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A Portrait of Grief and Pride

A high Nixon administration official once explained to me that the people jailed in the tiger cages of Con Son Island belong there because they refuse to salute the flag of President Thieu. Were they to salute, he told me, they would be freed.

The non-bureaucratic world has viewed the suffering at Con Son prison in a somewhat different light, and the following poem explains something of what it is like to be imprisoned there.

THE PRISON ISLAND OF CON SON  By Thop Xanh

You ask me where on earth

People cannot live as human beings,

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Where people with heart and soul

Live like beasts,

And I remember the days at Con Son.

They days of my youth

The beautiful blossoming days of my manhood

Still engraved in my heart with hate;

I engrave in this buring heart

The days of starvation at Con Son

Meals of eight spoonfuls of rice

Burning my stomach,

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