Jailed Vietnamese RFA Blogger Forced to Work Long Hours With Injured Back
RFA | 2020-12-11
An RFA blogger jailed in Vietnam for 10 years on a land-fraud charge is being
forced to work long hours in spite of chronic pain from herniated discs,
Vietnamese sources say.
Truong Duy Nhat, who had been a weekly contributor to RFA’s Vietnamese Service
before his abduction by police in Thailand in January 2019, now works eight
hours a day making paper money for sale as offerings burned later in religious
ceremonies, a friend of Nhat’s said on Friday.
Nhat’s friend, literary critic Pham Xuan Nguyen, had gone with Nhat’s wife and
younger sister on Dec. 3 to visit him at the Tan Ky No. 3 detention camp in Nghe
An province, Nguyen told RFA’s Vietnamese Service.
“Nhat’s wife, named Phuong, was allowed in to see him immediately, while his
sister Cuc had to show a document signed by her local police that she was Nhat’s
younger sister before being allowed to see him,” Nguyen said.
“They did not allow me to see Truong Duy Nhat, though, saying that the law
stipulates that friends are not allowed to visit,” he said.
Nguyen said that Nhat’s wife and sister assured him after their visit that
Nhat’s health was “normal.”
But he said later in a Facebook posting that Nhat was being forced to work eight
hours a day making paper money for sale as offerings, and that working long
hours in a seated position had aggravated the pain he was suffering from
herniated discs.
Nhat’s family has meanwhile voiced concern that Nhat has said he is being held
with 43 cellmates, some of them convicted drug addicts, Nguyen said.
Calls seeking comment from the Tan Ky detention camp in Nghe An rang unanswered
on Friday.
Kidnapped by police
Jailed before in Vietnam from 2013 to 2015 for his writings criticizing
Vietnam’s government, Truong Duy Nhat was convicted in March of “abusing his
position and authority” in a decade-old land fraud case, a charge Nhat has
described as politically motivated.
Nhat declared at his trial that after seeking political asylum in Thailand at
the beginning of 2019, he was arrested by Thai Royal Police on January 26
and handed over to Vietnamese police, who took him across the border into Laos,
and from there back to Vietnam.
A court in Vietnam’s capital Hanoi on Aug. 14 upheld Nhat’s sentence, rejecting
an appeal filed by his lawyers and sending him back to prison to serve his full
term.
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’s already low tolerance of dissent deteriorated sharply this year with a
spate of arrests of independent journalists, publishers, and Facebook
personalities as authorities continued 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 |