the Commission gave the following finding:
“From the thorough enquiry made into this case by Mobile Team 57, and from the detailed evidence obtained by the Team, the Commission has reached the following conclusions:
1. The complaint of the French High Command (which then represented the Ngo Dinh Diem administration) that the murder of Tran Nguyen was engineered by an Assassination Committee has been disproved.
2.The action taken against Mai and Toai, and the sentences passed against Tien, Dan and Dieu in their absence amount to reprisals against former resistance workers and, hence, violation of Article 14 (c).
3. There is a grave suspicion that the murder of Tran Nguyen was engineered by the authorities with the intention of planting it on the accused”.
On the basis of these conclusions the Commission requested the competent authorities in south Viet Nam to announce the ‘innocence’ of the five accused persons publicly, and to mete out punishment to those responsible for this affair, in particular, to Le Dinh Phap, Thai Hanh and Dat. (Ref. I.C. letter No ICSC ADM III-38 55 139 dated June 17, 1955).
The case of Mr. Vo Luong buried alive
Mr. Vo Luong, a former resistance member, native of Nhan Phong commune, An Nhon district, Binh Dinh province, was arrested on October 19, 1954, and savagely tortured by the south Viet Nam authorities in an attempt to force him to declare his activities during the Resistance war. On the night of November 3, he was led by a number of agents of the south Viet Nam administration to a ditch, stabbed, then pushed into the ditch and buried though still alive.
After his torturers had gone, concentrating all his remaining strength, he succeeded in getting out of the ditch (fortunately, it was raining at that time), and made for the nearest village where he was tended; then he was taken on a stretcher to the I.C. Fixed Team at Qui Nhon.
Dr. Vo Van Vinh at Qui Nhon concluded after examination:
“From the character of the wounds, I conclude that the man received many stabbings with a kind of flat, sharp instrument (as shown by the wound on the front part of the left forearm) ending in a sharp angle (traces of stabbings). The location of the wounds also shows that while being injured the man showed his right side and tried to defend himself with his arm (traces of cutting and stabbing).”
After a careful enquiry, on November 9, 1955, the International Commission concluded that “in this case, there was a violation of Article 14 (c) of the Geneva Agreement.” (Ref. I.C. letter No ICSC-FB-55-3-5286 dated November 9, 1955)
The murder of Mr. Tran Tham
Native of Dai Dien Trung village, Dien Khanh district, Khanh Hoa province, Mr. Tran Tham had participated in the Resistance war. Since the restoration of peace, he had resumed his normal activities to support his family. On January 18, 1955, he was arrested by the authorities under the slanderous charges of ‘theft of bullocks’, taken to the Dai Dien Trung post, subjected to the most savage torture which made him faint several times, and finally he was strangled. After an on the-spot enquiry by Mobile Team F. 16, the International Commission gave the following finding:
“As a result of the investigation, it has been ascertained that on January 18, 1955, Tran Tham was arrested by soldiers from the military post at Dai Dien Trung for alleged theft of bullocks, and was taken to the post. There, he was tortured, beaten and throttled, as a result of which he died. It has also been found that Tran Tham was a member of the Resistance movement before the cease-fire.
The Commission has arrived at the finding that the torture causing the death of Tran Tham constituted a breach of Article 14 (c) of the Geneva Agreement”. (Ref. I.C. letter No ICSC-FB-55-2-4569 dated July 20, 1955).
The murder of Messrs. Nguyen Luong and Le Tham
On October 3, 1954, on orders from the authorities, Major Ho Van Anh led his troops to Dien Ban district, Quang Nam province, to carry out arrests of former resistance members. Mr. Le Tham at An Truong commune was shot dead and Mr. Nguyen Luong at Thi Nhon commune was stabbed to death.
Alter an on-the-spot enquiry, the International Commission concluded: “These murders constitute a violation of Article 14 (c) of the Geneva Agreement”. (Ref. I.C. letter No ICSC-ADM-III-50-55-589 dated August 29, 1955).
The case of Tran Thi Nham alias Ly
Miss Tran Thi Nham alias Ly, native of Dien Hong village, Dien Ban district, Quang Nam province, was a guerilla fighter during the Resistance war. As she was a former resistance member, and had, on behalf of the inhabitants of her village, handed over a petition to the International Commission Team at Da Nang (Tourane), she was arrested on July 28, 1955 by the security service, and subjected to tortures during three consecutive months in the Ky Lam prison. On November 20, she was arrested for the second time, savagely tortured, and again set free over one month later. In March 1956, she was arrested for the third time, and taken to Hoi An where she was subjected to tortures of mediaeval atrocity: knife incision into the flesh, application of red-hot needles to the thighs and nipples, hanging to the ceiling by means of hooks fastened to the feet, tearing out of handfuls of hair... Thinking that she was doomed to die, the authorities gave her back to her family. But with the villagers’ assistance, she was brought to the North for medical treatment. When she was admitted to a Hanoi hospital, her body bore over 40 wounds which were still bleeding. She has exposed to the International Commission the crimes committed by the south Viet Nam administration. In January 1959, the International Commission sent its representatives to meet her in the hospital, and to hear her expound in detail her case which is still pending.
The case of Professor Nguyen Thi Dieu
Professor Nguyen Thi Dieu, a daughter of former minister Nguyen Van Hien, and a sister of Doctor Nguyen Thi Vinh, was a member of the Executive Committee of the Nam Bo Women’s Union during the Resistance war. After the return of peace, she resumed her normal business as a professor at the Duc Tri girls’ school in Saigon. On July 10, 1955, she was arrested and killed most savagely by the authorities. According to the complaint of her eldest brother, Mr. Nguyen Van By, an electrical engineer, the autopsy showed many wounds: “fractured skull, congestion in the inner ear, bruises on the wrists caused by handcuffs, contusions of the kidneys and bladder caused by kicks”.
Professor Nguyen Thi Dieu was then 29 years old. She had three children and was five months pregnant.
So far, the south Viet Nam administration has persisted in opposing an on-the-spot investigation by the International Commission into this case.
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