Tight Security as Vietnamese Court Orders Two More Hmongs Jailed
RFA - 03/20/2014
A provincial court in
northern Vietnam on Thursday ordered two Hmongs jailed for defying a government
campaign forcing the ethnic minority group to return to older funeral practices
now considered wasteful by many in the community.
The court hearing in northeastern Tuyen Quang province was held under tight
security as police kept protesting Hmong villagers at bay.
Ly Van Dinh, 50, and Duang Van Tu, 47, were sentenced to 21 months and 15 months
in jail respectively for violating Article 258 of Vietnam’s penal code, their
lawyer Tran Thu Nam told RFA’s Vietnamese Service on Thursday.
Article 258 is a vague legal provision routinely used to prosecute people for
exercising their right to freedom of expression, rights groups say.
The sentences follow last week’s jailing by the same court of Hoang Van Sang,
60, on charges of “abusing democratic rights to infringe on the State and
others’ benefits.”
Sang, who was given an 18-month term, was also tried under Article 258, sources
said.
All three are followers
of reformed burial and wedding practices proposed by Hmong Christian leader
Duong Van Minh, who is now in ill health in Hanoi.
Crackdown on reform
Officials in the Northern
Highlands have cracked down on reformed burial practices in recent years,
launching a campaign to force Hmong Christians to return to old traditions
involving expensive, week-long funerals, rights groups have said.
Minh, 52, whose calls for reformed burial practices have been drawing a large
following among Hmong Christians since 1989, now suffers from a kidney ailment
but has been denied medical treatment at hospitals in Vietnam’s capital Hanoi.
Sources say the charges against all three men, and against another tried earlier
in the week, appeared also to be tied to a growing refusal by Hmong to accept
grain seed, subsidies for food or schooling, or other state benefits—a move seen
by authorities as interference with government development policies.
Security surrounding the trial was tight, with police blocking Hmong villagers
from gathering near the court to protest, sources told RFA early Thursday
morning.
“We are on our way to the trial, but the police are everywhere, blocking all
approaches, and we can’t get past them,” one woman, Dao Thi Sai, said.
“They have searched my clothes to see if I am carrying anything suspicious,” she
said, adding, “Some people just can’t make it to the trial, and we have another
30 km [19 miles] to go.”
At Ngoi Sen village in Tuyen Quang province’s Ham Yen district, police also
blocked Hmong from traveling to the court, ripping away protest banners and
confiscating other items carried by the marchers, one protester said.
“The police took our banners away, and when we got to the highway they robbed us
again,” Hmong villager Duong Van Hung said.
“Some people can get to the trial, but others just can’t,” he said.
Other trial postponed
On March 18, the trial of Thao Quan Mua, another Hmong follower of Duong Van
Minh, was postponed when the government complainant in the case fell ill, lawyer
Nam said.
“The trial is postponed until March 27 because the plaintiff, the chairwoman of
the Minh Huong Village People’s Committee, was hospitalized with appendicitis,”
Nam said.
“According to the indictment, Mua was accused of gathering people to build a
funeral home,” Nam said.
“The government accused him of following an illegal religion and of encouraging
Hmong people to refuse government support,” he said.
In 2008, authorities in Cao Bang, Bac Kan, Thai Nguyen, and Tuyen Quang
provinces began an “aggressive campaign” to force Hmong Christians to return to
old burial practices by demolishing shared funeral storage facilities that
villages had built to accommodate the new practice, according to overseas rights
group Boat People SOS (BPSOS).
After a number of Hmong villages rebuilt their funeral storage facilities in
2012, the authorities last year sent in plainclothes police and thugs to destroy
the facilities and arrested a number of Hmong, the group said.
Meanwhile, in October and November, at least eight Hmong followers of Minh’s
were arrested as they protested for freedom of religion and belief, Vietnamese
citizen journalism blog Dan Lam Bao reported.
And on Nov. 23, police forces surrounded an ethnic Hmong village in Cao Bang
province and demolished their funeral storage facility, in an incident that was
followed by an attack on another Hmong village in the province the next day, Bao
said.
Reported by Mac Lam for RFA’s Vietnamese Service. Written in English by
Richard Finney.