Vietnamese
Authorities Detain Former Political Prisoners Visiting Fellow
Dissident
RFA –
12/31/2013
Vietnamese authorities on Tuesday detained and interrogated three former
political prisoners, beating one of them severely, as they traveled to visit a
fellow ex-prisoner of conscience at his home outside the capital, a member of
the group said.
Writer Huynh Ngoc Tuan, blogger Pham Ba Hai and lawyer Le Thi Cong Nhan traveled
from Hanoi to visit democracy activist Pham Van Troi at his home in Thuong Tin
district’s Truong Duong village when they were approached by plainclothes police
after exiting their taxi, Nhan told RFA’s Vietnamese Service.
Nhan, whose husband Ngo Duy Quyen and son Luca accompanied her on the visit,
said the group was taken from Troi’s home to the district police station,
located about 200 meters (650 feet) away, where they were interrogated.
“They asked who we were, where we came from, and why we had come there,” Nhan
said.
“We demanded that they behave correctly as civil servants, but they cursed at us
right from the beginning, showing us disrespect and using offensive words.”
Nhan said that when fellow activist Tuan explained to the officers that as
Vietnamese citizens, members of the group had the right to visit their friend,
their interrogators “focused on him.”
“In the commune’s police station, they separated us into different rooms … and
they beat Huynh Ngoc Tuan—my husband and I saw that,” she said.
“I knew they would do it to him so when they took him to another room, I tried
to follow and scream … There were people in the office but nobody paid us any
attention as though they thought the police had the right to beat people.”
Nhan said that her yells of “police harassment” and “murder” caused the officers
to force her and her husband into a separate room before they returned to Tuan.
“They took Huynh Ngoc Tuan to a room where three policemen beat him. They kicked
and punched him and cursed at him very cruelly … I was almost beaten as well,”
she said.
Hanoi clinic
According to Nhan, the group was held for about three hours before being
released at around 7:00 p.m., at which point they took Tuan—still injured from
the beating he received—to the privately run Hong Ngoc clinic in Hanoi.
“When I got there I could recognize plainclothes policemen who used to follow me
and harass me. They pretended to be employees of the clinic,” she said, adding
that even the doctor who treated Tuan behaved “arrogantly” with him.
Nhan said that she “confirmed [the police] had forced the clinic to take in
their own people,” although she did not reveal how she obtained the information.
Although she did not specify what injuries Tuan had suffered as a result of the
beating in detention, Nhan said that doctors at the clinic advised her group
that he was fine after the medical examination.
“They told us Tuan was fine after the procedure was over, but we don’t believe
the diagnosis.”
Former political prisoners
Troi, Nhan, Tuan, and Hai are veteran dissidents who have all served time in
prison for acts related to their promotion of democracy and human rights.
Troi had been charged under Article 88 of Vietnam’s legal code with “spreading
propaganda” against the state and was handed a four-year prison term in October
2009.
Prosecutors had accused him of sending emails and exchanging documents calling
for multiparty democracy in one-party communist Vietnam.
Earlier this year, Troi was among the first to sign up for membership in the new
online group Brotherhood for Democracy after his early release from prison at
the end of 2012.
Nhan, a well-known dissident and rights lawyer, was given a three-year prison
sentence in March 2007 followed by three years of house arrest under Article 88
after she was found guilty of “misinterpreting government policy on trade unions
and laborers in Vietnam,” among other crimes.
She was also found guilty of joining the Bloc 8406 democracy movement and the
Vietnam Progressive Party, conducting human rights seminars, and possessing and
distributing documents promoting human rights and democracy.
Writer Tuan had previously served 10 years in jail for his calls for freedom and
democracy and his children have expressed criticism of the government online.
He and his family have been frequently targeted for harassment by unidentified
men believed to be agents of local security forces angered by his online
writings.
Blogger Hai, a fellow Bloc 8406 member, was arrested in 2006 and sentenced to
five years in prison in 2008 for “spreading propaganda against the state,” but
was released in 2011.
Ongoing crackdown
Vietnamese authorities have jailed and harassed dozens of activists, bloggers,
and citizen journalists since stepping up a crackdown on protests and freedom of
expression online in recent years.
Many have been imprisoned 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 An Nguyen for RFA’s Vietnamese Service. Written in English by
Joshua Lipes.