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Montagnard Degar Christian Siu Lul tortured to death in Vietnam prison
By Michael Ireland
The Spartanburg, South Carolina-based Montagnard foundation says that on 20 April 2006 Siu Lul was denied food and water by Vietnamese authorities in Ha Nam prison where he was beaten and tortured. Lul was 62 years old and from the village of Ploi Kueng, Habong commune, Cu Se District, Gia Lai Province. He had been arrested, tortured and imprisoned at the prison facility in Ha Nam since 2004. A media advisory obtained by ANS says: "On April 24, 2006 he succumbed and died from the effects of torture and lack of water and food. The authorities wanted the family to take his body back to his village but his family did not have money to pay for the transportation so he was buried in Ha Nam." The Montagnard Foundation notes there are still over 350 Degar prisoners of conscience who remain imprisoned in Vietnam's brutal prison system. "The Montagnard Foundation thus appeals to the UN and international community to pressure Vietnam to release these prisoners because none of them would be in jail if they had lived in a free society that respected human rights." The indigenous Montagnard Degar Peoples have suffered decades of persecution by the government of Vietnam, namely confiscation of their ancestral lands, Christian religious repression, torture, killings and imprisonment. In May 2006, the US State Department has continued to maintain Vietnam on the "watch list" of countries that are the worst violators of religious freedom. To date over 350 Degar prisoners remain in Vietnamese prisons for charges involving merely standing up for human rights, for spreading Christianity or for fleeing to Cambodia. The Montagnard Foundation has urgently called on the United States Government, the European Union, the United Nations and all other peaceful nations to insist all 350 Degar prisoners are fully accounted for and released from Vietnamese Prisons before Vietnam be granted entry into the World Trade Organization. The group also calls for the United States Government, the European Union, the United Nations, and other peaceful nations insist Vietnam abide by the 2002 Concluding Observations of the UN Human Rights Committee regarding the "serious violations" facing the Montagnard peoples (UN doc: CCPR/C/SR.2031) and allow human rights monitors access to the central highlands as a precondition to Vietnam gaining entry into the World Trade Organization.
Vietnam Human Rights Network |