Vietnam Issues Arrest Warrant For Activist Blogger
RFA - 05/05/2017
Authorities in Vietnam have issued a warrant for the arrest of an activist
blogger who has drawn attention to the government’s handling of a toxic waste
spill last year that devastated the country’s central coast, he and a fellow
rights campaigner said Friday.
The warrant to arrest Bach Hong Quyen—a champion
of democracy, human rights and the environment—was signed into effect on April
19, fellow activist Thao Teresa told RFA’s Vietnamese Service, adding that Quyen
anticipates he could be detained at any time.
“Warrant No. 245 was obtained in Ha Tinh
province and [information about the warrant] was published by the Ha Tinh
media,” she said.
“Quyen plans to allow them to arrest him, though
he doesn’t know how the arrest will be carried out.”
Teresa said the blogger, who has reported on
last year’s toxic waste spill by Taiwan-owned Formosa Plastics Group’s steel
plant in Ha Tinh, has “two options available to him now.”
“One is to flee to another country, but he does
not like that option,” she said.
“He always knew he would one day go to jail for
his activism.”
Quyen told RFA that he is prepared to serve time
in prison.
“I accepted it when I chose this path fighting
for human rights, because I am a member of the Vietnam Path movement—the mission
of which is to act as an advocate and educate people about their rights,” he
said.
“The possibility of being arrested does not
scare me or hold me back, because we must fight when there is injustice.”
Several activists have been harassed by the
authorities for covering the April 2016 Formosa waste spill, which killed an
estimated 115 tons of fish and left fishermen jobless in four coastal provinces,
or for their involvement in protests against the company.
Earlier this week, thugs believed hired by local
police assaulted Hanoi-based activist Le My Hanh, who had slammed the
government’s handling of the spill, and two others at her friend’s home in Ho
Chi Minh City. A man believed to have orchestrated the beating posted a video of
the incident on his Facebook page.
Last week, nearly a thousand protesters
surrounded a police station in central Vietnam’s Nghe An province to demand an
apology from authorities for their confiscation of 200 T-shirts carrying Formosa
protest slogans and beating of the two men caught transporting the shirts.
Formosa has voluntarily paid U.S. $500 million
to clean up and compensate coastal residents affected by the spill, but slow and
uneven payout of the funds by the Vietnamese government has prompted protests
that continue to be held more than a year later.
Sentence served
Also on Friday, activists in Vietnam confirmed
to RFA that authorities released blogger Nguyen Thi Minh Thuy from Prison No. 5
in Thanh Hoa province after she completed a three-year sentence for “abusing
democratic freedoms to infringe on the interests of the state” under Article 258
of Vietnam’s penal code.
Thuy is the assistant of well-known blogger
Nguyen Huu Vinh, a former police officer also known as Ba Sam, who is currently
serving a five-year sentence on the same charge after criticizing the government
in his online writings.
The two were convicted together in March last
year after being held in prison since their arrests on May 5, 2014. Sentences in
Vietnam typically include time spent in jail before conviction.
In September, a court in Vietnam’s capital Hanoi
rejected an appeal by Vinh, sending him back to prison to serve out the
remainder of his sentence.
The ruling prompted condemnation from several
international human rights groups, which expressed concerns over the case
against Vinh and Thuy and demanded that the government immediately release them.
The U.S. Embassy in Vietnam has called the
convictions of Vinh and Thuy “inconsistent with the right to freedom of
expression and freedom of the press provided for in Vietnam’s Constitution,” and
with Vietnam’s obligations under its international commitments.
Reported by RFA’s Vietnamese Service.
Translated by Viet Ha. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.