Human Rights Watch Calls Out Vietnam for New Wave of Arrests of Critics
Human Rights
Watch
January 27, 2017
Vietnam should
immediately release rights activist Tran Thi Nga and drop politically motivated
charges against her, Human Rights Watch said today. Vietnam’s donors should
issue public statements calling on the government to end harassment and
prosecution of critics and rights campaigners.
New York, NY -
infoZine - Tran Thi Nga (also known as Thuy Nga), 40, was arrested on January
21, 2017, and charged with conducting propaganda against the state under article
88 of the penal code. State media said that Tran Thi Nga “accessed the Internet
to post a number of video clips and articles to propagandize against the
Socialist Republic of Vietnam.”
“It is ridiculous for the Vietnamese government to make accessing the internet
and posting critical views a crime,” said Brad Adams, Asia director. “Vietnam’s
international donors and trade partners should tell the government loud and
clear that they will reassess their relationships if it keeps throwing peaceful
critics in prison.”
Officials have arrested at least a dozen bloggers and activists during the past
five months and charged them with vaguely-defined national security violations.
Tran Thi Nga has long suffered intimidation, harassment, detention,
interrogation, and physical assault because of her labor and other activism. She
has also participated in anti-China and pro-environment protests, attended
trials of bloggers and rights activists, and visited the houses of political
prisoners to show solidarity. She once served as an executive board member for
Vietnamese Women for Human Rights (VNWHR), founded in November 2013.
In May 2013, Tran
Thi Nga and her sons, ages 3 years and 5 months at the time, went from Ha Nam to
Hanoi to attend a human rights picnic at Nghia Do Park the next day. Police
pressured a motel owner to kick them out at midnight, in the rain, where they
slept on the sidewalk until her friends could come to help them.
In May 2014, a group of five men assaulted her with iron rods, breaking her arm
and leg. In March 2015, security agents in Hanoi detained her, and took her back
to her hometown in Ha Nam province. During the trip, one man twisted her neck
and gagged her so she could not call for help. Two other men restrained her
hands and legs while the fourth man slapped her and punched her. In February
2016, men in civilian clothes threw shrimp paste at Tran Thi Nga and her sons as
the three were heading home from a supermarket in the city of Phu Ly, Ha Nam
province. Her eye was injured and her older son Phu had an allergic reaction.
Vietnam has at least 112 bloggers and activists who are serving prison sentences
simply for exercising their rights to basic freedoms such as freedom of
expression, assembly, association, and religion. Human Rights Watch has long
called for the repeal of all laws in Vietnam that criminalize peaceful
expression.
“Vietnam has a long history of persecuting anyone the ruling Communist Party
deems threatening to its monopoly of power,” Adams said. “Vietnam should join
the 21st century and repeal these draconian laws from another era.”