RFA | 2020-12-31
Dissident Vietnamese blogger Nguyen Tuong Thuy is seriously ill in detention
ahead of his scheduled Jan. 5 trial, Nguyen’s wife said Thursday, citing the
harsh conditions in which he is being held in close confinement.
Thuy, a former vice president of the Vietnam Independent Journalists Association
who had blogged for RFA’s Vietnamese Service, is now “aching all over his body,
especially on his left hand,” Thuy’s wife Pham Thi Lan told RFA.
“He is in so much pain,” Pham said, following a Thursday visit to Thuy at his
detention center in Ho Chi Minh City by lawyer Nguyen Van Mieng, who informed
her of her husband’s condition.
“He now has scabies even though the detention center has provided him with some
kind of medication,” she said, adding, “This is due to the conditions in the
closed cell in which he has been jailed, which has only one ventilator that is
covered with a wire mesh.”
Arrested in May, Thuy was indicted along with IJAVN members Pham Chi Dung and
Le Huu Minh Tuan on Nov. 10 for “making, storing, and disseminating documents
and materials for anti-state purposes” under Article 117 of Vietnam’s Penal
Code.
The three could face between 10 to 20 years in jail if convicted.
Thuy, a 22-year military veteran, had written weblog commentaries on civil
rights and freedom of speech for RFA’s Vietnamese Service for six years, and
visited the United States in 2014 to testify before the House of Representatives
on media freedom problems in Vietnam.
Thuy’s wife has been listed in a Dec. 15 court decision as a witness at his
trial on Jan. 5, but has received no papers authorizing her to attend, and is
worried she may not be allowed to enter the courtroom on that date, she said.
Hunger strike continues
Jailed Vietnamese democracy advocate Tran Huynh Duy Thuc will meanwhile reach
the 40th day of a hunger strike on Saturday aimed at reducing his
16-year sentence for subversion to five years in line with recent revisions to
the criminal code, Thuc’s elder sister told RFA this week.
Arrested in May 2009 for writing online articles criticizing Vietnam’s one-party
communist state, Tran was convicted in 2010 on charges of plotting to overthrow
the government under Article 79 of Vietnam’s 1999 Penal Code.
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 Tran’s family and
lawyers have petitioned authorities several times for his sentence to be reduced
in line with the new law.
Family members have phoned the No. 6 Prison in Nghe An province’s Thanh Chuong
district several times for news of Tran’s condition but have received no
response so far, Tran’s sister named Lien said, adding that they may soon travel
to the prison themselves to learn how he is.
Tran’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, and Lien said that Tran has vowed to continue his present
strike until his demands are met or he feels he is endangering his health.
In July 2019, Tran began a hunger strike over poor conditions in detention,
including the removal of electric fans from cells in the soaring summer heat,
and an earlier strike in August 2018 left him exhausted and thin after he
protested policy pressure on him to admit his guilt to the offenses for which he
was jailed.
Vietnam’s already low tolerance of dissent has deteriorated sharply this year
with a spate of arrests of independent journalists, publishers, Facebook
personalities and other dissident voices in the run-up to the ruling Communist
Party conference in January.
Reported by RFA’s Vietnamese Service. Translated by Huy Le. Written in English
by Richard Finney.
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