Nguyen Van Lem
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Nguyen Van Lem was the real name of Captain Bay Lop (d. Saigon 1 February 1968), a member of the Viet Cong executed on camera in Saigon during the Tet Offensive. Such a summary execution was naturally highly controversial, and was explained as being a consequence of wartime mentality and Lem being suspected of guerilla activity and war crimes.
On the second day of Tet, amid fierce street fighting, Lem was captured and brought to Brigadier General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, then Chief of the Republic of Viet Nam National Police. Using his personal sidearm, General Loan summarily executed Lem before AP photographer Eddie Adams and NBC television cameraman Vo Suu. The photograph and footage were broadcast worldwide, galvanizing the anti-war movement; Adams won a 1969 Pulitzer Prize for his photograph.
Though Loan's execution of Lem may have violated the appearance of norms under the Geneva Conventions for treatment of prisoners of war, the execution had been attributed to war crimes committed by Lem. Normally, the rights of POW status were accorded to Viet Cong only if captured during military operations. Those captured as unlawful combatants were subject only to the laws of South Vietnam.
South Vietnamese sources said that Lem commanded a Viet Cong assassination and revenge platoon, which on that day had targeted South Vietnamese National Police officers, or in their stead, the police officers' families; these sources said that Lem was captured near the site of a ditch holding as many as thirty-four bound and shot bodies of police and their relatives, some of whom were the families of General Loan's deputy and close friend. (In some accounts, the deputy was a victim as well; in others, the number of murdered relatives were as few as six.) Photographer Adams confirmed the South Vietnamese account, although he was only present for the execution. Lem's widow confirmed that her husband was a member of the Viet Cong and she did not see him after the Tet Offensive began. Shortly after the execution, a South Vietnamese official said that Lem was only a political operative.
See also
- General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a Viet Cong prisoner in Saigon (about the photograph)
External links
- Voice autobiography of execution by Photographer Eddie Adams
- General Nguyen Ngoc Loan's Obituary from The New York Times, July 16, 1998
- The Saigon Execution - thorough account by AP photo editor including research after the war