to a re-education camp. Those imprisoned in re-education camps from 1975 basically fell into two categories: those who collaborated with the Americans and its allies during the war, and those who were arrested in the years after 1975 for attempting to exercise such democratic freedoms as those mentioned in Article 11 of the 1973 Paris Agreements. (Possibly in violation of said agreements.) Government view Officially, the Vietnamese government does not consider the re-education camps to be prisons; instead it views them as places where individuals can be rehabilitated into society through education and socially constructive labor. The Hanoi government defended re-education camps by labeling the prisoners as war criminals. A 1981 memorandum of the government to Amnesty International claimed that all those in the re-education camps were guilty of acts of national treason as defined in Article 3 of the 30 October 1967 Law on Counter-revolutionary Crimes (enacted for the government of North Vietnam), which specifies punishments ranging from 20 years to life in prison or the death penalty. However, it was instead allowing the prisoners to experience "re-education", which Vietnam says is the most "humanitarian" form punishment for law breakers. Registration and arrest In May 1975, specific groups of Vietnamese were ordered to register with the new government that had established control over the South on April 30, 1975. Then, in June, the new government issued orders instructing those who had registered in May to report to various places for re-education. Soldiers, noncommissioned officers and rank-and-file personnel of the former South Vietnamese government were to undergo a three-day "reform study," which they would attend during the day and they would go home at night. Officers of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) forces from the rank of second lieutenant to captain, along with low-ranking police officers and intelligence cadres, were ordered to report to various sites, bringing along "enough paper, pens, clothes, mosquito nets, personal effects, food or money to last ten days beginning from the day of their arrival." Similar instructions were given to former high ranking officials in the South Vietnamese government, except that they were to bring provisions for 30 days. The new government announced that there would be three days of re-education for ARVN soldiers, ten days for low-ranking officers and officials, and one month for high-ranking ARVN officers and officials. Many teachers reported for re-education, assuming that they would have to undergo