Vietnam Free Expression Newsletter No. 48/2018 – Week of December 3-9

On December 1, Nguyen Huu Quoc Duy gave an interview to Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh (Me Nam) about his time in prison. He revealed that he was frequently tortured by detention officials, causing his prolonged anemia. In his first instance trial, he was not allowed to meet with his defense counsel. They also applied different punishments to him when he violated any regulations in prison. His most terrible memory was the period of 20 days, from October 5 to 25, 2016, after he pretended to beat his cellmate to help that cellmate to be transferred to a more comfortable prison section. Prison officials chained his feet close to the wall and only allowed him to wear boxer shorts and eat two spoonfuls of rice and drink a small bottle of water at each meal. When he asked to meet with the detention supervisor to report discrimination against him, they tortured him with pepper spray, causing burns because he did not have a shirt to dry his skin. Duy was released from prison last week after completing his three-year sentence for “propaganda against the state” under Article 88 of the 1999 Criminal Code. He was arrested in November 2015 for online postings that were critical of the Vietnamese government and for calling for the release of his cousin, Nguyen Huu Thien An, from prison.

Lawyer Le Cong Dinh reported on lawyer Dang Dinh Manh’s harassment after Huynh Thuc Vy’s trial on November 30. After Dang Dinh Manh passed the Buon Ho toll station, traffic police stopped his car and asked for his documents. He did not give them the documents but asked the officers what law he had violated and why he had been stopped. They accused him of driving away after causing an accident. After Manh suggested they check his car’s camera, police made a phone call and said that the accident might have happened in the tunnels where the camera would not have observed it. Manh argued that his car has a camera both in front and back. Police again called someone and finally let him go, saying that “they might have misunderstood, so please go” without checking the camera as Manh had suggested. It was not the first time lawyer Manh was harassed after a dissident’s trial. In May 2018, right after Manh left the court building, right in the area tightly surveilled by the police, he was coerced into a car and his work laptop was taken away by a group of unknown individuals.

Four activists were monitored by police and later attacked by pro-government thugs while attempting to visit families of some of the protesters imprisoned after the national June demonstrations in Bien Hoa. En route to Dong Nai Province, police stopped the car, and later plainclothes agents followed it and physically injured the passengers by throwing rocks into the car. The activists were forced to turn back and could not meet with the families as planned.

According to a press release from the Vietnam Human Rights Network, on November 30 they will award three Human Rights Awards in 2018 to the following activists: Hoang Duc Binh, Tran Thi Nga, and Pham Doan Trang. Binh is an environmental activist serving 14 years in prison, Nga is a land and labor rights activist serving nine years, and Trang is a dissident writer who promotes political participation and human rights in Vietnam.

Party to replace village chiefs: “State media said that thousands of village heads, as many as thirty per cent of the total, were not members of the Communist party and so were not a reliable conduit to communicate party directives to the population. Instructions have been given to local party committees to evaluate existing officials and to decide whether they should be co-opted as party members. Those not considered suitable face replacement by existing members. Mr Trong has frequently bemoaned young people’s ‘loss of trust in revolutionary ideals’. He says they are vulnerable to manipulation by what he calls hostile forces that run counter to the party’s direction. His solution is a drive for more intense Marxist education and propaganda and the re-establishment of the party at the centre of government at all levels.”

Vietnam’s new power monopoly: “While lamenting that ‘corruption is threatening the survival of the regime’, Trong believes that ‘political decadence’ is even more dangerous. Two weeks after he was nominated as president, the CPV announced its intention to reprimand former vice minister of science and technology Chu Hao. Hao quickly renounced his CPV membership, prompting the Party to dismiss him altogether. A public intellectual and reform advocate, Hao pioneered a publishing house promoting liberal thought. He was censured for his ‘serious violation of the party’s principles’ and for ‘speaking and writing outside the party line’. The case of Chu Hao is illustrative of Trong’s larger anti-liberalism agenda.”