Vietnamese Blogger Held for Distributing Rights Leaflets
RFA –
05/22/2013
A
prominent blogger and her two colleagues were briefly detained this week by
authorities in southern Vietnam’s Khanh Hoa province after distributing leaflets
and balloons promoting international human rights standards.
Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh—who blogs as Me Nam, meaning “Mother Mushroom”—said in an
interview after her release that she and her friends Pham Thanh Hai and Nguyen
Tien Nam, also known as Binh Nhi, were handing out copies of the United Nations’
Universal Declaration of Human Rights on Tuesday in Nha Trang city when they
were detained.
“I went to April 2 Avenue to distribute the declaration of human rights while
some friends gave kids balloons that said our human rights should be respected,”
Quynh told RFA’s Vietnamese Service.
“Police came and told me
to go to the Loc Tho commune police station” along with Pham Thanh Hai and
Nguyen Tien Nam at around 5:00 p.m., she said.
Quynh was released late on Tuesday night, while Hai and Nam were held for 24
hours.
Their detention followed a move earlier this month by authorities to shut down
“human rights picnics” in Nha Trang, Hanoi, and Ho Chi Minh City, where bloggers
and activists gathered in public parks to discuss the declaration and other
rights issues but ended up beaten, interrogated, or arrested.
Quynh said that she had distributed copies of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights—which Vietnam has ratified—to inform the Vietnamese people of what
Vietnam agreed to when it became a member of the United Nations in 1977.
“When I was arguing with the police … many people crowded around and demanded
that I be allowed to show them the declaration. They wanted to read it to
understand for themselves that it wasn’t a ‘horrible’ document.”
After she was taken to the local police station, authorities told her that she
did not have permission to distribute the rights declaration.
“They confiscated all the leaflets and wrote a report, all while filming me as
if I were a criminal,” she said.
“After that they took me to the provincial police office for additional
interrogation until midnight.”
Under questioning
Quynh said that her interrogators were “very intimidating and tense,” but said
that she remained calm, asking them to explain to her exactly why she had been
detained.
“They only said that what I did wasn’t wrong, but that it was ‘not right’
either,” she said, adding that they were unable to give her a clear answer of
how she had violated the law.
“It was strange that many policemen refused to touch the declaration. They
looked at it like it was some kind of poisonous document.”
When Quynh was given permission to leave the police station, she told her
interrogators that she wanted to wait until Hai and Nam were also released, but
authorities made her return home.
“They said that my daughter needed my help to prepare for a school exam and
reminded me that my young son was sick, so I should go home and they would let
my friends out later…. I decided to go home and return the next morning,” she
said.
She returned to the Khanh Hoa provincial police station Wednesday and waited
there until her friends were released.
Bloggers targeted
Quynh has been held by authorities several times in the past for “abuse of
democratic freedoms and infringing on the national benefit” after writing
damning blog posts concerning China's intervention in Vietnam.
Her writings have largely focused on Beijing's financing of a controversial
bauxite mine in the Central Highlands and its claims to disputed islands in the
South China Sea.
Police surveillance and harassment is a common experience for dissident bloggers
in Vietnam, which is listed by press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders
as an “Enemy of the Internet.”
Vietnamese authorities have jailed and harassed dozens of bloggers, citizen
journalists, and activists over their online writings since stepping up a
crackdown on freedom of expression in recent years.
Many have been jailed under Article 88 of the Vietnamese Criminal Code for
“conducting propaganda against the state,” and international rights groups and
press freedom watchdogs have accused Hanoi of using the vaguely worded provision
to silence dissent.
Reported by RFA’s Vietnamese Service. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.