Vietnam Land Activist Sent to New Prison Without Word to His Family
RFA | 2021-03-19
Vietnamese land-rights activist Trinh Ba Phuong has been transferred to a new
detention center without word given to his family, according to his wife, who
attempted to visit him at his former jail this week.
“Today, March 19, I went to the Hanoi Police Detention Center No. 1,” Phuong’s
wife Do Thi Thu told RFA’s Vietnamese Service on Thursday. “When I arrived, they
told me that my husband had been sent to another facility but would not tell me
where it was,” she said.
“They also gave me what was left of the money we had given him" to buy food in
the jail, she said.
“Normally, when prisoners are moved to another place, detention center staff
will inform the detainees’ families, and my husband’s surplus deposit should
have been moved with him,” Thu said, adding,“I don’t know why they transferred
my husband so suddenly, or whether they’re going to torture him or mistreat him
now.”
A well-known land-rights activist in Hanoi, Trinh Ba Phuong was arrested on June
24, 2020 with his younger brother, Trinh Ba Tu, and his mother, Can Thi Theu, on
charges of “creating, storing, and disseminating information, documents, items
and publications opposing the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.”
The three family members had been outspoken in social media postings about the
Jan. 9, 2020 clash in Dong Tam commune in which 3,000 police stormed barricaded
protesters’ homes at a construction site about 25 miles south of the capital,
killing a village elder.
They had also offered information to foreign embassies and other international
figures to try to raise awareness of the incident. While all land is ultimately
held by the state, land confiscations have become a flashpoint as residents
accuse the government of pushing small landholders aside in favor of lucrative
real estate projects, and of paying too little in compensation to farming
families displaced by development.
'Activities to overthrow'
Also on Friday, a court in central Vietnam’s Dak Lak province sentenced Tran
Nguyen Chuan, a member of the U.S.-based Provisional Government of Vietnam, to a
six and a half year prison term on charges of carrying out “activities to
overthrow the People’s Government” under Article 109 of Vietnam’s Penal Code.
Chuan’s indictment charged that he had used his mobile phone beginning in 2015
to access YouTube videos with subversive content and had attended online
meetings of the Provisional Government from June 2018 to March 2020.
The Provisional Government was founded in 1991 by soldiers and refugees who had
been loyal to the South Vietnamese government prior to the country’s unification
under communist rule in 1975. It is headquartered in Orange County, California.
In 2018, Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security classified the Provisional
Government of Vietnam as a terrorist organization, and four other members—Vu Thi
Kim Phuong, Le Van Lac, Nguyen Thi Kim Duyen, and Le Van Sang—were also
sentenced to lengthy prison terms in March 2021 for their involvement in the
group.
Reported by RFA’s Vietnamese Service. Translated by Chau Vu. Written in English
by Richard Finney.
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