Reeducation Camp - The Release of Prisoners

The Release of Prisoners

In June 1976, the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam, in one of its last policy announcements before the official reunification of Vietnam, stated that those in the camps would either be tried or released after three years of imprisonment. But this promise was broken. The policy announced that those still in the camps would stay there for three years, but would be released early if they made "real progress, confess their crimes and score merits".

Since there were no clear criteria for releasing the inmates from the camps, bribery and family connections with high-ranking officials were more likely to speed up release than the prisoner's good behavior. Released prisoners were put on probation and placed under surveillance for six months to one year, and during that time they had no official status, no exit visas, no access to government food rations and no right to send their children to school. If the progress of the former prisoners was judged unsatisfactory during this period, they could be fired from their jobs, put under surveillance for another six months to a year, or sent back to the reeducation camps. Faced with these challenges, many chose to flee the country and became boat people.

Some prisoners who have been imprisoned since the Fall of Saigon, have been released as recently as the year 2000.

The U.S. government considers reeducation camp inmates to be political prisoners. In 1989, the Reagan administration entered into an agreement with the Vietnamese government, pursuant to which Vietnam would free all former RVN soldiers and officials held in reeducation camps and allow them to emigrate to the United States. Thus began the third large influx of Vietnamese immigrants into the country.

The Vietnamese American Foundation began a program called "The Returning Casualty" in the early 2000s. It attempts to locate graves of people who died in the camps, and identify and deliver their remains to loved ones.