The Law of War

gymnastics, and boxing. For the P.O.W.s this was also an opportunity to meet with
friends from other camps. The prisoners had their own photographers, announcers,
even reporters, who after each day's competition published a newspaper, the "Olympic
Roundup".
Of about 16,500 French soldiers who fought at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in French
Indochina, more than 3,000 were killed in battle, while almost all of the 11,721 men
taken prisoner died in the hands of the Viet Minh on death marches to distant POW
camps, and in those camps in the last three months of the war.
The Vietcong and the North Vietnamese Army captured many United States service
members as prisoners of war during the Vietnam War, who suffered from mistreatment
and torture during the war. Some American prisoners were held in the prison called the
Hanoi Hilton.
Communist Vietnamese held in custody by South Vietnamese and American forces
were also tortured and badly treated. After the war, millions of South Vietnamese
servicemen and government workers were sent to "re-education" camps where many
perished.
Like in previous conflicts, there has been speculation without evidence that there were a
handful of American pilots captured by the North Koreans and the North Vietnamese
who were transferred to the Soviet Union and were never repatriated.
Regardless of regulations determining treatment to prisoners, violations of their rights
continue to be reported. Many cases of POW massacres have been reported in recent
times, including October 13 massacre in Lebanon by Syrian forces and June 1990
massacre in Sri Lanka.
In 1982, during the Falklands War, prisoners were well treated in general by both
parties of the conflict, with military commanders dispatching 'enemy' prisoners back to
their homelands in record time.
In 1991, during the Persian Gulf War, American, British, Italian, and Kuwaiti POWs
(mostly crew members of downed aircraft and special forces) were tortured by the Iraqi
secret police. An American military doctor, Major Rhonda Cornum, a 37-year-old flight
surgeon captured when her Blackhawk UH-60 was shot down, was also subjected to
sexual abuse.
During the 1990s Yugoslav Wars, Serb paramilitary forces supported by JNA forces
killed POWs at Vukovar and Škarbrnja while Bosnian Serb forces killed POWs at
Srebrenica.
In 2001, there were reports concerning two POWs that India had taken during the Sino-
Indian War, Yang Chen and Shih Liang. The two were imprisoned as spies for three
Page 106 of 265