Vietnamese Former RFA Videographer Ends Hunger Strike in Prison
RFA | 2020-12-07
A Vietnamese political prisoner and former RFA videographer has ended an
eight-day hunger strike launched to protest conditions at his detention camp
after prison officials met many of his demands for change, his sister said on
Monday.
Nguyen Van Hoa, now serving a seven-year prison term for “conducting propaganda
against the state” after filming protests outside a polluting steel plant in
2016, called home on Dec. 1 to say he had ended his strike on Nov. 27, Hoa’s
sister Nguyen Thi Hue told RFA’s Vietnamese Service.
Two fellow prisoners—Nguyen Bac Truyen and Pham Van Diep—had also resumed eating
that same day after prison officials met “most of their requirements” to end
their strikes, Hoa’s sister said, without saying which of their demands for
change had been met.
Diep, who had protested against the mistreatment of prisoners at the An Diem
detention camp in Quang Nam province, had been on hunger strike for four days,
while Diep, whose family letters had been seized by prison officials, had been
on strike for two days, Hoa’s sister said.
Nguyen Van Hoa, 25, was jailed on Nov. 27, 2017 after filming protests outside
the Taiwan-owned Formosa Plastics Group steel plant, from which a toxic spill in
2016 killed an estimated 115 tons of fish and left fishermen and tourism workers
jobless in four central provinces.
A former blogger and videographer for RFA, Hoa was arrested on Jan. 11, 2017 for
“abusing democratic freedoms to infringe upon the interests of the state,” but
the charges against him were later upgraded to the more severe “conducting
propaganda against the state.”
U.S. Congressman Alan Lowenthal announced in October that he had officially
adopted Hoa under the Defending Freedoms Project, in which U.S. lawmakers work
to raise awareness of the cases of political prisoners and advocate for their
freedom or a reduction in their sentences.
Another strike continues
Jailed democracy advocate Tran Huyn Duy Thuc has meanwhile entered the third
week of a new hunger strike, his second in the last two months, demanding that
his 16-year sentence for subversion be reduced in line with a law enacted after
he was sentenced.
Now in the 14th day of his strike at
the Thanh Chuong detention camp in Nghe An province, Thuc has vowed to continue
until his demands are met or until he dies.
Thuc’s brother Tran Huynh Tuy Tan told RFA on Monday that many of Thuc’s
friends, including the Le Hieu Dang Club civil society organization have sent
petitions to Vietnam’s Supreme People’s Court and to relevant government
departments, asking that Thuc be freed.
Other letters will be sent to the U.N. and to international human rights groups
to put pressure on the Supreme People’s Court, Tran said, adding, “They also
sent a letter to our family, asking that this be delivered to my brother, urging
him to stop his hunger strike. However, they have not been able to deliver this
to him yet.”
Convicted of subversion
Arrested in May 2009 for writing online articles criticizing Vietnam’s one-party
communist state, Thuc was convicted in 2010 on charges of plotting to overthrow
the government under Article 79 of Vietnam’s Penal Code. He was tried along with
lawyer Le Cong Dinh, engineer Nguyen Tien Trung, and entrepreneur Le Thanh Long.
He is now calling for the charges against him to be changed to involvement in
“preparations to commit a crime,” an offense calling only for a five-year term
of imprisonment under Vietnam’s revised 2015 Penal Code, and Thuc’s family and
lawyers have tried several times to petition authorities for his sentence to be
reduced in line with the new law.
Thuc’s health in prison has been a continuing source of concern to his family
following a series of hunger strikes, most recently in October, calling for a
review of his case.
Vietnam, with a population of 92 million people, 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 (RSF) ranked Vietnam 175 out of 180 in its 2020 World
Press Freedom Index. About 25 journalists and bloggers are being held in
Vietnam’s jails, “where mistreatment is common,” the Paris-based watchdog group
said.
Vietnam has increasingly rounded up independent journalists, bloggers, and other
dissident voices as authorities already ignorant of dissent seek to stifle
critics in the run-up to the ruling Communist Party congress in January.
Reported by RFA’s Vietnamese Service. Translated by Huy Le. Written in English
by Richard Finney.
Vietnam Human Rights Network |