in 1982: During the last three years friends and I have interviewed several hundred former prisoners, read newspaper articles on the camps as well as various reports of Amnesty International, and have studied official statements from the Vietnamese Government and its press on the re-education camps. The picture that emerges is one of severe hardship, where prisoners are kept on a starvation diet, overworked and harshly punished for minor infractions of camp rules. We know of cases where prisoners have been beaten to death, confined to dark cells or in ditches dug around the perimeters of the camps and executed for attempting escape. A common form of punishment is confinement to the CONEX boxes—air-freight containers that were left behind by the United States in 1975. The boxes vary in size; some are made of wood and others of metal. In a CONEX box 4 feet high and 4 feet wide, for example, several prisoners would be confined with their feet shackled, and allowed only one bowl of rice and water a day. "It reminded me of the pictures I saw of Nazi camp inmates after World War II," said a physician we interviewed who witnessed the release of four prisoners who had been confined to a CONEX box for one month. None of them survived." Visitation By 1980, official regulations stated that prisoners in the camps could be visited by their immediate family once every three months. Family visits not only meant personal contact, but also it meant they could bring food to their relatives. Some reports have stated that the prisoners in these camps would not have survived without such food. The duration of these visits was reported (by former prisoners) to last from 15 to 30 minutes. Family visits could be suspended for prisoners who broke rules. Only families who proved their loyalty to the government were allowed visiting privileges. Many former prisoners who were interviewed said they had been in three to five different re-education camps. It is believed that the movement of prisoners from one camp to another was intended to prevent their relatives from knowing a specific camp's real location. Release of prisoners In June 1976, the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam, in one of its last policy announcements before the official reunification of Vietnam, stated that those in the camps would either be tried or released after three years of imprisonment. But this