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out more about released political prisoners, and on a proposal for an AI mission to visit South Vietnam (and perhaps Hanoi) later in the year. A letter formally proposing such a mission was sent to PRG President Huynh Tan Phat in mid-May. Apart from maintaining and developing Al's relations with the PRG, the proposed mission would look into the PRG's policies towards law and order in general, and political imprisonment in particular, as well as into the question of aid for the re- habilitation of released prisoners.
In the 12 months preceding the collapse of the old administration in Saigon, the condition of South Vietnamese political prisoners seems to have remained largely as it was in July 1973 when AI published its report Political Prisoners in South Vietnam, at least as regards the four large national prisons at Chi Hoa, Thu Duc, Tan Hiep and Con Son. Fresh evidence obtained by the AI German Section Coordination Group on Vietnam in autumn 1974 confirmed the continued existence of many of the abuses outlined in the report, including the widespread use of torture during interrogation, the reclassification of political prisoners as common criminals, the continued detention of political prisoners after their sentences had been served, and the dispatch of many of those eventually released to serve in the front-line units of the army.
AI marked the second anniversary of the January 1973 Paris Agreements on Vietnam by calling on the signatories (the United States, North Vietnam, Saigon and the PRG) and the participants in the February 1973 Paris Peace Conference (including the members of the now-defunct International Commission for Control and Supervision) to discharge their legal and moral responsibility to ensure the release and humane treatment of civilians detained throughout South Vietnam, or publicly to renounce any continuing responsibility as guarantors of the agreements. Al national sections were asked to take supplementary actions, with approaches to their local Vietnamese embassies.
Efforts by Al groups to keep track of individual prisoners were often frustrat- ed by the large-scale and allegedly forced transfer of prisoners from one prison to another. Thus according to reliable reports from Saigon, in May 1974 some 500 Buddhist monks were forcibly dispersed from Chi Hoa to various provincial prisons, while in August and November, several hundred prisoners were taken from Tan Hiep and Chi Hoa to Con Son, after police had used tear-gas and beatings.
Fresh arrests continued throughout the 12 months in question though the total number of political prisoners - while certainly still exceeding several tens of thousands remained the subject of disagreement and the object of conflicting propaganda claims. Among those arrested in the Saigon area from June 1974 to January 1975 were more than 45 members of the "Saigon People's Anti-Hunger Front", a pressure group involved in opposing the soaring costs of food. In February 1975, 18 journalists were arrested and charged with being members of a subversive communist group after a number of newspaper presses were con- fiscated (February 1975). The journalists and most of the Front members were adopted by AI as prisoners of conscience.
When the war ended and the prisoners were released in April-May 1975, AI groups were working on 236 adoption and investigation cases in Saigon- administered areas. In addition, work had continued on the cases of 13 people