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Hanoi's Paris negotiators seized on the accounts and, during negotiations last week, condemned the "penitentiary regime" in Con Son. The Communists did not mention that North Viet Nam has few if any political prisoners be cause most enemies are simply exterminated, as at Hue in 1968. In Geneva, the International Commission of Jurists called for an investigation, and Saigon lost little time in sending a ten-man team to the island.
Voracious Ants. Investigators would certainly find South Viet Nam's prisons overcrowded: 32,000 inmates, more than half classified as Communists, are confined in 37 provincial and four national prisons, which certainly need both reforms and improved facilities. They are not likely to conclude, however, that the tiger cages are characteristic of Saigon's entire penal system or even that the Vietnamese have outdone the French. French jailers in Con Son specialized in such techniques as placing red ants in the securely fastened pantaloons of female prisoners or slashing the soles of inmates' feet, pouring alcohol in wounds and setting them aflame.
* Including Hanoi's figurehead President Ton Due Thang, Premier Pham Van Dong and Mrs. Nguyen Thi Binh, head of the Viet Cong delegation to the Paris peace talks. Alumni from Saigon include Phan Khac Suu, chief of state in 1965, and Truong Dinh Dzu, unsuccessful peace candidate in the 1967 presidential elections.