A paradise with a prison
Thirty years ago, Con Son island was the Guantanamo Bay of its day.
Today,the island is inviting visitors to explore relics of its dark past
The prisoner are shackled and sent to a tropical island, where they're
put
in tiny cells barely more than two metres square. Critics condemn the
cells
as "cages." An international outcry springs up over the treatment of
the
captives.
History has a way of repeating itself. The recent row over the
treatment of
prisoners at the United States base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba has
striking
parallels to an outcry three decades ago. Back then the setting was Con
Son,
the largest of the Con Dao Islands off the southern tip of Vietnam,
where
the U.S.-backed South Vietnamese government sent its political
prisoners to
languish in notorious "tiger cages" during the Vietnam War.
These days, while the U.S. is keeping journalists at arm's length in
Guantanamo, Vietnam is eagerly welcoming tourists to visit the tiger
cages
and to spend some time on the 51-square-kilometre Con Son island-surely
one
of the most schizophrenic spots in Asia. The island's two hotels sit on
the
beachfront of its only town, Con Dao, looking out on palm trees, blue
water
and colourful fishing boats, framed by white-sand beaches and hills in
the
distance. Yet just behind the hotels are the vast prison compounds,
including not only dozens of tiger cages but also large cells,
chillingly
restored by Vietnam's government to give a taste of what life there
must
have been like.
It takes a little fortitude to get here. The ferry from Ho Chi Minh
City is
a 15-hour ride, and travel agents consider it unsafe. The only
alternative
is to take a two-hour drive to the beach resort of Vung Tao, and then
an
hour's flight on a 19-year-old Russian-built helicopter. While Russian
helicopters have no great reputation for safety, every passenger for
this
one is required not only to strap on a life jacket before take-off, but
also
to watch a video that reassuringly shows the helicopter landing on
water and
the occupants sliding into inflatable rafts.
Assuming they make it in one piece, most visitors will want to head
first to
the tiger cages. Built by the French in 1940 when Vietnamese
revolutionaries
started becoming active, they remained a closely held secret for 30
years.
But in 1970, a young U.S. congressional aide heard rumours about them,
and
he joined an American delegation headed to Con Son. While the South
Vietnamese hosts were showing the other Americans around, the aide
slipped
away and knocked at a door he had been tipped off about. A guard opened
the
door and the controversy began. That congressional aide, Tom Harkin,
later
became a U.S. senator, and the words "tiger cages" took their place in
the
annals of infamy.
For today's visitors, the tour starts at the nearby museum, where a
guide
who speaks only Vietnamese explains the exhibits and then grabs a set
of
keys and walks visitors over to the prison. (Little English is spoken
on Con
Son, where tourism is in such a nascent state that a Western face is a
rarity.)
What the Vietnamese have done with two of the tiger cages, and with one
of
the large prison rooms, is startling. They've sculpted, from concrete,
lifelike emaciated figures, lying on the ground shackled to iron bars.
The
large room is illuminated only by sunlight streaming through one small
barred window, giving the figures a ghostlike quality.
Indeed, it takes only a few minutes viewing the exhibits to realize
that the
hardships on Con Son far exceeded whatever is happening at Guantanamo
Bay.
The prisoners, including protesting students and Buddhist monks, were
tortured with blood-curdling cruelty: A favourite tactic was to
sprinkle
them with caustic soda, then force them to spend hours under the
broiling
sun in open-roofed cells.
Although the truth about the tiger cages is distressing enough, the
museum's
exhibits go beyond that. They allege that in the early 1970s the U.S.
military used a separate group of tiger cages to house its prisoners.
In
fact, there's no evidence for this claim. But what is known is that
there
were American advisers on the island for years witnessing the South
Vietnamese brutality. That's part of what made Harkin's revelations so
shocking.
Away from the prisons, Con Son offers very little to do other than
pedal
around the island on rickety rental bikes. The island's recently
created
national park has only one hiking trail, and for most of its length
that is
a paved road. The snorkelling and diving off the island is reputed to
be
spectacular, but that depends on being able to rent the park's one
boat,
which is used much of the time for research purposes. An ice-cream
parlour
in a sprawling old house is the centre, and extent, of nightlife.
But in frenetic Vietnam, a place to truly relax is a lure in itself.
You can
walk down the middle of the main street and only an occasional car will
disturb your stroll. No one will ask for money and no one will try to
sell
you things. The food at the hotels is simple but delicious-mainly
fresh-caught fish and locally grown fruits and vegetables. For someone
who
comes from the noise, bustle and pollution of Ho Chi Minh City, Con Son
is a
true tropical paradise-a paradise with a prison colony attached.
GETTING THERE: The round-trip price of the helicopter ride to Con Son
is
$150. It can be booked through the offices of Saigon Tourist, an
official
government agency in Ho Chi Minh City. Tel. (08) 829 8914 or 823 0100;
e-mail: sgtvn@hcmc.netnam.vn.
PLACES TO STAY: Saigon Tourist also owns one of the two major hotels on
Con
Son, called simply the Saigon Tourist Hotel. Prices start at $55 per
person,
which includes two nights' lodging, all meals, and a van to pick you up
at
the airport and take you touring around the island. A more interesting
place
to stay is the privately run ATC hotel, which incongruously has brought
two
large, traditional hilltribe village houses down from the north and
reassembled them on the island. Each house provides two guest rooms.
Tel.:
(64) 830 666; e-mail atccd@vol.vnn.vn.
By Stan Sesser - The Far Eastern Economic Review - March 07, 2002.
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