Page 273 - The Viet-Cong Tet_Offensive_1968

the people off frorn the outside world. At the sarne tirne they spread
the rurnor that the entire Thua Thien province and the whole country
had corne under their control.

In the next step they called on all national governrnent
ernployees, such as public servants, soldiers and police, to surrender
their individual weapons and to report to their rnilitary place of duty
in order to benefit frorn clernency rneasures. Failing to cornply they
would have to face severe punishrnent. Large nurnber s of such peopJ.e
turned thernselves and their weapons in to the C ornrnunists and were
allowed to freely return and stay horne for two days. None were forced
to do anything for the enerny. The rnove was apparently designed to
deceive the public.
The third stage was the actual rnass arrest and terror
drive against these {orrner ernployees of the local governrnent.
After these two days of having been freed people were
asked to attend lpolitical rneetingsrr by the enerny cadremen who carne
to each of their hornes. A nurnber of people never carrle back or were
ever heard of again. The nurnber of rrrnissingtr increased with each
passing day. These people had been rnurdered sornewhere in the city
after reporting to the rrpolitical rneetingsrr..They had never suspected
they wouLd rneet tragic death; nor had they been aware of the tirne
they were to die. Survivors and enerny agents, captured in the later
stages of the Hue battle, recounted that the victirns had been told to
dig air raid trenches during the daytirne. Then they were actually led
to these so-called trenches in the night to be rnassacred by subrnachine-
gun fire or sirnply buried alive. Apparently the victirns had never
suspected they were digging their own mass graves. In rnany cases the
victims were rnurdered and shoved into the graves soon a{ter they had
finished digging.

An estirnated 1,000 people were rnurdered and massa-
cred in this way by the Viet Cor,g in the suburbs of Hue. They had
been public servants, soldiers and those who had experienced personal
feuds with pro-Cornrnunist elernents during the political disturbances
in preceding years. N4ajor rnass graves were later found at the Gia
FIoi high school, the Tang Quang Tu pagoda, the Bai Dau area (sorne
30 rrrass graves here alone) and Ernperor Tu Ducrs tornb (another Z0
mass graves here). The bodies recovered frorn these and other mass
graves showed evidence of atrocious, painful deaths. A nurnbe r of
bodies were headless or lirnbless - or both. Others had their hands

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