Poulo Condor prison. (also known as Paulo Condor). It was located on Poulo Condor Island in French Indochina, which is part of the Conder Archipelago, which is situated about 230 km SSE of Ho Chi Minh City in the South China Sea . Its French name is derived from the Malaysian language Pu Lao Kundur meaning courgette. The most famous sites on the island are the so-called “tiger cages” and the so-called “sun baths” which are enclosures with a total area of 5,745 m² with 120 cells with an area of 1,408 m; “sun baths” with about 1874 m. The prison was closed after the unification of Vietnamand in the 1990s it was reopened as a monument to the memory of the nationalists who died there, believed to be at least 20,000. In the vicinity of the prison is the Hang Duong Cemetery where prisoners were buried.
Background
The prison was a place of exile, originally used by the Annamite Kingdom , from times before French colonization. The French used it as a prison since 1862 , after the Treaty of Saigon, and it continued to be used by successive governments until 1975 . This site is infamous because tiger cages were used to torture political prisoners, many of whom were crippled by torture and long months under forced immobilization of their bodies.
Many of the opponents of the French colonial regime were imprisoned here, among them the patriotic members of the Viet Minh , Pham Van Dong , Le Duc Tho and the wife of Vo Nguyen Giap who has blamed the colonial administration for the death of his first wife, fact that occurred in 1941 and also the death of his sister-in-law who was guillotined by the French colonial administration after being found guilty of nationalism.
Like many of the Vietnamese patriots, Pham Van Dong was confined in the prisons of the colonial administration, in his case for seven years, between 1929 and 1936 ; after the arrival of the Popular Front to the government of France , he is released and will resume his revolutionary activities. It is these prisons and penal colonies that will transform militant nationalists into communists. Under the French colonial regime, those sentenced to forced labor, served as slave labor known as “Annamites” were sent to many other French colonies, such as New Caledonia . In the movie Indochina this situation is mentioned, as well as in the novelA Dam Against the Pacific by Marguerite Duras . The use of this « Annamites » slave labor constituted a part of the « Process of French colonization », as published by the outlaw Nguyen Ai Quoc (future president Ho Chi Minh ) in the newspaper Le Paria in 1925 .
This penal colony was active during the Indochina War. In 1955 , it was restructured as a “reeducation center” by the Republic of Vietnam ( 1955-1975 ) to imprison supporters of the National Front for the Liberation of Vietnam (Viet Cong) during the Vietnam War .
vietnam war
During the Vietnam War , former prisoners of this jail reported abuse and torture that took place in the prison. In July 1970 , two representatives of the American Congress, Augustus Hawkins and William Anderson , visited the prison; this was within a framework of negotiations with the People’s Republic of Vietnam for access to visit American prisoners from North Vietnam; they were accompanied by Tom Harkin , who was officiating as a translator and by the USAID program director. Through clandestine information, they were able to verify that the prisoners were subjected to torture and an inadequate diet, as well as the use of chains and dumbbells on their feet. Tom Harkin photographed these people and these photographs were later published by Life magazine in the July 17, 1970 issue
