Word: conning
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Asia is not exactly noted for enlightened penal systems or livable prisons. Yet. thanks in part to several million dollars in U.S. aid, Saigon authorities boast that most of Con Son's 9,500 prisoners now enjoy work in vegetable gardens and craft shops as well as supervised surf bathing. But it was something else that Democratic Congressmen Augustus F. Hawkins of California and William R. Anderson of Tennessee were looking for last week when they visited the island as part of a congressional fact-finding team...
...American who had spent six years in Viet Nam with organizations such as the Y.M.C.A. and the Boy Scouts. A strong opponent of the war, he has been working for the World Council of Churches since 1967. Luce had detailed information from former inmates on conditions at Con Son, and what he and the Congressmen really wanted to see were the French-built "tiger cages," the maximum-security block where some 400 hard-core political prisoners, including women, were reported suffering gruesome mistreatment...
...would all urinate in a bucket, then divide it up and drink it," and so hungry they snared lizards and beetles that strayed into their cages and "ate them alive, biting off and sharing pieces." Congressional colleagues of Anderson and Hawkins were not happy about the trip to Con Son, however, and only a few lines on the prison got into the official committee report...
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...
...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...