Passport of Dr. Nguyen Quang A with forged handwritten change by Vietnam security forces on his birthday information. Vietnam's security forces have defaced the passport of prominent dissident Dr. Nguyen Quang A with their handwritten change on his birthday information, making his document ineligible for oversea travel, Defend the Defenders has learned. The police act likely aims to prevent him from going to Brussels this week for participating in a hearing on the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement organized by the European Parliament Committee on International Trade (INTA) on October 10. Dr. A, one of leading figures of Vietnam's government critics, was invited to the event. He has had a plan to travel to the European capital city on October 8 to take part in it. However, several hours before he left for Noi Bai International Airport, a security officer from the Ministry of Public Security came to his private residence in Hanoi asking him to check for his documents' validity. After the officer left, Dr. A checked his passport and found out that his birthday information in his passport was forged by handwritten marks, particularly they erased his year of birth of 1946 and forged it to 1949. Dr. A recalled that on September 18, he was blocked from taking a flight to Ho Chi Minh City where he would take another flight to Australia. When security officers detained him, they took his passport and returned it him several hours later. He did not suspect that they would change his information in his passport by that way. Vietnam's communist regime has applied a number of tricks to prevent local dissents from meeting with foreign diplomats or attending international forums, especially events related to human rights and democracy. Dozens of activists have been denied of being granted with passports while hundreds of others have been blocked from taking international flights or their passports have been confiscated by police due to "national security" excuse. Since 2014, Vietnam's security has blocked Dr. A from going abroad for 20 times. Despite the incident, Dr. A went to Noi Bai International Airport to go to Brussels as planned. Unexpectedly, at the airport, the security officers came up and gave him the new passport with his correct personal information so he could take his flight to the EU. At the time of this story was written, Dr. A was boarded and on his way to Brussels.