Bloggers, Activists Stage Hunger Strike Over Vietnam Prison
Conditions
By An Hai – VOA | December 02, 2020 A blogger
jailed after filming protests over a toxic spill has gone on a hunger strike
over unjust treatment in Vietnam’s An Diem prison, alongside two other prisoners
of conscience. Nguyen
Van Hoa, 25, a blogger and contributor to Radio Free Asia (RFA) Vietnam Service,
is protesting prison conditions with human rights defender Nguyen Bac Truyen and
blogger and activist Pham Van Diep. In a call
to his home, Truyen said he began his hunger strike in November and would
continue until prison conditions and treatment improved, his wife, Bui Thi Kim
Phuong, told VOA Vietnamese on November 28. “He told
me the reasons for the hunger strike were unjust treatments by the prison
officials. They have protested about lack of access to medical care and
confiscation of letters from prisoners to their families without explanation,”
Phuong said. Truyen
tried to send two letters home in April, but prison authorities blocked them,
Phuong said, without detailing the content of the letters. In 2019,
Truyen filed a request to prison authorities in An Diem, which falls under the
Ministry of Public Security’s supervision, for a health checkup and examination
by medical specialists, but the request was ignored, Phuong said. “It has
been more than three years since his arrest, and he has not been granted the
health checkup,” she said. Several
prisoners also requested transfers to prisons closer to their families.
Prisoners of conscience are often imprisoned far from their homes, which makes
it difficult for their families to visit. Truyen’s
parents and his wife live in Ho Chi Minh City. His parents are unable to make
the 900 km trip to the prison to see him, and Phuong says she falls sick after
every visit because of the long travel, with the journey taking 14 to 16 hours
if going by rail or car.
Declining
health Blogger
Hoa’s health is extremely poor, his sister Nguyen Thi Hue said. When she spoke
with RFA’s Vietnamese Service on November 27, the day after she last saw her
brother, he had been on the hunger strike for at least eight days. “I
couldn’t believe it was him because he looked so ill and tired, and he had to be
supported by someone who helped him walk to the visiting booth because he was
too weak to walk by himself,” Hue said. “This was the first time in the past
four years that I saw my brother’s health so badly broken down.” Hue said
her brother told her that prison guards had
seized letters he was going to send to her and prohibited him from sharing
information about official wrongdoing and conditions at the camp with
outside contacts. The
Ministry of Public Security did not respond to VOA Vietnamese’s email requesting
comment about the hunger strike. Phuong
told VOA Vietnamese that her husband and the other prisoners understand the
health risks of a prolonged hunger strike but said it was a last resort because
they believe they have no other way to demand improved conditions.
Demands for
rights Truyen
has previously been on a hunger strike. In May 2019, Christian
Solidarity Worldwide, a U.K.-based freedom of religion or belief
organization, reported that Truyen and three others coordinated a hunger strike
to protest ill treatment of Hoa. In a
statement last week, the organization’s founder, Mervyn Thomas, said, “The fact
that Nguyen Bac Truyen and others have been forced to go on a hunger strike as
the only way of having their demands heard reflects the sad reality of the
situation of prisoners of conscience in Vietnam.”
Thomas added, “[We] urge the
Vietnamese authorities to ensure that those who stand up for human rights in the
country are free to do so without fear of harassment, violence or imprisonment.” In
October, the Norwegian human rights organization Stefanus Alliance International
awarded Truyen its Stefanus
Prize for his work promoting human rights in Vietnam, including
freedom of religion. The
52-year-old activist is a Hoa Hao Buddhist and he has long fought for the rights
of religious minorities and other human rights in Vietnam. Two
groups of Hoa Hao Buddhists exist in Vietnam: one backed by the
government, and a group that is not registered, to which Truyen belongs. On July
30, 2017, Truyen was assaulted and arrested by plainclothes police while waiting
for his wife outside his office in Ho Chi Minh City. On April 5, 2018, a court
sentenced him to 11 years in prison and three years’ probation for “activities
aimed at overthrowing the government.”
Filmed
protests Blogger
Hoa was jailed on November 27, 2017, after filming protests outside the
Taiwan-owned Formosa Plastics Group steel plant. A toxic spill there in 2016
killed an estimated 115 tons of fish and left fishery and tourism workers
jobless in four central provinces. Hoa, who had blogged and produced videos for
RFA, was arrested January 11, 2017, for “abusing democratic freedoms to infringe
upon the interests of the state.” The
charges were later upgraded to “conducting propaganda against the state.” Hoa is
serving a seven-year sentence, followed by three years’ probation. RFA and
VOA are both independent networks funded by the U.S. Congress. The third
person on the hunger strike, Diep, is a 54-year-old activist from the northern
province of Thanh Hoa. In 2019 Diep was jailed for nine years for spreading
“distorted information defaming the Communist Party and the Vietnamese
government.” Diep is a human rights advocate and government critic who used his
blog and later his Facebook account to discuss human rights abuses. Vietnam
has been consistently rated “not free” in the areas of internet and press
freedom by Freedom House, a U.S.-based watchdog group. Reporters
Without Borders ranks Vietnam 175th out of 180, where 1 is the most free, in its
2020 World Press Freedom Index. About 25 journalists and bloggers are held in
Vietnam’s jails, “where mistreatment is common,” the Paris-based watchdog group
said.
Vietnam Human Rights Network |