Photo story about Con Dao

From: Judith A N Henchy <judithh@uw.edu>
Sent: Sunday, September 3, 2023 10:42 PM
To: Nicolas Lainez <niklainez@gmail.com>; vsg@u.washington.edu
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Photo story about Con Dao

Dear VSG,

I though people might be interested in a comparison with my photos from Côn Đảo from 2001.  I can’t say that it felt anything like a tourist destination at that time.  I was told that it has been on the itinerary for some of the cruise ships that visited the resort ports of the region, but that the cruise lines had received complaints that it was too depressing a destination.  But that brief experiment with the tourist trade seems to have resulted in the spectacularly deserted Tôn Đức Thắng highway, pictured in some of my shots. 

Here's the google file:  https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1K_gO-Pc4FzXtXK_wJgVD35-GJuY0AC6p

Best

Judith

Judith Henchy, Ph.D., MLIS

Head, Southeast Asia Section

Special Assistant to the Dean of University Libraries for International Programs

Affiliate Faculty, Jackson School of International Studies

From: John Hutnyk <johnhutnyk@tdtu.edu.vn>
Sent: Sunday, September 3, 2023 8:33 AM
To: Hiep Duc <Hiep.Duc@environment.nsw.gov.au>
Cc: vsg@u.washington.edu
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Photo story about Con Dao

Good to know about Camille Saint-Saëns - I'm reading all the memoirs of revolutionary prisoners I can find, but am also keen to hear of other prominent visitors to Con Dao/Paolo Condore - for example the pirate-cartographer William Dampier, in his 1697 book of Voyages, wrote about the mangoes (best in the world he said). Forgive me for indulging my own reference - but I got into this writing about Dampier and Robinson Crusoe after Six Senses resort on Con Dao was described as ‘Robinson Crusoe meets Fantasy Island’ This then led me to other reasons to not think Con Dao is just for vacations - there also the story of the undiplomatic East India Company Captain Catchpole 'Alen Kếtpôn’ (who lead the British colony there in 1702 that was wiped out within three years). If anyone wants a pdf just write me: (2021): Robinson on Con Dao: Mango writing and faltering diplomacy in the precursors of Crusoe in Vietnam, South East Asia Research, DOI: 10.1080/0967828X.2021.1994353 - And theres also a new one on Dampier/Robinson in Phố Hiến and Hanoi: (2023): Robinson Crusoe: After the island, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, DOI: 10.1080/17449855.2023.2244204

J

From: Hiep Duc <Hiep.Duc@environment.nsw.gov.au>
Sent: Saturday, September 2, 2023 11:30 PM
To: John Hutnyk <johnhutnyk@tdtu.edu.vn>; Nhu Miller <trantnhu@gmail.com>
Cc: vsg@u.washington.edu
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Photo story about Con Dao

Penal colony is not the only place that Con Dao island is known for

The authority in Con Dao (part of Vung Tau-Condao Province) also wants to develop the island as an eco-tourist destination to improve the economic life of the inhabitants. Coral reefs and dugongs are main attraction. And they are aware of excessive development can ruin the place (as it happens in Phu Quoc island).

The musician Camille Saint-Saëns was there in the late 19th century and it was here that he completed the unfinished opera  “Brunhilde”  (which he renamed later as “Frédégonde”). It is said he was inspired by the mournful sounds of a two-stringed bowed instrument (đàn nhị) played by one of the prisoners in the nearby cells. In 2017, Frédégonde was performed in Ho Chi Minh municipal theatre for the first time after more than a century

https://en.vietnamplus.vn/french-opera-to-be-played-for-first-time-in-over-a-century/119456.vnp

There was a plaque at the place where he stayed in Con dao island. I believe it is still there.

Currently domestic tourism focussed mainly on Vo Thi Sau tomb with excessive pilgrimage and religious overtones. The prison is still visited by tourists but not to the extend of the tomb of Vo Thi Sáu. The authority wants to discourage this mass tourism to the tomb which becomes unmanageable during the period before and after Vo Thi Sau anniversary.  

Hiep

EPA, NSW, Australia

From: John Hutnyk <johnhutnyk@tdtu.edu.vn>
Sent: Saturday, September 2, 2023 3:51 PM
To: Nhu Miller <trantnhu@gmail.com>
Cc: vsg@u.washington.edu
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Photo story about Con Dao

Hi I appreciate this comment (T.T.Nhu, and the earlier ones), but also remember that tourism so-called can and should be many different things - sometimes 'vacation' time can be a time to go an have a look for yourself so as to learn something new or which is simply not available elsewhere. best, John

From: Nhu Miller <trantnhu@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, September 2, 2023 10:52 AM
To: Hue-Tam Tai <huetamtai@gmail.com>
Cc: vsg@u.washington.edu
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Photo story about Con Dao

Poignant details about the outrageous suffering. 

Makes the transformation of CON DAO into

a resort rather sacrilegious. It's parallel to 

TOUL SLENG tour.  Why would one want to

vacation on an island of suffering? It should

be consecrated as a torture museum to remind

future generations of the unbelievable cruelty of

colonialism.  

T. T. Nhu

From: Hue-Tam Tai <huetamtai@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, September 2, 2023 8:50 AM
To: mchale@gwu.edu
Cc: vsg@u.washington.edu
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Photo story about Con Dao

According to my father's memoir, Le Duan was in the same cell, as was also Phan van Hum. My father does not mention performances of any kind, preferring to focus on the nighttime discussions of Buddhism with Phan van Hum and Nguyen An Ninh.

So, ex-prisoners' memories can be extremely selective.

Hue-Tam Ho Tai

Harvard University emerita

From: Shawn McHale <mchale@gwu.edu>
Sent: Saturday, September 2, 2023 8:26 AM
To: Hue-Tam Tai <huetamtai@gmail.com>
Cc: vsg@u.washington.edu
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Photo story about Con Dao

To add to these comments on the photographs -- well done! -- a recommendation to others,  and some other comments.

The recommendation is of Peter Zinoman's book, which gives a complicated picture of imprisonment in general under colonial rule.  And complicated pictures tend to break down the binary view we sometimes have of these prisons (e.g. of horror and heroism) that the state has promoted. 

A comment or two.  In 1989, Peter Zinoman and I got to interview Nguyễn Thanh Sơn, who had been a political prisoner on Poulo Condore. This is the same Nguyễn Thanh Sơn who took part in the First Indochina War in the south and who took part in the "founding" of the Cambodian Communist Party.  Yes, his experience (in the 1930s? Up to 1945? I forget)  as a prisoner was bad. But what I most vividly remember was his telling a story of the prisoners putting on a play about Napoleon, because they believed, correctly, that the Corsican guards would let them get away with it. And of course Napoleon had a wife. So Lê Duẩn -- yes, Lê Duẩn-- played the role of Napoleon's wife! Evidently, the play was a hit, and Lê Duẩn's gender-bending did not cause a scandal.  . . . . the point here is that political prisoners sometimes liked to remember the funny as well as truly sad. And there is a range of prison memoirs of time on Côn Đảo -- Trần Huy Liệu, a VNQĐĐ member when he went in, who converted to communism, is quite engaging. Finally, perhaps one reason the state shies away from more detail is that a wide range of political prisoners and common criminals were imprisoned there, and this complicates the story.. For example, Cao Đài and Khmer also were in there. All these random comments are a way of saying that the human stories I have read of life on Côn Đảo can be gripping, funny, poignant, heroic, sad, horrible -- the full range of human emotions. Ideally, if these sites are reframed for tourism, a wider range of these stories would be presented to the public. 

Shawn McHale 

George Washington University

From: Hue-Tam Tai <huetamtai@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, September 2, 2023 6:54 AM
To: Nicolas Lainez <niklainez@gmail.com>
Cc: vsg@u.washington.edu
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Photo story about Con Dao

Dear Nicolas

Thank you for the photos.

 From my perspective, the more beautiful the phots, the less they capture the horrors of the bagne. Moreover, they cannot capture the sounds and the smells. I notice that in some photos, prisoners are seen laboring. These would be the common "bagnards". The political prisoners were kept in cells, around 40 in each. According to my father (1940 -1943), of the 600 political prisoners who were arrested in 1939 and sent to Poulo  Condore, 400 died of dysentry, including Nguyen An Ninh who died saying "eli,eli, sabbachta ni" (Ho Huu Tuong, unpublished memoir, 1969). But the political prisoners were treated much better than the common prisoners, thanks partly to the respect the wardens had for many of them (chiefly for Nguyen An Ninh). 

Under Diem, my father spent six years in Con Son. After the failed coup of 1960, he was incarcerated in an airless, dark and damp cell where he was going mad. Some months later,  wardens on shore leave came to our house to let my mother know and told her that the prison director had orders not to refill the medicine that was used to calm him down. They gave her the name of the drug (along with a beautiful chess set the other wardens sent as a gesture of respect for my father). My mother set out to buy the drug (difficult to obtain without a prescription) in time to give it to the wardens at the end of their shore leave. Then she pleaded with Ngo Dinh Nhu to let my father out of the isolation cell.

My cousin's then fiancee (later his wife) joined the NLF right after graduating from Gia Long high school in 1968. In 1969, she was caught in a Phoenix program operation and spent the next five years in a tiger cage. Although the photograph does capture the extremely small dimensions of the cage where the women were packed so tight they could not lie down, or even sit down at the same time, it does not capture the experience of having the cage deliberately flooded so that the women were standing for hours in water. My cousin's wife kept fragments of her fellow prisoners' peeled skins in a plastic bag as a memento of her ordeal.

I had the same reaction to seeing Hoa Lo. Despite the visual reminders, it had a sterile, antiseptic atmosphere that failed to convey the real, horrible experience of incarceration.

Hue-Tam Ho Tai

Harvard University emerita

From: Nicolas Lainez <niklainez@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, September 1, 2023 8:39 PM
To: vsg@u.washington.edu
Subject: [Vsg] Photo story about Con Dao

Dear folks,  

I would like to share a photo story about Côn Đảo, titled Paradise and Hell. I recently went to the archipelago for a short vacation but ended up taking many photos. It was my first time there. I had read about le Bagne de Paulo Condor and seen photos of the tiger cages and re-enactment scenes with mannequins. But reading about prisons and seeing and experiencing them are two different things. The government’s plan to turn Côn Đảo into a vibrant (mainly Vietnamese) tourist destination by promoting Côn Sơn’s prison sites and memorials and the natural and marine environment raises fascinating academic questions about spiritual and dark tourism (Dang 2021), the shift from 'green hell' to 'grey heritage’ (Fuggle 2021), the ritualising of connections with the past and the future (Salemink 2022), the writing of memory and revolution, and so forth. For me, the challenge was not academic but photographic and aesthetic: how to make a photo story that would encapsulate the beauty and horror that permeate Côn Đảo and generate strong yet ambivalent emotions? Below is the best I could do.

https://nicolaslainez.com/paradis-enfer-con-dao-paulo-condore-viet-nam-canon-r-2023/

Best wishes, 

Nicolas Lainez

Institut de recherche pour le développement / CESSMA

Paris / Vietnam