Nghe An Provincial Prison No. 6 did not allow Bui Van Thuan, a prisoner of conscience from Thanh Hoa Province, to talk to his family in the Muong language when they visited him in August 2023 and February 2024. The prison officers required them to communicate in the Vietnamese language. Thuan, 43, a Muong ethnic minority, is serving a six-year sentence on the conviction of “distribution of anti-state propaganda.” The Muong community in Vietnam is located in a mountainous area southwest of Hanoi.

Thuan’s wife, Trinh Thi Nhung, told RFA that her husband, his parents, and younger brother had difficulty communicating in Vietnamese instead of their mother language. The correctional officers threatened to file a report against Thuan when they occasionally used Muong words for sentences they found hard to express in Vietnamese. Nhung added that Thuan had recently been transferred to the prison’s Camp No. 1, which has harsher living conditions.