Talk:Re-education camp (Vietnam)

First comments
I know the article needs more references and other improvisations, but I sorely missed an article about the reeducation camps in Vietnam, so I had to make one. Feel free to contribute and edit, but please tell me why you are editing. Regards. Tridungvo 14:03, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Herring, America's Longest War, argues that the term and concept of the "reeducation camp" actually started with the autocratic-leaning anti-Communist Diem government of Republic. Perhaps this should be included in the article as well? --Unassigned user.

The reeducation camps in Vietnam actually started in North Vietnam after 1954, when Vietnam was split in two. These camps themselves were similar to reeducation camps in China during the Cultural Revolution, as the article states. 'Trai hoc tap cai tao', was probably first used by the North Vietnamese, though I am not sure about this. As I believe what you typed in isn't correct I suggest it is removed from the article. However I will wait a couple of days for your reply first. Tridungvo 23:18, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I just found a link that says: 'According to Hoang Son, a spokesman for the Hanoi regime, the use of "re-education" camps began in North Vietnam in 1961.

You will find the text under the first underheadline named: The precedent in the North.Tridungvo 23:38, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

First indochina war (1954)
THESE CAMPS WERE ALREADY USED DURING THE FRENCH VIETNAM WAR! Shame On You 04:09, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

no this is incorrect they all gave blowjobs to the poor horses and made them reproduce with a chipmunk —Preceding unsigned comment added by 114.93.111.110 (talk) 09:18, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Kerry comments
I removed the references to Kerry's comments under the "See Also" section. First, it is evidently the same comment repeated in two paragraphs as though they were two separate events. Second, they are someone's summaries, not the actual quote. Third, their presentation implies a POV...the second paragraph (a cut and paste from the blog running the video) especially attempts to make an argument about the veracity of the comment, or more accurately this person's summary of the comment.

Why are Kerry's comments included and no one else's? Has no public figure, academic, or commentator made any comments on the existence or Vietnamese re-education camps over the years? --EECEE 20:09, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Keep up the good fight
To Tri Dung Vo, keep up the good fight. It is important that the wikipedia reading public know about the re-education camps. Sadly, as soon as you stop policing this article, it will be vandalized and deleted by 14 year-old leftists. The leftists in America and the West are still waging cultural revolution: USA are the bad guys, anyone pro-USA are bad guys, anyone anti-USA are good guys. That is the people who suffered and died in the re-education camps, according to these cultural revolutionaries -- deserve it. These are the same people who want the West to commit cultural suicide. Rant over. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.170.121.186 (talk) 05:39, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Cultural Suicide? May I ask where you acquire your definition of "American Culture" from, Just because people in the United States are able to see the other side of a story and look around the continuous one-sided pro american perceptions of the Cold War does not mean that American cultural values have been contaminated by dissenting leftist hooligans. Quite frankly, this is an ENGLISH encyclopedia, not an AMERICAN one, so if another editor removes some fact that they think may be biased by where a person lives i.e. United States then they are within their bounds to do so. Neutrality is understandably hard to come by, seeing as there are so many english internet users living in the world's only Superpower, and with so many people influenced by this one set of perceptions (Which many of us would call right wing) a little leftist leaning in your own country may help set a better balance.--99.141.176.247 (talk) 20:38, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
 * P.s. Do you think may candid and hopefully objective view of the situation sufficiently conforms with your established standards of "14 year-old leftists"--99.141.176.247 (talk) 20:40, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Templates
I have added NPOV and Original Research templates to the article.

Both these problems are part of the problem already noted: no references, unverified claims. The article needs citations, and much of it is couched in terms of the editor's own conclusions. --EECEE (talk) 06:21, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Neither problems fixed the whole time? (!) Homunculus (duihua) 01:19, 11 June 2010 (UTC) How the reeducation camps were used to "reeducate" NVA soldiers and Viet-cong personell is described in the book "Why the Viet-Cong Fought" By William Henderson. The man seems to me be a balanced and quite scientific minded person, who wrote this book on the side of his work as an army general in the armed forces of America. But this is only based on the book itself. For this article with no citations it might be a good place to start the dig for some sort of objectiviety. Best of luck for anyone who takes the task on. Martin, Sweden. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.227.11.243 (talk) 20:56, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 1 one external link on Reeducation camp. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.dartcenter.org/dartaward/2002/hm3/01.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 17:01, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

Reeducation camps of the Western bloc
Greek citizen here. It strikes me as biased that no mention is given to the reeducation camps in our country during our Western bloc-imposed dictatorship. Lots of pro-democracy and leftist people were imprisoned and perished in those camps during the 1967-1974 era, as well as the intermediate era from the end of the civil war (1949) till 1967. A balanced historiography should mention the other "dirty" side of the Cold War. --Dead3y3 (talk) 11:48, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
 * The topic for this article is about camps in Vietnam. I did a few quick searches and easily found Makronisos which mentions prisons in 1967-1974 and links to Greek military junta of 1967–74 which doesn't mention prisons. I'd suggest that the camps you are talking about should appear as a section in Greek military junta of 1967–74 and once that exists could be linked as a disambiguation from this article. It's also possible the information already exists in the English wikipedia. If you are able to check the Greek Wikipedia it might have an article that links to a poorly named English Wikipedia article. Alex Sims (talk) 08:15, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Reeducation which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 17:01, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

"Thousands were tortured and abused."
I checked the sources and this isn't stated anywhere. This source states that torture happened, but it doesn't happen, the source is not particularly well known, and it lists torture cases as coming from "confidential sources". Can we find a better source for torture? Does not the NYTimes, Washington Post or a historical study mention this? Stix1776 (talk) 08:33, 17 August 2022 (UTC)
 * That is sourced in the main body. See 'The Bamboo Gulag...'. I didn't revert your latest edit (for now). But that statement in the LEAD is sourced in the main body. I would encourage you to self-revert.Rja13ww33 (talk) 13:33, 17 August 2022 (UTC)
 * I went ahead and added a quote from one of the sources. If more sources are needed, I can add.Rja13ww33 (talk) 17:49, 17 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Can you put the quote in here? Because I'm not seeing it. Stix1776 (talk) 00:40, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
 * It's the only footnote in the article, but here it is: "...hundreds of thousands more [inmates] bore the permanent physical and psychological scars that would hound them the rest of their lives." (Source #12, p.147)Rja13ww33 (talk) 02:24, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
 * This quote does not mean that thousands were tortured. Would you mind writing out the paragraph, if possible. As I'm unable to attain this book right now. Stix1776 (talk) 03:14, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
 * What exactly would you call it? Sounds (at minimum) like abuse. As requested, the full paragraph: "By its ruthlessness, cai tao broke many prisoners physically and mentally. “The power of their masters was total and totally arbitraray”[13] Hundreds of thousands of people died as a consequence of mistreatment, malnutrition, starvation and diseases,[14] and hundreds of thousands more bore permanent physical and psychological scars that would hound the, the rest of their lives. These scars forever widened the chasm between oppressors and oppressed, between northerners and southerners, and left minimal room for reconciliation. Whatever faint admiration a few might have had for the steeliness of the socialist army, which had defeated them, soon evaporated and was replaced by a loathsome disdain or even hatred for the communists." So not sure what else it could be called. And as I said: there are other sources as well.Rja13ww33 (talk) 03:37, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Thank you for adding the paragraph. Torture is an active process that likely assumes physical abuse. One can have emotional scars just from imprisonment. Clearly this passage isn't stating "thousands were tortured" and the assertions are original research. A better summary would be "according to author Nghia M. Vo, hundreds of thousands of thousands died and sustained physical and mental damages due to their time in the re-education camps".
 * Unrelated, but who is this author? Is he a historian? It doesn't strike me as scholarly. See also WP:HSC. Ideally we should be sourcing historical facts from academic sources. Stix1776 (talk) 04:47, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
 * We can quote directly if you want. (Whether you want to call it abuse, mistreatment, or whatever.) His source for this statement is a book from a academic press (i.e. Texas A&M, the book's name is 'Reeducation in Postwar Vietnam'). If Vo's book was self-published, we could go down the path you are suggesting....but it's not.Rja13ww33 (talk) 05:04, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
 * (EC): Although I just reverted Stix1776's "disputed-inline" tag, upon reflection I am concerned that the reference to physical abuse or "torture" in the lede is not clearly substantiated by the body of the article (as required by MOS:LEAD) and that the available sourcing on camp conditions is quite weak and may reflect a Western anti-communist bias. While arbitrary detention of 300,000 people is a gross violation of human rights, the exaggerated claims quoted above (and also those cited from the much-criticized The Black Book of Communism) do not inspire confidence in the source's objectivity. I note that Nguyễn Hữu Có, a former South Vietnamese defense minister who spent 12 years in the camp system, did not mention a single case of physical abuse in his Washington Post interview, although he did refer to constant, "dreary reeducation," and to one camp near the Chinese border where "forced labor and short rations" were common (conditions in the other camps were considerably less severe). WaPo adds that "thousands are thought to have died in the camps, but there have been no reports of systematic execution of prisoners"; on a related note, the vast majority (over 85%) of the South Vietnamese generals detained alongside Có are thought to have survived. Obviously, this is just one man's experience, but our article already relies disproportionately on anecdotal evidence (often filtered through politically-biased authors) to paint a portrait of systematic violence, when "dreary reeducation" and psychological abuse were likely the norm, and physical violence a comparatively rare exception (at least in the overwhelming majority of the camps). For that reason, even apart from the disputed sentence (which I will WP:BOLDly remove), the whole article probably needs "NPOV" and "Better sources needed" tags.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 05:01, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
 * If a book published by Harvard University Press (i.e. The Black Book of communism....) is off the table than I'm not sure what will do here. I know there is a lot of controversy about the overall death toll in the book....but i don't think the authors were fabricating what the inmates of these camps were saying.Rja13ww33 (talk) 05:09, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
 * May I suggest another source for this line. It's here . This is an academic source, and isn't likely to be disputed.
 * "Torture was also used to break the will of “stubborn” prisoners. Torture was widespread in reeducation camps, especially during the first few years after the war. Because escape was considered among the worst offenses, captured escapees were punished severely in several ways, usually starting with a beating."
 * A solution to this problem may be "torture was common in the re-education camps". (my emphasis) Stix1776 (talk) 05:38, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Putting it like that (or in some form of) may be the only solution.Rja13ww33 (talk) 05:45, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Feel free to make this change and remove the tag. Or I can do it if you like. Stix1776 (talk) 05:54, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
 * I can do it today.Rja13ww33 (talk) 05:58, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Added your reference.Rja13ww33 (talk) 17:43, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

(EC): Unfortunately, if you are familiar with the provenance of the "1 million" figure, it is demonstrably false and based on citogenesis originating from a 1983 draft study by Jacqueline Desbarats and Karl Jackson, which was never published in an academic journal and used disputed methodology to estimate post-war political executions in Vietnam. The study's methodology was reviewed and found to be invalid by Gareth Porter and James Roberts in the journal Pacific Affairs (JSTOR). (Although the authors did not stress this point, the 34% duplication rate in the execution victims reported to Desbarats and Jackson, if anything, tends to suggest that the overall number of political executions was quite low, as a matter of statistical probability.) As described by Porter and Roberts: "At this point, Desbarats and Jackson make a major factual error which makes it even more difficult to make sense of their methodology. They assert that there were one million Vietnamese who experienced incarceration in reeducation camps, based primarily on an alleged admission by then Prime Minister Pham Van Dong, quoted in their unpublished preliminary draft as 'in over three years, I released over a million prisoners from the camps.' But what Dong actually said was rather different, as Desbarats and Jackson confirm in a different version of the article: 'In over three years, we returned to civilian life and to their families more than a million persons who in one way or another had collaborated with the enemy.' The difference between the two translations is important, because Dong was clearly referring to those who were released after only a few days of reeducation in their own home towns—not released from longterm reeducation in distant camps. The actual number of reeducation camp internees, according to both official communist sources and former officials of the regime who later fled to the West, was between 200,000 and 300,000." Technically, I see that The Black Book of Communism (p. 572) avoids repeating the same error as Desbarats/Jackson, accurately noting that "Pham Van Dong, the prime minister at the time, admitted in 1980 that 200,000 had been reeducated in the south"; however, the subsequent caveat that "[s]erious estimates range from 500,000 to 1 million out of a population of 20 million" is presented in passing without a citation, raising questions about the provenance and veracity of such inflated figures.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 06:14, 18 August 2022 (UTC)


 * I just checked the other two sources, The Columbia Guide to the Vietnam War and Vietnam's Forgotten Army: Heroism and Betrayal in the ARVN. Neither of them source the claim that one million men were interned. I admit, the one million number is shaky. Stix1776 (talk) 06:48, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
 * With or without a direct citation in the text....like I said: this is a Harvard University Press publication. Academic press is pretty much the gold standard for RS here. (And they are on the top of the heap.) As far as the Dong quote goes, this doesn't make it particularly clear. How do the authors know "Dong was clearly referring to those who were released after only a few days of reeducation in their own home towns—not released from longterm reeducation in distant camps."? (Rather than 3 years.) If we are going to start cross examining RS....this is opening quite a can of worms. I have no problem with your addition to the article....just wanted to point this out.Rja13ww33 (talk) 17:25, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

Reliablity of the Black Book
@Rja13ww33 I see that there has already been a massive discussion on the inclusion of figures from the Black Book where you have argued for it to remain.

I would like to highlight that calling the Black Book not a reliable source is not a matter of personal opinion. For one, we have the fact that much of the book has been disavowed by many of its authors including Karel Bartosek, Jean-Louis Margolin, and Nicolas Werth. Quoting from the page of the Black Book:

"Moreover, three of the book's main contributors (Karel Bartosek, Jean-Louis Margolin, and Nicolas Werth) publicly disassociated themselves from Courtois' statements in the introduction and criticized his editorial conduct. Margolin and Werth felt that Courtois was "obsessed" with arriving at a total of 100 million killed, which resulted in "sloppy and biased scholarship", faulted him for exaggerating death tolls in specific countries, and rejected the comparison between Communism and Nazism."

Alongside this, many other historians have criticised the Black Book on its own merits. And in the discussions above, there seems to be very serious evidence that casts shade on the "1,00,000" figure. I see your main point is that the book must be reliable as it was published by Harvard. But this isn't a very convincing argument. The veracity and reliability of a source does not wholly depend on where it was published. Thus, saying that the Black Book is unreliable is not the same as saying Harvard University Press is unreliable.

What more do you need to see to concede that the Black book and the figures they provide are not reliable? Also consider the evidence given above Genabab (talk) 18:27, 20 July 2024 (UTC)


 * First: the figures on the re-education camps are hashed out within the intro itself. We do it the way we should do it: one set of RSs say this.....another say that. We don't exclude anything. Our job is to present what RSs say. Second: this is not the lone RS saying this. Third (and finally): To the best of my knowledge, most of the controversy about The Black Book has been about the overall death toll and it's comparison to Nazism and so on (as you note yourself). In other words: Not this particular point (i.e. the re-education camps).Rja13ww33 (talk) 19:10, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I understand that we don't exclude anything, but if this goes into using unreliable sources then is that not a violation of the Policy "Undue Weight"?
 * If there are other sources saying that one million were interned in said camps, then I think it is fine to leave the figure there. But that does not suddenly make the Black Book reliable.
 * While that is where most of the conclusions fall, it is worth pointing out that that would still mean the source is unreliable as its methodology is flawed, giving us little reason to cite it. Genabab (talk) 19:35, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I think we ought to stick to what the sources say. It is OR to say: because a RS has a issue with statement/conclusion X, that means it must also have a issue with statement/conclusion Y (or the whole thing is unreliable). As far as I know, no other RSs criticize The Black Book on this point. It isn't unusual for a RS to be criticized....we should stick to what the criticism is. (And it is not relevant here as far as I know.)Rja13ww33 (talk) 02:22, 21 July 2024 (UTC)