Word: saigon
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...continuing. It progresses at a level lower than in previous years, but no less fatal for those who are killed, no less uprooting for those who are made homeless. At the same time that the war continues, apparently, the political techniques which helped turn many Americans against the Saigon government of Nguyen Van Thieu continue as well...
Estimates of the number of political prisoners in Thieu's jails vary widely. The Saigon government announced in July that it held 4321 political prisoners, a figure Newsweek magazine called "unconvincing." A few days later, a group of South Vietnamese students and clerics issued a statement claiming that the government held about 202,000 political prisoners...
Article Four is more than enforced. Under a number of decree-laws, issued by the executive branch of the Saigon government and approved, sometimes under heavy pressure, by the legislature, "persons, parties, leagues, and associations" that aim directly or indirectly at "practicing communism or pro-communist neutralism" are outlawed. "Pro-communist neutralism" is defined as "propaganda for and incitement of neutralism...
...under such laws, political imprisonment is not reserved for supporters of the National Liberation Front. The best known political prisoners are not communists, but neutralists, pacifists, or other opponents of Thieu. According to some observers, in fact, it's precisely non-communist and even non-political people that the Saigon government is most interested in imprisoning. They're the ones that might help to bridge the gap between the Provisional Revolutionary Government and its opponents, or present an alternative to Thieu besides the NLF to upper-class Vietnamese, other Vietnamese anti-communists, and especially the United States...
...United States now pays 70 or 80 per cent of the Saigon government's budget in direct aid. All South Vietnamese military equipment, weapons and ammunition are provided by the United States on a one-for-one replacement basis. As a result of American aid, the Saigon government has one of the world's best-equipped air forces and 1.1 million men under arms, the fourth largest military force in the world...