Free Prominent Novelist Pham Chi Thanh Suffering Health Problems: Human Rights
Watch
HRW |
2021-07-08
(New York) –
The Vietnamese government should immediately release the dissident writer and
novelist Pham Chi Thanh and drop all criminal charges against him, Human Rights
Watch said today.
Police
arrested Thanh, 69, in May 2020 and charged him under article 117 of the penal
code, which criminalizes possession or dissemination of “information, materials,
and products that aim to oppose the State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.”
On May 28, 2021, his lawyer was allowed to see Thanh for the first time. His
wife, Nguyen Thi Nghiem, later wrote on Facebook that the lawyer told her that
her husband had recently suffered an injury during a fall and had headaches and
difficulty breathing. His trial in Hanoi is scheduled for July 9.
“Pham Chi
Thanh is among a long list of Vietnamese dissidents prosecuted for nothing more
than their written words,” said John Sifton, Asia advocacy director. “There are
no allegations that he has committed a recognizable offense under international
human rights law.”
Thanh (also
known as Pham Thanh – Ba Dam Xoe) published his first novel, Hau Chi Pheo (About
Chi Pheo), in 1991. The novel condemns the land reform in North Vietnam in the
1950s, and portrays local communist leaders as corrupt, immoral, stupid, and
cruel.
In 2007, he
lost his position as deputy editor of Voice of Vietnam newspaper for writing
anti-China articles. In 2014, he self-published his second novel, Co Hon Xa
Nghia (Scarecrow Socialism), which portrays socialism and the Vietnamese
government in a highly negative light. In 2019, under his pen name, he published
a collection of writings criticizing the Communist Party General Secretary
Nguyen Phu Trong for being too close to China.
In a 2019
interview with Voice of America Vietnamese service, Thanh said, “I had followed
the [Communist] Party and State for 41 years. Now, looking back, I found our
nation moved backward in every way. What is the cause? The reason is that we do
not have democracy. The reason is that the Communist Party maintains a
dictatorship! I fight against the communist dictatorship!”
The police
have harassed and intimidated Thanh numerous times. Between 2014 and 2016, they
summoned him several times and interrogated him about his writing. On December
6, 2015, the police at Noi Bai International Airport prohibited him from leaving
Vietnam for Bangkok, stating that his travel ban was “to protect national
security and social order and safety.”
In November
2017, during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in Da Nang, security
agents placed him under house arrest for several days. Prior to and during the
meeting between the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, and former US President
Donald Trump in Hanoi on February 27 and 28, 2019, Thanh was placed under house
arrest. He posted on the internet photos of men in civilian clothes stationed
outside his door, calling them “the phantoms in front of my house, night of
February 26, 2019, to celebrate Trump’s arrival in Hanoi.”
In November
2020, six months after his arrest, Radio Free Asia reported that Thanh had been
in a mental health facility for six weeks, where his wife was briefly allowed to
visit him. The purpose of his admission to the facility remains unclear.
“Pham Chi
Thanh has committed no evident crime, appears to be in ill health, and was
detained for more than a year without legal counsel,” Sifton said. “The
Vietnamese authorities have no plausible justification for jailing him, and
never did. He should be released and allowed to return to his home and family.”
Update: On
July 9, 2021, a court in Vietnam sentenced Pham Chi Thanh to five years six
months in prison and five years of probation after his release.
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