Possibly trying to extend an olive branch to anti-communist Vietnamese-Americans, Vietnam has quietly freed the last South Vietnamese military officers imprisoned in forced-labor camps since Saigon fell 17 years ago.
The release of the remaining 20 "re-education" camp inmates met a key humanitarian demand of the United States, which began formal talks aimed at restoring diplomatic ties with Vietnam in November."Right now, there's no one left in the camps," Le Van Bang, Vietnam's foreign minister for the Americas, said Thursday in a telephone interview with the San Jose Mercury News from Hanoi.
Bang called the release a humanitarian gesture and an act of "forgiveness," and said there was no connection to the talks with Washington.
"We hope that the prisoners will reunite with their wives and children," Bang said. "If they would like to relocate in the U.S., then we will create opportunities for them to relocate."
Although the move is expected to draw praise from U.S. diplomats, the U.S. State Department had not been informed by late Thursday. Instead, Vietnam's top diplomat in the United States chose to make the initial disclosure Thursday in a private conversation with Tom Miller, a 54-year-old Oakland attorney who works extensively with Vietnamese emigres.
Last month, Miller had asked Trinh Xuan Lang, Vietnam's ambassador to the United Nations, to do what he could to release two former South Vietnamese colonels, Nguyen Van Han and Nguyen Van Sao, because their families were concerned they would die in captivity.
On Thursday, Lang phoned Miller to say that all re-education camp prisoners had been released about April 30, the anniversary of the fall of Saigon. Bang confirmed that the released prisoners include Han and Sao, two of the highest-ranking officers left in the camps.
At one time, tens of thousands of South Vietnamese military and government officials were held in the camps. Thousands died from starvation diets, beatings, lack of medical care and accidents while clearing jungles, constructing canals and building their own jails.
In the past 21/2 years, as prisoners were released under pressure from the United States and other countries, hundreds of camp survivors and their families were allowed to emigrate to the United States each month, many of them to the San Jose area.