Côn Lôn, largest of the islands in the Côn Đảo Archipelago (Quần Đảo Côn Đảo),
became a French penal colony in 1862. Thereafter the prison became
known as the ‘Hell of South East Asia’ where a total of over 200,000
prisoners were jailed and approximately 20,000 died in atrocious
conditions. Those incarcerated in the prison’s infamous ‘tiger cages’
and ‘cow cages’ by the French and South Vietnamese regimes respectively
included several leading Vietnamese revolutionaries. Today the many
cells and punishment areas of the prison’s eight main barracks are
preserved in memory of the country’s national heroes.©2012 SkyDoor - The travel information network of Vietnam
