Mass Kidnaping

While military pressure on the Viet Cong grows, so does the Communist campaign of terror against the Vietnamese people. The Viet Cong conscript by force, levy taxes on the populace and generally harass whichever villages they cannot control. They have killed no fewer than 15,000 local village chiefs since 1957, and regularly heave grenades into sidewalk cafes, detonate plastic bombs in hotels and use other tech niques that accounted for the loss of more than 2,000 lives last year. The terror is meant to slam home the message that nobody is safe anywhere, and that an enemy so ubiquitous must eventually win. In this much-practiced art, few horrors are new--but the Viet Cong are resourceful when it comes to terrorism. For the first time in the war, they have begun kidnaping people en masse.

Risk of Death. Just after midnight three weeks ago, some 30 black-clad guerrillas filtered into the tiny town of Long Vinh, 75 miles south of Saigon. They quickly rounded up all 121 people in one area of the village and marched them off, sparing not even a toothless, crippled and nearly blind woman whom one guerrilla carried away on his back. During the march to a Viet Cong camp, 14 women and children risked death by dropping out of line and squatting unobserved in the tall rice. When the group reached its destination, eleven men, 33 women and 63 children--many of them under five--were herded into grass huts.

After the first day, the eleven men disappeared, presumably drafted into Viet Cong ranks, even though all were either elderly or middle aged. Then the Viet Cong began indoctrinating the women and children. In four-hour sessions held at gunpoint, they told their captives that they were "killing thousands of Americans and winning many battles," and that "the American intruders are losing the war." Every hour the indoctrinator paused and asked if anyone wanted to contribute to the session. The peasants were stubborn, recalled Ho Thi Xien, a widow who was kidnaped along with her war-orphaned grandchildren, and "no one ever said anything." In choosing Long Vinh, the Viet Cong had picked badly. Though the area is 95% under Communist control, almost every young man in the village has joined the South Vietnamese army, and most families are tied by blood as well as by inclination to the government cause. Frustrated by the peasants' failure to cooperate, the Communists last week began releasing them in small groups after 14 days of captivity.

Second Try. At week's end the Viet Cong decided to try again. This time they kidnaped 108 residents of Dinh Cu hamlet, just a mile or two from Long Vinh. The peasants there are no more likely than the first group to cozy up to the Viet Cong, but they will be lucky if they escape with only a dose of indoctrination. While Americans celebrated Thanksgiving, a group of Viet Cong ambushed a truck convoy of civilians on a road 135 miles northeast of Saigon. Before they were through, they had killed nine people.

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