Two Vietnamese to Stand Trial for Broadcasts Into China
Vietnam bends to Chinese
regime’s pressure over Falun Gong
By Stephen Gregory
Epoch Times Staff
Apr 4, 2011
On Friday two Vietnamese men
go on trial in Hanoi because the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) objected to short
wave radio broadcasts they were beaming into China. Vietnamese Falun Gong
practitioners see these arrests as the most dramatic instance of a campaign
inspired by the CCP to suppress Falun Gong in Vietnam.
The men, both of whom practice Falun Gong, used their broadcasts to inform the
Chinese people of the twelve-year-long persecution of the spiritual practice.
The Epoch Times obtained a copy of the indictment against them. It makes clear
that the Vietnamese government arrested the men in response to pressure from
Beijing, applied through a March 5, 2010, diplomatic memo sent by the Chinese
Embassy to the Vietnam Ministry of Public Security.
“The memo stated that the Police Department in China discovered radio signals
coming from the Vietnamese territory containing the same content about Falun
Gong as heard on the ‘Sound of Hope’ radio station,” the indictment read. “It
was recommended that all illegal activities of Falun Gong individuals in the
Vietnam territory must be charged and stopped.”
Vũ Đức Trung is the CEO of a high-tech company headquartered in Hanoi and a
Falun Gong practitioner. According to the indictment, in April 2009 Trung
installed short wave radios in the home of his brother-in-law, Le Van Thanh, and
his father-in-law, Le Van Manh. The short-wave radios were then used to
broadcast into China.
The Sound of Hope radio station mentioned in the indictment is a media partner
of The Epoch Times. Since its inception in 2003 it has undercut the Communist
Party’s efforts to control information in China, using shortwave broadcasts to
deliver news directly to the Chinese people about China’s politics, economy,
culture, and environment.
According to its website, Sound of Hope reaches tens of millions of people in
China. It reports on human rights abuses, protests, and official corruption, and
is not afraid of addressing one of the issues the Chinese regime most attempts
to censor: the ongoing persecution of Falun Gong in China.
According to Allen Zeng, spokesperson for Sound of Hope, anyone may download
Sound of Hope’s programs, as Trung and Thanh did.
Through interviews with Vietnamese Falun Gong practitioners and documentary
evidence, The Epoch Times has pieced together a chronology of events leading up
to and succeeding the arrest.
On June 10, 2010, Trung’s broadcasting equipment was confiscated.
Also on June 10 officers from the Bureau of Radio Frequency Management recorded
a memo of “administrative offense” against Mr Thanh for using broadcasting
devices without a permit, which violates Item 64, Article 1 of the Postal and
Telecommunications Law.
On June 11, Trung, his brother-in-law, who is also a Falun Gong practitioner,
and his father-in-law were arrested.
On June 19, the stakes were raised as, in addition to this administrative
action, criminal charges were filed under Vietnam’s Article 226, which prohibits
“transmitting information illegally onto the telecommunications network.”
The three men were detained without bail. Their families were told they could
not visit, because the charges were said to be political in nature.
On Sept. 1 the father-in-law, Mr. Manh, was released from custody. Mr. Trung and
Mr. Thanh remain in prison.
In early 2011, the People’s Police magazine published an article claiming that
Trung’s short wave broadcasts had interfered with air traffic control and
damaged Vietnam’s diplomatic relations.
Diplomatic Relations
The police who raided the
homes of Trung and Thanh not only took away broadcasting equipment and
computers, they also confiscated books and other materials related to Falun
Gong.
Falun Gong is a spiritual
discipline that involves practicing five meditative exercises and following
moral teachings based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and
tolerance. After first being taught in 1992 in China it rapidly became very
popular. An issue of the U.S. News and World Report from February 1999 cited
Chinese officials in claiming that Falun Gong had 100 million adherents.
The popularity of Falun Gong
frightened the then-paramount leader, Jiang Zemin, who in July 1999 ordered that
the practice be “eradicated.” The Falun Dafa Information Center estimates that
tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have died from torture and abuse
and hundreds of thousands are held in China’s labor camps or prisons.
In its foreign relations, the CCP’s diplomats make clear that criticism of its
policy toward Falun Gong is unacceptable. Where the regime has influence, it
attempts to suppress the practice.
Vietnam has bowed to the CCP’s influence. While Falun Gong is officially legal
in Vietnam, the state has put systematic pressure on Falun Gong practitioners,
as witnessed by documents obtained by The Epoch Times.
A
three-page, 2009 memo (left, click to see maximum resolution) devoted to
stopping the activities of Falun Gong was distributed to local police
departments by a provincial division of the Public Security Ministry. The month
and day and the name of the province were blacked out and are illegible in the
copy received by The Epoch Times.
The memo says in part, “Spreading Falun Gong in Vietnam and spreading the
information about China’s persecution of practitioners in China directly affects
the diplomatic relations between Vietnam and China…
“The government and the ministry of investigation and security gives direct
orders to stop the practice of Falun Gong in the country to avoid problems with
China. It orders officials they must deal with the situation when they detect
it.”
A memo from Provincial Department of Education and Training in Bến Tre to its
Offices of Education and Training issued on March 30, 2011 corroborates the 2009
memo’s picture of systematic state suppression. The 2011 memo states that it was
issued in compliance with an official order dated March 29, 2011 from the
Official People's Committee in Bến Tre to halt all dispersal of Falun Gong
materials.
Vietnamese practitioners date the attempt to suppress Falun Gong to 2006. In
Hanoi police came to a park where practitioners were doing the Falun Gong
exercises and arrested the practitioners. Later the police went to their homes,
confiscated materials relating to Falun Gong and pressured families into trying
to get practitioners to give up Falun Gong.
Since then, the harassment has gradually intensified, with incidents reported
throughout Vietnam. In some cases, practitioners have been roughed up by police.
Two weeks ago 15 police detained 11 Falun Gong practitioners in Bien Hoa. The
police confiscated all their Falun Gong materials and required practitioners to
sign documents promising not to practice Falun Gong and not to distribute fliers
about the persecution.
Extra-legal Grounds
Mr. Trung and Mr. Thanh
are represented by the lawyer Tran Dinh Trien. Mr. Trien believes the real
reason for his clients’ arrest involves Vietnam’s attempts to appease the CCP.
In a Radio Free Asia
broadcast translated from Vietnamese by The Epoch Times, Mr. Trien points to a
document issued by the Ministry of Public Security around the same time as the
decision by the state to prosecute his clients. The document emphasized that
propagating Falun Gong affected diplomatic relations between Vietnam and China.
Trien believes the
criminal case against his clients is without merit.
In a letter to the Ministry of Public Security and the People’s Supreme
Procurator, Mr. Trien explained how the criminal charge brought against his
clients does not actually apply to them: Article 226 originally did not apply to
radio broadcasts. It was revised to include radio broadcasts, with the revised
law effective January 1, 2010. But, Trien argues, since his clients had begun
radio broadcasts in 2009, the revised law is not binding in their case.
At most, he says, his clients should be charged with an administrative offence
of broadcasting without a license, the punishment for which would be the
confiscation of their equipment and a fine.
As for the claim that the broadcasts interfered with air traffic control, Falun
Gong practitioners in Vietnam say that the broadcasts were made on international
short wave frequencies, and such interference is not possible.
Trien points to the aggressive actions of China toward Vietnam—occupying
Vietnamese islands and exploring for Vietnam’s mineral resources on Vietnam’s
continental shelf—as reasons why the Vietnamese state has felt it needed to
please the CCP by suppressing Falun Gong and, in particular, arresting his
clients.
With reporting by Thanh Le.