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Part of Total, Bloody Mayhem'

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'Total, Bloody Mayhem'
The war in Viet Nam, more than most,' is
a dirty war where civilians are cold-bloodedly
butchered for psychological effect and prisoners
are tortured brutally for information. In the
grim struggle, as the following report makes
clear, neither side has a monopoly on atrocities.
By Beverly Deepe
A Special Correspondent

SAIGON.
Every day the "Fishnet Report," cla,ss!fied as confidenUal, is collected from the provinces of Viet Nam, typed
and :fl.led at the American military headquarters here. It
lists atrocities of this war in which Vietnamese kill and
torture Vietnamese.
Extracts from the report for just one day in the
northern province of Thua Thien, containing the old
imperial capital of Hue, read as follows:
tIAn unknown number of Communist Viet Cong guerrlllas infiltrated a "New Life" hamlet arid murdered two
civilians.
tIAn unknown number of Viet Cong entered a, hamlet
and assassinated a 14-year-old boy.
tIAn unknown number of Viet Cong entered Ke Sung
hamlet and Thanh Duong hamlet, murdering two residents
and seriously wounding another.
,
tIOne Viet Cong squad entered Tho Son hamlet and
kidnaped one resident.
In the neighboring province of Quang Tri, the report
indicated, three Viet Cong entered Thanh Luong hamlet and
k1dnaped two youths. In the adjoining mountain province
of Pleiku, the report said, an unknown number of Viet Cong
detonated a mine against a civilian bus, killing one civilian
and wounding three others.
0

'TOTAL MAYHEM'
"This is the story of total, bloody mayhem which daily
takes place in the Vietnamese villages," one concerned
American official said. "It's been going on for years."
The atrocities are not committed only by the Communist forces. Vietnamese government troops, while seldom
torturing non-suspect civilians, are known to torture Viet
Cong prisoners and suspects. One Vietnamese army captain explained that government troops try to get intelligence
information from Viet Cong prisoners in the heat of battle.
American advisers and intelligence officers have urged
the Vietnamese forces to be more lenient with Viet Cong
prisoners and to keep them alive for additional intelligence.
In one known case, two Viet Cong prisoners were interrogated on an airplane flying toward Saigon. The ftrst

refused to answer questions and was thrown out of the airplane at 3,000 feet. The second immediately answered all
the questions . But he, too, was thrown out,
One of the most infamous methods of torture used by
the government forces is partial electrocution--or "frying "
as one U. S. adviser called it.
•
This correspondent was present on one occasion when
the tortm:e was employed. Tw-0 wires were attached to the
thumbs of a Viet Cong prisoner. At the other end of the
strings was a field generator, cranked by a Vietnamese
private. The mechanism produced an electrical current that
burned and shocked the prisoner.
Vietnamese officers repor•t that sometimes the wires
are attached to the male genital organs, or to the breasts of
a Viet Cong woman prisoner.
The water torture, also used by government forces, ts
painful but seldom fatal. One person forces the prisoner to
gulp water, while another applies pressure on his stomach.
TrJs forces the water out and creates a feeling similar to
drowning.
Other techniques, usually designed to force onlooking
prisoners to talk, involve cutting off the fingers, ears, fingernails or sexual organs of another prisoner. Sometimes a
string of ears decorates the wall of a government military
installation. One American installation has a Viet Cong ear
preserved in alcohol.
In dealing with government prisoners, the Viet Cong
have two tactics. One is to treat the government troops
well, indoctrinate them and send them back to their units
in the hope of getting their co-operation in the future .
The second is to destroy them .
At a Western cocktail party last month, one European
counter-guerrilla expert said, "I've just read the goriest
report ever-from Binh Dinh province.
"The Viet Cong sneaked into the ,government hamlet,
grabbed the village chief and his family. They forced the
chief to watch as they cut off the legs of his five children,
then bayoneted out the abdomen of his wife. And then
they emasculated him, leaving 'them all to die as slowly as
possible."
He continued: "The Viet Cong are very selective with
this terror-tortu,re technique. They do it for deliberate
political purposes. That story will spread like wildfire
through Binh Dinh province. Every government village
chief knows if he takes an active stand against t he Communists the same thing will happen to him and his family ."
The effect of this terror is to destroy the most anti•
Communist elements in the village.
Earlier this month, American officials in Saigon and
Washington vigorously protested the killing of an American
civ!lian employee working for the U . S. Agency fo r International Development.
Officially, this was one of
the first atrocity k1llings
of an American in Viet
Nam. American advisers in
rthe provinces, however,
have reported atrocity k111ings of U . S. m111tary prisoners.
One of these involved
four U. S. advisers captured by the Viet Cong
when their district head.quarters in Phuoc Long
province wa.s overrun last
December. "Their bodies
had been tortured and
'.hacked," one American adviser said. "And then they
were shot in the back of
their '.head."