The World - News from Nov. 23, 1987

The Vietnamese government has given Western embassies in Hanoi a list of 23 members of the clergy who were recently released after a dozen years in political “re-education camps,” a Western diplomat said. Official Vietnamese radio said 6,685 prisoners--including a former vice premier of South Vietnam, Lt. Gen. Nguyen Huu Co--were being freed, and the sentences of 5,320 others were being reduced. It was the largest reported release from the network of camps the Communists established shortly after Hanoi’s victory over U.S.-backed South Vietnam in 1975. The diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the prisoners released in the amnesty announced Sept. 13 included 22 former chaplains of the South Vietnamese army. The majority were Buddhist, with a few Catholics and Protestants included.