amnesty international
International Secretariat
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London WC1X 8SP
Telephone: 01-404 5831 Telegrams: Amnesty London
The Rt. Hon. The Lord Goronwy-Roberts
The Parliamentary Under Secretary of State Foreign and Commonwealth Office London, S.W.1
6th December, 1974
Dear Minister,
I refer to your letter of 11th November addressed to Mr. Martin Ennals, wherein you gave details of the trial of the 118 deported South Vietnamese refugees held in Saigon on 29th October. You had at that time a report of the proceedings, presumably made by members of the staff of the British Embassy present at the trial.
In describing the trial, you accounted for all the 118 and stressed, inter alia, that there was no suggestion in the court hearings that any of the 118 deportees had died. I wish to draw your attention to the report of the trial published in the South Vietnamese newspaper, The Saigon Post, on 31st October, which states plainly that one of the 118 had "died while in prison".
This Saigon report, which we have just received, confirms a report pub- lished by Agence France Presse sent out from Saigon, dated 29th October, and received by us on the same day, which states that "one of the 118 died during detention in a South Vietnamese prison". We had refrained then from publicising the reported death of the prisoner on the basis of the AFP report alone, because we had hoped that the report being prepared by your Embassy staff would settle the matter conclusively.
The Saigon Post is a newspaper published with governmental blessings. It states clearly that the news of the death of the prisoner was revealed in the court hearing of 29th October. It seems to me that this corroborates convincingly the AFP report. I should welcome any comments which you may wish to make on the apparent discrepancy between the press reports and the observations made by British Embassy staff who attended the trial.
I am sure you would understand the extreme concern we feel at the revela- tion made at the trial. While making repeated assurances that the 118 were being treated reasonably, the South Vietnamese Government had con- cealed the fact of the death before the trial. Nor has that Government
Chairman of the International Executive: Sean MacBride, S.C. Secretary General: Martin Ennals
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PATRONS: The Archbishop of Canterbury, Great Britain Roger Baldwin, President of the International League for the Rights of Man, U.S.A. Danilo Dolci, Sicily Professor Erich Fromm, New York and Mexico · LU-Gen. Sir Brian Horrocks, Great Britain · Jean-Flavien Lalive, Switzer- land Professor Nalvador de Madariaga, Spain · Yehudi Menuhin. Great Britain Professor Clunnar Myrdal, Sweden Alan Paton South
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