Word: saigon
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...American involvement in Vietnam increased, this second condition began to fail. After the cancellation of the 1956 elections, guerrilla activity began in the South. Naturally, the Saigon government did not take this lying down; to fight the guerrillas effectively, it had to accept a further erosion of civil liberties and democracy. It also needed a further infusion of American money and troops, which increased unavoidably Americans' interest in and knowledge of the erosion of the civil liberties for which they were supposedly fighting...
Many liberals continued to urge a purification of the South Vietnamese government, of course, and a series of coups in Saigon demonstrated the impossibility of such a purification. More and more, therefore, liberals demanded that the United States simply withdraw. Some Americans were even beginning to understand the real alternatives before the Vietnamese people, and to say either that the Vietnamese people themselves would have to decide the question ("How many Vietnamese fought in our Civil War?" William Sloan Coffin demanded), or--the same thing made more explicit--that the NLF represented the vast majority of the Vietnamese people...
...International zeroed in on such practices in South Viet Nam, where, it estimates, more than 100,000 people have been jailed as political prisoners. Describing varieties of torture in agonizing detail, A.I. said: "There can be no doubt that [torture] is widely used in the areas controlled by the [Saigon government] not only as an instrument of intimidation but as an end in itself." The report is another step in A.I.'s newly launched campaign to "raise a public outcry throughout the world until torture becomes as unthinkable as slavery...
...Saigon statisticians claimed that at least 821 enemy troops had been killed in action in the few days since Cease-Fire II had been signed, while ARVN losses totaled 218. By the Saigon command's own admission, however, most contacts in recent days have amounted only to mortar and rocket exchanges. What fighting has occurred has been limited to the Chuong Thien province in the Mekong Delta and Kontum in the Central Highlands. In the northerly I Corps area, virtually no combat has been reported. Said a Western diplomat: "The combat statistics show that incidents are only a fifth...
Explanations for the comparative tranquillity vary. One Western diplomat argues that the Communists feel that they won little in their land-grab attempts after the January truce. Another believes that the Communists are now concentrating on building up their infrastructure in areas they already hold. He adds that Saigon "has achieved an equilibrium it can live with. The main arteries are open, the bulk of the population is within the government fold." But it is still too early to tell whether Cease-Fire II will really take permanent hold...