There are ‘modern’ forms commonly applied in the colonialists’ torturing rooms:
- Electric torture;
- ‘Punching-ball’: The victim is hung head down, and four torturers use his body as a ‘punching ball’ with kicks and punches;
- Beating the hands with cudgels;
- Pig cage: The victim is forced to lie flat on his belly in an open ditch with just enough place for one person, and overtopped by a cage of barbed wire;
- ‘Journey by Dakota’: The victim is hung head down with his hands kept in an iron press, and security agents shower him with blows;
- ‘Journey by boat’: Dirty soapy water mixed with urine and excrement, or small pieces of bone are poured into the mouth of the victim, tied up and compelled to lie on his back on the floor; when the stomach has swelled, a security agent tramples on him with hobnailed boots to make him throw out the water through his mouth, nostrils and anus;
- ‘Journey by submarine’: Immersion of the victim in cold water for hours;
The forms which were often applied by the cruel despots of the Middle Ages are also resorted to:
- Tearing out handfuls of the victim’s hair;
- Kneeling on a board bristling with nails;
- Driving needles into the genital organ;
- Suspension by a hook passed through the hands or feet while the torturers drive needles, into the head or belly, or other parts of the victim’s body;
- Tearing off pieces of the flesh from the victim’s thigh with red-hot pincers, or introducing these tools into his throat;
- Winding around the victim’s fingers a bandage soaked with oil (sometimes petrol), and setting it alight;
- Burning the victim’s nose and ears with oil (or sometimes petrol soaked in pieces of cotton;
- Burning various part of the victim’s body by setting fire to bundles of straw or dry grass tied to the body;
- Cutting off the victim’s lips, ears, tongue, hands, and feet;
- Slashing the victim’s stomach.
There are still many other forms depending on particular localities and police agents;
- Nailing the victim to a tree before killing him (case of 23 youths at Nhan Hoa Lap and Nhan Ninh communes, Tan An province);
- Trailing the victim to death by a jeep (case of Mr. Le Ngo, former chief of a guerilla unit at Phuong Lang Dong village, Hai Lang district, Quang Tri province);
- ‘The Confession’: The victims are obliged to stand balanced on high piles of bricks in a room where the ground bristles with long, sharp steel points, or they have to kneel down on debris of broken glass, the eyes turned towards a lighted lamp placed under a portrait of Ngo Dinh Diem or on a skull. They have to keep such position from 11 p.m. in the evening to 4 a.m. in the following morning. Those who stagger with exhaustion fall on the steel points; at the least movement a shower of blows is rained on them. According to the authorities, this practice is to enable the victims to ‘repent’ of the ‘crime’ which they committed in participating in the Resistance war against the French colonialists.
- ‘The test of strength’ : The so-called ‘die-hard’ elements are placed on high platforms and beaten on the head and chest with three-edged iron sticks. Then the torturers holding them by the feet thrust their head against the ground, or grasping them by the hair, they throw them against the wall until their skull and limbs are broken. Relatives and friends of the victims are forced to attend the scene.
- ‘Exorcising’ : The victim is put into a jute bag placed on a high stool in a closed room where incense is burnt, and deafening noises of drums and gongs are made as was done formerly in the ‘exorcising ceremonies’ in Viet Nam. Police agents pierce the victim through the bag with sharp sabres, or set the bag alight after soaking it with petrol. According to them, this form of ‘exorcising’ is to cast the ‘communist devil’ out of the victim.
(The last three forms of torture are applied in Quang Nam concentration camps, especially that of Phu Hoa in Hoa Vang district).
- Running ahead of a jeep: The victim, completely naked, is compelled to run ahead of a jeep along a road fringed with barbed wire on both sides, the least failure would immediately result in the victim being crushed under the vehicle.
With regard to women, there are various forms of torture aimed at terrorizing them or making them barren for ever: thrusting of sticks into the vagina, cutting off of breasts, thrusting of needles into the nipples, burning of the nipples, raping in turns by syphilitic people, putting of snakes into the trousers after tying their legs together…
It can be stated that there is not a single arrested person who has been subjected only once and to only one form of torture. It can also be stated that some have passed through almost every imaginable torture. Subtle tortures are intercalated with violent ones as if the aim is to protract the sufferings of the victim or to demoralize him. Thus, in a variant of the ‘journey by boat’, ‘small pieces of bone are put into the water’, and these are to remain in the victim’s throat; a variant of the ‘journey by Dakota’ consists in hanging the victim by five ropes above a trench bristling with long sharp steel points, and slowly cutting the ropes one by one. The suspension by the feet is outdone by plunging the victim’s head into a bucket of bran or excrement.
People have been massacred by various means, with those used by feudal despots being resorted to in most cases:
- Shooting;
- Guillotining;
- Shelling and bombing from the air (including napalm bombing);
- Throat-cutting;
- Beheading, disembowelling and extraction of the liver;
- Beheading, with the victim’s head being shown through the streets at the end of a stick;
- Beheading and exhibition of the victim’s head at the door of the military post;
- Beheading, with the victim’s head being used as a target for shooting exercises;
- Cutting-up of the victim’s body into small pieces.
Burying alive of the victims. Individual or collective poisoning.
Previous: 5. SOME MASSACRES DURING THE ‘DENOUNCE COMMUNISTS’ CAMPAIGNS
Next: 7. PRISONS AND CONCENTRATION CAMPS