TNAG-0495-FCO40-560-Deportation-of-foreign-nationals-from-Hong-Kong-1974 — Page 42

CONFIDENTIAL

of their prisoners-of-war and 70,286 civilians. The PRG deny this and

counter-claim that anything up to 300,000 political prisoners are still

held by the Saigon Government.

6. The term "political prisoner" is extremely hard to define and we

do not have precise information about the number of civilian prisoners

held in South Vietnam. We have avoided entering publicly into

speculation about the numbers involved, but our judgement is that the

total number of convicted civilian prisoners in the territory of the

Saigon Government is rather less than 35,000, of whom possibly half

may be detained for political reasons. Some Western observers put the

figure for political prisoners much lower. No information is available

to us on prisoners held by the PRG or North Vietnam.

CONFIDENTIAL