Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 85.djvu/918

 PROCLAMATION 4038-MAR. 19, 1971

[85 STAT.

PROCLAMATION 4038

National Week of Concern for Americans Who Are Prisoners of War or Missing in Action March 19, 1971

^y ^^^ President of the United States of America

A Proclamation The first American still being held by the enemy was captured in South Vietnam on March 26, 1964. Now, with the seventh anniversary of that event approaching, the number of Americans missing in action or known captured in the Vietnamese conflict has grown to about 1,600. Most of these men are officers and enlisted men of the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, and the Marine Corps; some are civilians. Even in captivity, they continue to serve our Nation in the highest sense of honor and duty to country. We owe them, in turn, no less than our strongest support and our firmest pledge that we will neither forget them nor abandon them. This Government has made and will continue to make strenuous efforts in behalf of these Americans who are prisoners of war or missing in action. In the face of the enemy's callous indifference to the plight of these men and their families, we have sought to focus the attention of the world on the barbaric attitude of North Vietnam and its agents throughout Indochina. We have conducted vigorous diplomatic efforts to resolve the prisoner of war problem on a purely humane basis for the prisoners we hold as well as for our brave men held prisoner. 6 usT 3316.

The Geneva Prisoner of War Convention of 1949 sets forth the minimum standards for humanitarian treatment applying to all prisoners of war. Some 125 nations including all of those involved on both sides in the Southeast Asia hostilities have acceded to the Geneva Convention and have pledged to observe its humane standards. And on a moral plane above and apart from these formal rules, all civilized peoples are subject to the basic humanitarian standards long established in international law and custom. In view of the continuing disregard of this Convention and basic humane standards by North Vietnam and its agents—their refusal to identify all of the Americans being held, to permit impartial inspection of their camps, to release the seriously sick and wounded prisoners, to provide humane treatment, and to permit prisoners to correspond regularly with their families—and in view of their adamant refusal to consider

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