Choe — detained cartoonist: The Thieu government arrested the cartoonist as a ‘Communist agent’ in 1975;the Communist government considered him a ‘reactionary’ and have kept him in a re-education camp since 1976

Abstract

Choe (real name Nguyen Hai Chi) was a leading political cartoonist in South Vietnam, whose work also appeared in Newsweek and the New York Times. He was arrested as a ‘Communist agent’ by the Thieu government during its last months in power. In April 1976, one year after the Vietnamese Communist take-over, Choe was arrested as a ‘reactionary and counter-revolutionary element’. He has since been held in a ‘re-education camp’ without charge or trial. In the following, Thuc-sinh (the pseudonym of a specialist in Vietnamese affairs) describes the circumstances of his arrests.