Uwazi

A prison in Vietnam’s Thanh Hoa province is refusing to allow the family of political prisoner Nguyen Thi Tam to bring her traditional medicine to treat uterine fibroids, her sister told Radio Free Asia.

Fibroids are growths, which don’t normally develop into cancer but can cause major swelling in the uterus leading to the appearance of pregnancy.

Tam, 52, was arrested in June 2020 on charges of “propaganda against the State” under Article 117 of the criminal code.

The charges related to social media posts about a police attack on Dong Tam commune during which officers shot and killed protester Le Dinh Kinh.

In Dec. 2021, the People’s Court of Hanoi sentenced Tam to six years in prison.

After the appeal was rejected in Aug. 2022, Tam was transferred to serve her sentence at Gia Trung Prison in Gia Lai province, and then to Prison No. 5 in Thanh Hoa from the end of May 2023.

On Monday, Nguyen Thanh Mai told RFA her sister, Tam, was found to be suffering from fibroids in March last year.

She was not treated by an outside medical specialist but only at the prison’s infirmary, which lacked suitable medical equipment.

Her family sent traditional medicine and said Tam’s condition improved after using it. But since October, the prison stopped accepting the pills and dried leaves they sent.

“They said they could not determine the ingredients of the medicine the family sent,” Mai said. “They also said if she got sick she would have a prescription and the family could buy medicine according to the new instructions and send it.”

The medicine, Crinum latifolium, is on a list of 70 medicinal plants approved by Vietnam’s Ministry of Health in 2014, saying it was an “anti-cancer and eliminating fungus” supporting the treatment of cervical cancer,

Mai said the basic medicines given to Tam by the prison hospital had no effect on the fibroids and her sister had been bleeding for 17 consecutive days.

The reporter called Prison No. 5 to verify the information provided by Tam’s family. The unidentified call operator said prisoners can only receive medication with a doctor’s prescription.

“People here have a hospital. When they get sick they go to the hospital,” he said.​​

“As for Vietnamese medicine, we don’t know how it should be taken. There are no instructions on how to take it so how can anyone know?”

The person asked the reporter to come directly to the detention facility to have additional questions answered in person.

Mai said the prison also stopped giving Tam many other items the family sent including cassava flour and green bean powder which the prison canteen doesn’t have or sells at exorbitant prices.

Tam’s cell was searched, her sister said, and many belongings such as diaries, English books and writing materials were confiscated.

On March 29, Tam called her family to talk about mistreatment but a prison officer repeatedly intervened, telling her to “only talk about health issues” and finally hung up the phone.

Amnesty International publicized Tam’s health issues in March 2023, urging the Vietnamese government to urgently provide adequate health care and unconditionally release Tam and other activists. imprisoned for peacefully exercising human rights.

Former prisoner of conscience Dang Thi Hue said conditions in Prison No. 5 are extremely harsh, and poor nutrition caused even healthy inmates to get sick.

Le Thi Ha, the wife of Dang Dang Phuoc, told Project88 that she received a decision by the head of Daklak’s School of Pedagogy to “discipline” the music teacher because he’s convicted of “anti-state propaganda” and is serving an 8-year prison sentence. On the same day that decision was signed (12/21/2023), another decision by the Bureau of Education and Training of Dak Lak was also issued to fire him; however, Le Thi Ha said she only received the latter a few days ago. She added that Phuoc had been receiving only half of his salary between the time he was arrested (Sep. 2022) to Dec. 2023; after Jan. 2024, everything was terminated. On March 25, Ha also received a notification that Phuoc’s electronic devices and data related to the case will be destroyed, and the rest will be returned to her.

Huynh Ngoc Chenh, husband of Nguyen Thuy Hanh, told Project88 that on March 10 he was called to the police station to file paperwork that would allow him to bring Hanh home for cancer treatment, provided that she remain at the residence where she was living at the time of her arrest. However, that apartment had since been leased to another tenant, and the lease would not expire until March 18. Chenh told the police he would try to negotiate with the tenant to end the lease early so his wife could move back to that residence; however, that effort failed. Then on March 17, he called the authorities to let them know that he could take Hanh home on March 18, but received no response from them. Then on March 22, after Hanh’s radiation therapy, the authorities went to K Hospital and read an order to continue Hanh’s “temporary detention” for another three months. She was then taken back to the jail on 2 Thuong Tin St. It is not clear why Hanh’s family was given such false hopes.

Below is a letter from Tran Phuong Thao, wife of imprisoned climate leader Dang Dinh Bach. In it, she alleges Prison No. 6 in Nghe An province deliberately withheld a package of food from Bach, leaving him to have essentially no access to food for two weeks. This serious allegation should be thoroughly investigated by the international community.

Bach, who is serving five years in prison on spurious charges of tax evasion, has been subjected to harsh prison conditions and has undertaken numerous hunger strikes in protest. His family has also faced constant harassment from the Vietnamese authorities, even threatening the confiscation of their home.

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Hanoi, 13.03.2024 ~

Dear friends, colleagues and international organizations

I came home yesterday (March 12) at 9PM after visiting my husband Đặng Đình Bách in Prison No. 6, Nghe An province. I left home (in Hanoi) at 9PM the day before (March 11), which means twenty three hours on the road to see and talk to Bách through a glass pane for one hour, and to bring him the 5kg of dried vegetarian food allowed by the Vietnamese authorities, vital for his survival.

This letter is going to be short, because there is no amelioration to Bách’s detention situation to report. It has gotten even worse, so bad that I have been feeling suffocated from anxiety for Bách’s health and safety, as the prison seemed to increase their policy of deprivation of food by not handing over the 6kg of food I sent Bách per post on Feb 28.

This food parcel was the only nutrition source Bách would get for the last 2 weeks, as he depends entirely on his family’s supplies to eat vegetarian and safe food. In his last phone call on Feb. 2, Bach had already informed me that he was running out of food.

VN Post recorded that parcel 475790 (sent by me on Feb 28) was delivered on March 4 at 9:25:33 to a prison warden named San. But the parcel never reached Bách, and my husband was left without food for the last 2 weeks.

“Every two or three days, the canteen sold me something,” Bách said, “and my teeth are getting loose.”

Bách would like to thank —

–Ms. Mary Lawlor, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders; Irene Khan, Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, Mr. Clément Nyaletsossi Voule, Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association.; Mr. David Boyd, Special Rapporteur on the issue of human rights obligations relating to the enjoyment of a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment; Mr. Marcos A. Orellana, Special Rapporteur on the implications for human rights of the environmentally sound management and disposal of hazardous substances and wastes; Ms. Priya Gopalan (Chair-Rapporteur), Mr. Matthew Gillett (Vice-Chair on Communications), Ms. Ganna Yudkivska (Vice-Chair on Follow-Up), Ms. Miriam Estrada-Castillo, and Mr. Mumba Malila – Working Group on arbitrary detention,

for urging the Government of Viet Nam to stop targeting, convicting, and mistreating him

  –Chairman Cardin for mentioning him and calling for his release in the Truth to Power series of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee SFRC.

As last week Vietnam and Vanuatu sought advice from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on national climate change obligations, Bách puts his trust in the wisdom and farsightedness of his friends and colleagues to monitor Vietnam’s national commitment on climate change issue.

Bách would like to wish you all endurance, peace of mind, and harmony.

Yours faithfully,

Tran Phuong Thao (Mrs)

Vietnamese state media declared two human rights organisations as terrorist groups on 6 March.

The groups are the North Carolina-headquartered Montagnard Support Group Inc (MSGI) and Montagnard Stand for Justice (MSFJ), which was established in Thailand. Both organisations specialise in defending the rights of the Montagnard minority ethnic group.

The majority of Montagnards are Christians and live in Vietnam’s central highlands. The community has a long history of conflict with the Vietnamese government and have faced intense harassment and intimidation since a June 2023 attack on provincial Communist party offices in Dak Lak that left nine dead, including local party officials and police.

The MSGI and MSFJ are accused of having helped plan the attack in Dak Lak, but leaders of both groups strongly deny these allegations.

The Vietnamese government’s press release named several human rights activists as terrorists and threatened that anyone working with them would face similar charges. It went on to give the personal home addresses of several key human rights figures in Thailand and the US.

CSW's Founder President Mervyn Thomas said: ‘The government of Vietnam is endangering the lives of human rights defenders by naming them and sharing their addresses on state media, which poses an immediate security concern and is clearly intended to silence, harass and intimidate. The government of Vietnam is an authoritarian state that is paranoid that the world will know the true nature of their control and repression of religious and ethnic minorities, and this is further evidence of its lack of inhibitions in participating in transnational repression against activists who are simply exercising their right to freedom of expression. CSW rejects the designation of the MSGI and MSFJ as terrorist organisations and we call on the Vietnamese government to recognise human rights groups as legitimate voices in any healthy civil society.’

A court in Vietnam on Tuesday sentenced a man to eight years in prison for managing a Facebook page that shared news and content that authorities said was against the state.

Nguyen Van Lam, 33, was the administrator of “The Diary of Patriots,” a page on Meta’s social media platform that authorities said defamed and smeared Vietnam's senior leaders.

Lam was convicted in the Tien Giang People’s Court in southern Vietnam of “making, storing, disseminating, propagandizing anti-state information and materials” under Article 117 of Vietnam’s Penal Code, which is criticized by rights groups as being an intentionally vague law that allows Hanoi to stifle dissent.

According to the indictment, Lam, a native of Vinh Hoa commune, Vinh Loc district in Thanh Hoa province, regularly visited websites and social media pages to read posts and articles with bad content and therefore developed a “hostile and anti-state” attitude.

He used the Facebook account “Nguyễn Lâm” to put up 19 posts with content distorting and defaming the system of one-party rule in Vietnam, it said..

There are multiple pages on Facebook with the same name, and Lam may have had connections to more than one of them, state media said.

One of the “Diary of Patriots” pages had more than 800,000 followers.

The earliest page was created in 2011, at the beginning of widespread demonstrations against China’s claims and aggressiveness in the South China Sea. Though Vietnam upholds its own claims, it often stifles anti-China dissent.

Restricting freedom of speech

The arrest was aimed at punishing those who had “created a forum for people to discuss and share multifaceted information in the spirit of freedom of speech,” said a member of that page who wished to remain anonymous for security reasons.

“I am against the punishments against those who exercise human rights and promote human rights values,” he told RFA Vietnamese in a text message, saying that he did not know Lam personally.

He called on Vietnamese authorities to adopt the world’s “civilized standards,” and said that the international community has a responsibility not to ignore Vietnam’s crackdowns on activists while supporting Hanoi’s bid to stay on the U.N. Human Rights Council.

State media reports did not include information about Lam’s arrest.

RFA attempted to find details about his arrest by contacting the Tien Giang provincial police department, but staff who answered the phone refused to respond to queries.

Lam did nothing criminal by managing pages on social media, said Phil Robertson, Deputy Asia Director for New York-based Human Rights Watch.

“He should be immediately and unconditionally released,” Robertson said. “Sadly, it looks like Vietnam’s leaders will not stop this crackdown until they have imprisoned every last activist in the country.”

In July 2023, Ho Chi Minh City police arrested Phan Tat Thanh, who was allegedly the former administrator of “The Diary of Patriots” page, charging him with “propaganda against the state” under Article 117.

RFA’s database shows that since January 2024, the Vietnamese government has arrested six activists on the same charges and sentenced one to six years in prison for the same accusation.

Two ethnic Khmer Krom activists who were arrested last year on suspicion of distributing books about indigenous peoples’ rights were sentenced to prison on Wednesday by a Vietnamese court.

Nearly 1.3-million Khmer Krom live in a part of Vietnam that was once southeastern Cambodia. They have faced serious restrictions on freedom of expression, assembly and movement.

The Cau Ngang District People’s Court in southern Vietnam’s Tra Vinh province convicted To Hoang Chuong, 38, and Thach Cuong, 37, of “abusing democratic freedoms” under Article 331, a section of the penal code used by the government to silence dissenting voices.

Chuong received a four-year sentence and Cuong was given three-and-a-half years in prison, state media reported.

Last month, a court in neighboring Soc Trang province sentenced Danh Minh Quang, 34, to three-and-a-half years in prison on the same charge.

Quang was arrested in July 2023 as part of the same investigation as Chuong and Cuong.

Police in both provinces told local media that the men passed out copies of the United Nations’ “Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,” which states that indigenous peoples have the right to maintain and develop their political, economic and social systems or institutions.

Prosecutors last month said that Quang used his personal Facebook account to post comments and live-stream videos that “violated Vietnam laws.”

The indictments for Cuong and Chuong also accused them of using their Facebook accounts to live-stream videos and to post and share photos and video clips, according to the Tra Vinh newspaper.

The contents of the articles, photos and video clips “affected the national and religious unity, distorted the history of Vietnam and the authorities and insulted the prestige” of police and local authorities, according to the Tra Vinh provincial Department of Information and Culture.

‘The reality of suppression’

A Khmer Krom resident of Vietnam who follows Chuong on Facebook told Radio Free Asia on condition of anonymity that he never saw any posts from Chuong that opposed the Vietnamese government.

“They reflected the reality of suppression against the Khmer community in southern Vietnam,” he said.

There was no information about whether Chuong and Cuong had a defense attorney present during Wednesday’s trial.

Khmer Kampuchea Krom for Human Rights and Development Association Secretary General Son Chum Chuon said the severe sentences were unfair and were particularly unjust if the two men were tried without access to a lawyer.

“These allegations are contrary to their actual activities,” he told RFA. “That is why we urged the Vietnamese government or the court to give them a lawyer.”

Josef Benedict, Asia Pacific civil space advocacy expert for rights group CIVICUS, called Wednesday’s convictions “an outrageous travesty of justice.”

“Both were targeted for their advocacy of the rights of the Khmer Krom community and should have never been brought to court,” he said.

Human Rights Watch Deputy Asia Director Phil Robertson called the charges “bogus,” saying they were designed to stop the Khmer Krom activists exercising their civil and political rights.

"Article 331 is a perfect example of the total injustice perpetrated by the government because they can use this charge to criminalize virtually anything the authorities don't like,” he said.

“The lapdog Vietnamese courts do whatever they are told to do by the ruling party, and the ordinary Khmer Krom people who stand up for their communities, their religion and their culture have no chance to escape being sent to prison.”

A Vietnamese activist, accused of “propaganda against the State” is being denied access to a lawyer, his family told Radio Free Asia.

Phan Tat Thanh, 38, has been detained since July 2023, charged under Article 117 of the criminal code.

Prosecutors say he used three Facebook accounts to post and distribute content, “propagating information and documents with distorted content, causing confusion among the people, and fabricating and defaming the Communist Party of Vietnam.”

Thanh’s family have been able to meet him twice at a police detention center in Ho Chi Minh City, the first time on Feb. 16, 2024, and the second time on March 15.

Thanh told them that after a detention order expired police investigators issued a second order which lasted until Feb. 7.

Even though the police finished their investigation and transferred the case file to the City Procuracy, Thanh said he had not been allowed to meet the lawyer – Tran Dinh Dung – his family hired for him.

“Lawyer Dung went through all the procedures to request access to the files and contact Thanh. He doesn’t understand why the Procuracy and Security Investigation Department were completely silent and did not respond to him,” Thanh’s father Phan Tat Chi said on Wednesday.

The law states that defense lawyers should be allowed to participate in legal proceedings after the investigation has finished, even in cases relating to alleged violations of national security.

It also stipulates that lawyers are allowed to access documents related to the defense after the end of the investigation in order to take notes and make copies.

Ha Huy Son of the Hanoi Bar Association told RFA lawyers can file a complaint, asking the Procuracy to explain the reason for not allowing the lawyer to contact the client, and can use this to prove prosecutors failed to follow the correct procedures.

Thanh told his father investigators couldn’t find any evidence to convict him and didn’t appear to have any documents to support their case.

He also said he had been beaten by many of the policemen at the detention center.

RFA called the Ho Chi Minh City Procuracy to ask about Mr. Thanh’s case. The person on the phone said the reporter needed to come to the agency, or send a text in order to receive a reply.

Phan Tat Thanh is one of six Facebookers arrested on charges of “anti-state propaganda” last year.

Vietnamese authorities on Thursday arrested and charged two Facebook bloggers for “abusing democratic freedoms to infringe the interests of the state” for posting comments about the handling of a case of a death row inmate, Vietnamese media reported.

The Security Investigation Agency of the Binh Duong provincial police charged Nguyen Duc Du and Hoang Quoc Viet under Article 331 of Vietnam’s Penal Code, saying their social media posts about death row inmate Ho Duy Hai being unjustly sentenced had insulted judiciary agencies.

Their cases bring to five the number of people who have been prosecuted under Article 331, a law that rights groups say authorities regularly use to suppress dissent or criticism of the government.

Authorities arrested and temporarily detained Du, 48, while they banned Viet, 46, from leaving his residential area. Both live in Binh Duong province in southern Vietnam.

The Public Security Ministry’s People’s Public Security Newspaper reported that police said Du and Viet published many social media posts with content that distorted, slandered and defamed agencies and individuals – without specifying the content of their posts.

The prosecution of the two bloggers also illustrates the lengths that authorities will go to to silence critics for comments they made or social media posts they wrote in the past.

Nguyen Van Dai, who used to work as a lawyer in Hanoi for many years, said social media platforms have been full of information defending and demanding justice for Ho Duy Hai since 2008.

Hai was arrested in March 2008 and convicted nine months later of robbery and the murder of two postal employees in Long An province. He was sentenced to five years in prison for the theft and given the death penalty for the murders, despite a lack of crucial evidence and irregularities in how the case was handled.

In 2020, the Supreme People’s Court rejected a request by the Supreme People’s Procuracy to reinvestigate the case, prompting Hai’s family members to petition lawmakers over his death sentence. That petition has not been addressed, and Hai, now 39, is still on death row.

The prosecution of Du and Viet is a crackdown on freedom of speech and was carried out to serve the political purposes of several officials in the judiciary system, Dai said.

“The arrest and detention of the two individuals who posted information concerning the Ho Duy Hai case on social media is nothing more than suppression, as the information [they posted] has been available for a long time,” Dai said.

Numerous democratic countries and human rights groups have called on Hanoi to repeal or amend Article 331, along with Article 117, arguing they are abused to stifle dissent.

In a separate case, Le Thanh Lam, wife of political prisoner Bui Tuan Lam, also known as “Spring Onion Bae,” wrote on her Facebook account that police in Da Nang had fined her and seized the foods that she sold to make a living, claiming that these goods did not have proper invoices declaring their origins. After her husband was arrested and imprisoned, Thanh Lam, a mother of three, started to sell local snacks and condiments on social media to earn extra income.

However, on Feb. 2, a market inspection team of the Da Nang Police Department approached Lam when she delivered goods to a customer, confiscating all her products worth about 2 million dong ($82). On Feb. 19, the inspection department summoned Lam, fining her another 1.5 million dong for “selling undocumented goods.”

Thanh Lam believed the police had selectively targeted her because her husband, Bui Tuan Lam, is a political prisoner. She said that after she was forcefully taken to a police station for trying to attend the public trial of her husband in May 2023, a Da Nang public security officer pointed his finger at her face, telling her that he would not leave her and her daughters alone, implying that the police would continue to intimidate and harass them due to their peaceful resistance.

Human rights lawyer Dang Dinh Manh on Feb. 20 wrote on social media that Ngo Oanh Phuong, an influential Facebook user, had been banned from traveling abroad and that she had been summoned by the Ho Chi Minh City Police Department for posting information critical of the conglomerate Vingroup.

According to Manh, Phuong, a businesswoman with thousands of followers on her Facebook account, often engages in charity work and raises concerns on different social issues. Phuong learned she was prohibited from traveling outside Vietnam in early October last year when she boarded a flight at Tan Son Nhat Airport in Ho Chi Minh City.

Later, the Security Investigation Agency of Ho Chi Minh City Police summoned Phuong twice for questioning, on Jan. 19 and Jan. 30, stating that they had received a defamation complaint filed against her by Vingroup. Manh added that he could not access Phuong’s Facebook account, which she used as a platform to publish opinions and commentaries criticizing the business model of Vingroup - a crony conglomerate owned by Vietnam’s richest man, Pham Nhat Vuong.

Previously, in Dec. 2023, Tran Mai Son, a social media commentator known by his pen name “Sonnie Tran,” was allegedly detained by the Ho Chi Minh Police Department for days for questioning about his criticisms of the company. The account “Sonnie Tran” has over 3,000 followers on Facebook.

Son, an ardent critic of VinFast, the automobile subsidiary of Vingroup, frequently inquires about the company’s finances and suggests that it uses shell companies to hide debt and inflate its sales figures. Anonymous sources told VOA News that following the detention, the police confiscated all of Son’s electronic devices, interrogated him for 35 hours over four separate days, and threatened to charge him with Article 331 for “abusing democratic freedoms.”

In 2021, VinFast reported Tran Van Hoang, a customer and a local YouTuber, to the police after he posted a video complaining about the quality of his VinFast vehicle on his YouTube account. The company said Hoang’s complaints were made up to hurt its reputation, and its lawyers had “sufficient grounds to prove it is not just a normal complaint.” The Vietnam-owned automaker added that if a similar incident occurred when operating in the United States, they “will also submit a request to the authorities in accordance with local law.”

Trinh Thi Nhung, the wife of Bui Van Thuan, told Project88 that during the Tet holidays she was suddenly summoned to the police station on Feb. 16 without a reason. Once there, they showed her a Facebook account using her name but which had been created only one day earlier; the account contained posts that could potentially be deemed “anti-state propaganda.” She denied it was hers and refused to sign an affidavit. Since that day, the police have allegedly been posting men around her house. She reported that unknown men wearing face masks have also been following her and her young child everywhere. At night, they even allegedly asked her neighbors to shine their lights on her house “all through the night.”

Activist Trinh Dinh Hoa reported to Project88 that he was abducted on Jan. 30 and interrogated for hours by Hanoi police. Three days earlier, while on his delivery route near the Ministry of Public Security, Hoa saw a large group of land rights protesters and stopped to take some photos, which he later posted on social media. On the day he was abducted, he got a delivery order to an address next to the police station of Buoi Ward. As soon as he got there, he was allegedly forced by a group of non-uniformed police into the station for questioning. Hoa was kept there from 11:30 a.m. until 2 p.m. The police focused their questioning on three videos he had posted about police abuse in 2016, the BOT protests in 2018, and a public gathering near Ho Chi Minh’s tomb in 2021. Before releasing Hoa, they asked him to sign an affidavit admitting that the Facebook account “Hoa DT” belonged to him, which he refused to do.

Trinh Dinh Hoa became an activist in 2015 when he participated in a memorial for soldiers killed by the Chinese Navy at Johnson Reef in 1988. In 2016, he joined protests for protection of trees in Hanoi and later against the Formosa environmental disaster. Then in 2018, he became actively involved in the nationwide protests against the proposed Cybersecurity Law. During those years, Hoa also attended–or tried to attend–the trials of other activists. In 2017, he was beaten by police and had his ID card and phone confiscated outside the courthouse where Tran Thi Nga was sentenced to eight years in prison for disseminating “anti-state propaganda.” During the Dong Tam trials in 2019, his home was monitored by police for an entire week. Hoa also participated in the translating of two books – one about the Formosa incident and the other about anti-democratic elections in Vietnam. Since 2019, however, Hoa has remained low-key and works as a deliveryman for a restaurant in Hanoi.

The Security Investigation Agency of the Ho Chi Minh City Police Department has issued a third summons for Ngo Thi Oanh Phuong, an influential Facebook user and a critic of conglomerate Vingroup, saying that they received a defamation complaint filed against her by Vingroup, according to a recent Facebook posting of human rights lawyer Dang Dinh Manh.

Previously, Manh wrote on social media that the police had twice summoned Phuong, also known by her Facebook name Phuong Ngo, on Jan. 19 and Jan. 30. In the third summons, dated Feb. 26, they told her to come to the security investigation headquarters on March 4 to question her relations with Tran Mai Son, another critic of Vingroup, and to resolve the defamation report submitted by the conglomerate.

Manh said that Phuong did not come to the previous questioning sessions because she said she was busy. He suggested that if she were absent this time, the investigation agency would issue a warrant to search for her, similar to the warrants the Long An Provincial Police Department filed against him and other human rights lawyers, Nguyen Van Mieng and Dao Kim Lan, last year.

According to Manh, no legal provisions allow Vietnamese investigators to search for people who do not respond to summons. Attorneys Manh, Mieng, and Lan fled to the United States late last year after Long An Provincial Police issued warrants to search for them after they were accused of violating Article 331 of the Penal Code, which concerns “abusing democratic freedoms.”

The Hanoi Police Department on Feb. 29 detained and searched the house of activist and blogger Nguyen Chi Tuyen to investigate his alleged engagement in “distributing anti-state propaganda,” a violation of Article 117 of the Penal Code.

Nguyen Thi Anh Tuyet, Tuyen’s wife, confirmed her husband's detention on the same day, adding that he would be held at Hanoi Detention Center No. 2 for four months during the investigation period. The police also confiscated his cell phone, a laptop, and some of his handwritten notes.

Tuyet said that the previous afternoon, her husband received a summons from the Hanoi Police Department to come in for questioning, but he declined to go because he felt unwell. Last January, the police sent Tuyen a notice informing him that he was prohibited from traveling outside Vietnam.

Tuyen, who is also known by his blog name “Anh Chi,” is a renowned environmental activist, blogger, and human rights defender who often participated in demonstrations against China’s excursions in Vietnam’s maritime territories. He also established two YouTube channels, Anh Chí Râu Đen and AC Media, that discuss social issues in Vietnam and report on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Because of his activism, Tuyen became a target of harassment and surveillance by Vietnamese security. In 2015, he was hospitalized after being beaten by strangers, possibly plainclothes police.

Independent journalist and former political prisoner Nguyen Vu Binh has been arrested again. On the morning of Feb. 29, the 56-year-old Binh was summoned to the police headquarters in Hanoi to discuss the YouTube channel TNT Media Live, which he and lawyer Nguyen Van Dai (currently in exile) worked on together from 2021 to 2022. After the meeting with the police, Binh was taken back to his apartment where the police formally arrested him and searched his residence. Nguyen Thi Phong, his sister, who witnessed the arrest, told Project88 that when she went to the police station on March 4 to retrieve Binh’s motorbike, she was told verbally that he had been charged with conducting “anti-state propaganda” under Article 117. She said she was not shown anything in writing. The police said Binh will be held at Detention Center No.1 in Hanoi for four months while they investigate his case.

Four months is the maximum amount of time by law that authorities can detain a suspect; however, they can file for multiple extensions which can stretch the detention period to years, as has happened to many political prisoners in the past. Phong said that her brother had been “invited” to visit the police many times in the past year. She added that it was thus reasonable to assume that the police have been following his activities for some time now, and that the need to “investigate” Binh was just a legal fig leaf in order to detain him for as long as the law allows. Binh is no stranger to the Ministry of Public Security. He worked for The Communist Magazine for 10 years before joining RFA in the early 2000s. He was convicted in September 2002 and sentenced to seven years in prison for “espionage” – that is, for exposing the party’s dirty secrets. Under international pressure, Binh was released early in 2007. He was awarded the Hellman-Hammett Prize by Human Rights Watch in 2002 and again in 2007 for his courageous activism.

Vietnam police have been summoning the wives of political prisoners for questioning over the past week, leading one lawyer to suggest that the Ministry of Public Security has launched a new harassment campaign against relatives of prisoners of conscience.

According to information obtained by Radio Free Asia, police summoned the wives of four prisoners this week: Trinh Thi Nhung, wife of Bui Van Thuan; Le Thi Ha, wife of Dang Dang Phuoc; Do Thi Thu, wife of Trinh Ba Phuong; and Nguyen Thi Tinh, wife of Nguyen Nang Tinh.

The women were questioned about their social media activities.

They also summoned Nguyen Thi Mai, daughter of female prisoner Nguyen Thi Tam.

The five prisoners are serving sentences of between five and 10 years, all for the crime of “propaganda against the state.”

On Tuesday, police also summoned Le Thi Kieu Oanh, wife of former prisoner Pham Minh Hoang, following her trip to France to see her husband.

In 2017, Hoang was stripped of his Vietnamese citizenship and deported after serving a 17-month prison sentence for “activities aimed at overthrowing the government.”

Questioned about Facebook Trinh Thi Nhung was summoned for questioning by the Nghi Son Town Police in Thanh Hoa province on Wednesday morning.

They said they believed she had used the Facebook account “Nhung Trinh” to sign a petition calling for the release of human rights activist Nguyen Thuy Hanh, who has cancer and is being held in a secure mental facility.

Nhung told the police the account was not hers and refused to sign a statement.

Do Thi Thu was asked to visit Ha Dong District Police in Hanoi on Thursday, also in connection with Facebook but she refused.

“I’m not going to meet them there because they've invited me so many times about the same thing,” she said.

“The investigator asked me if the [Thu Do] Facebook account was mine.

“They told me not to share articles related to prisoners of conscience.”

Le Thi Ha was summoned by the Internal Security Department of Dak Lak Provincial Police.

They asked her to come in on Thursday to provide information about her use of social media. She told RFA she would attend even though she doesn’t have a Facebook account.

“I find it annoying,” she told RFA Vietnamese. “It affects my job because I work all day at school and have no time to rest.”

Human rights lawyer Nguyen Van Miem wrote on Facebook, "There seems to be a campaign to harass the wives of prisoners of conscience."

Josef Benedict, Asia Pacific civil space advocacy expert for rights group CIVICUS also criticized Vietnam for harassing families of political prisoners.

"The Vietnamese government must halt the shameful and vindictive campaign of harassment against the wives of political prisoners for their social media posts,” he said.

“Prisoners’ families should not be targeted simply because they seek justice for their loved ones .

Instead they should be able to exercise their basic right to freedom of expression peacefully without fear of reprisal.”

According to Amnesty International, Vietnam currently has more than 250 political prisoners.

Hanoi always claims it has no political prisoners, only those convicted of crimes.

A court in Vietnam’s Soc Trang province has sentenced an ethnic Khmer Krom man to three-and-a-half years in prison for “abusing democratic freedoms” under Article 331 of the country’s criminal code, state-controlled media reported.

Prosecutors said Wednesday that Danh Minh Quang, 34, used his personal Facebook account to post comments and live-stream videos which “violated Vietnam laws.”

Quang set up the account in Dec. 2018 and the prosecution claimed that from 2021 to July 2023 there were 51 comments, photos and videos that had “contents that were negative, propaganda and distorted realities for defaming the honor and dignity of State officials.”

Quang was arrested by Soc Trang Provincial Police on July 31, 2023 along with Thach Chuong and To Hoang Chuong.

All three were prosecuted on charges of “abusing democratic freedoms to infringe on State interests, legitimate rights and interests of organizations and individuals.”

Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch , called for authorities to drop all charges against Quang and immediately release him.

“The government of Soc Trang province shamelessly trampled on the right of freedom of expression and retaliated against a citizen for simply stating his politically independent views on social media,” Robertson said in a statement on Feb. 11.

“The National Assembly of Vietnam should urgently amend the penal code and repeal rights-abused articles, including Aticle 331, which is systematically being used by the Vietnamese government to violate rights of ordinary people across the country,” he said.

Nearly 1.3-million Khmer Krom live in a part of Vietnam that was once southeastern Cambodia. They have faced serious restrictions on freedom of expression, assembly and movement.

In August last year, community members living in the U.S. organized a demonstration in front of the Vietnamese Embassy in Washington DC to protest the policy of oppressing the Khmer Krom people and demanding the release of the three men.

Prison authorities have refused to sell jailed Vietnamese prisoner of conscience Tran Huynh Duy Thuc food from the facility’s canteen, a week after he voluntarily ended a hunger strike, members of his family said Wednesday.

Convicted in 2010 on charges of plotting to overthrow the government, Thuc is serving a 16-year sentence for writing online articles criticizing Vietnam’s one-party communist state.

Thuc is now in the final year of his sentence, counting the time of his detention in 2009, and is in poor health. He has staged other hunger strikes in the past to protest conditions at Prison No. 6 in Nghe An province. He began his latest hunger strike on Jan. 27.

In Vietnam, prisoners are fed basic prison food, but can also buy higher quality food from the canteen, and inmates are allowed to receive non-perishable food from their families. But it’s not unusual for jail authorities to deprive political prisoners of canteen food, hot water, medicine and outside health care as a means of further punishment.

Thuc ended his hunger strike on Feb. 2 after canteen workers finally sold him something to eat. But a week later, they again refused to sell him food, saying that he had exceeded the monthly limit for purchases, even though he had not bought enough to meet his dietary needs, his relatives told Radio Free Asia, two days after a prison visit on Feb. 12.

Canteen workers said Thuc purchases exceeded the monthly limit of 1.7 million dong (US$70), and he could only buy more food beginning in March, according to his family.

Thuc has only one package of instant noodles and about 8 kilograms (18 pounds) of other food his relatives gave him on Monday.

Tran Huynh Duy Tan, Thuc’s younger brother, said the family was happy when Thuc ended his hunger strike, but now they are worried about the possibility that he will resume it. They also expressed concern that the food they gave him will only last a few days.

“The family is very worried that he will continue to not have enough food,” Tan said. “He said he would continue to protest by going on another hunger strike if the prison continued to mistreat him, as it is doing now.”

RFA was unable to reach prison officials for comment.

During his recent hunger strike, Thuc became exhausted and lost consciousness, his family said. He also complained of being constantly cold, although he had not complained previously about the winter weather in Nghe An.

Thuc’s family called on Vietnamese authorities as well as human rights organizations and the governments of democratic countries to pressure the prison to stop treating Thuc harshly.

Prison authorities have continued to restrict access to hot water for Thuc and his cellmate, fellow political prisoner Dang Dinh Bach, Thuc’s relatives said.

Bach, a lawyer and the director of the environmental group that had been campaigning to reduce Vietnam’s reliance on coal, was arrested in July 2021 and sentenced to five years for “tax evasion.”

When the warden said Thuc could only exchange instant noodles for boiling water because the amount of water was limited, Thuc refused, his family said.

The correctional authorities of Gia Trung Prison in Gia Lai Province have disciplined prisoner of conscience Truong Van Dung for allegedly insulting prison personnel. Dung’s wife, Nghiem Thi Hop, told Radio Free Asia (RFA) about his punishment. Dung is serving a six-year prison sentence on accusations of “distributing anti-state propaganda,” a violation of Article 117 in Vietnam’s Penal Code.

According to Gia Trung Prison, Dung will not be allowed visitations or to receive supplies and handwritten mail from his family for a month, starting from Jan. 16. Hop said she was worried about Dung as the Lunar New Year, a national holiday in Vietnam, was approaching. The prison added that after the punishment concludes on Feb. 17, Dung can only see his family once every two months, instead of once a month, until he is “progressively rehabilitated.”

On Jan. 3, Dung’s family sent some gifts to him in prison, including a poster prepared by the Viet Tan Party, which is deemed a “terrorist organization” by the Vietnamese government. The organization named Dung the recipient of its 2023 Le Dinh Luong Human Rights Award. When the parcel containing the poster arrived a week later, the warden examined it and then refused to let Dung receive it. A tense argument broke out between him and the correctional officers, leading to disciplinary action.

According to a notice from Gia Trung Prison dated Jan. 17, Truong Van Dung was disciplined for “insulting the honor and dignity of others,” but they did not elaborate on what he said. On Nov. 9, 2023, Dung was transferred from An Diem Prison in Quang Nam Province to Gia Trung Prison in Gia Lai Province, hundreds of miles from his home in Hanoi. The Vietnamese authorities often send human rights activists to prisons far from their homes to make it difficult for family members to visit them often.

A Vietnam court in Phu Yen Province on Jan. 26 sentenced Nay Y Blang, a Rhade religious activist, to four and a half years in prison on charges of “abusing democratic freedoms” for allegedly holding unauthorized spiritual services in his home, state media reported. Blang did not have a lawyer defending him.

Blang, 48, was arrested on May 18, 2023, for his alleged engagement in the Central Highlands Evangelical Church of Christ, an indigenous religious organization that the Vietnamese government has banned. According to the state media, the Rhade religious activist has “admitted his wrongdoing and has asked for leniency.”

The Communist authorities in Vietnam have called this Protestant group a “foreign-based reactionary organization” that purportedly seeks to “incite ethnic minority groups in the Central Highlands and the surrounding areas to erode the national solidarity bloc, trigger secession, and promote the establishment of a separate state.” The indictment of Blang said that from the end of 2019 to 2022, he used his private home in Phu Yen to gather key figures of this religious sect for meetings and prayer sessions and hosted other online Christian fellowships.

Pastor Aga, the North Carolina-based founder of the Protestant sect, told RFA that his group is purely religious and that they do not conduct any anti-state activities nor attempt to establish a separate state. “We just want to express our religious beliefs, our religion, to worship God and follow the religion that suits us while still following the laws of the Vietnamese government,” Pastor Aga said.

Prisoner of conscience Nguyen Nhu Phuong told his family that he coughed up blood and had suffered pain after being assaulted by the correctional officers of the Ba Ria - Vung Tau Provincial Police Detention Camp in Long Dien District, according to Phuong’s mother, Nguyen Thi Thu Ha. In 2022, two Vietnamese courts sentenced Phuong to a sentence of six years and three months on combined charges of “distributing anti-state propaganda” and “storing and using narcotics.”

Ha told RFA that the assaults began on Nov. 20, 2023, after she visited the detention camp and gave her son two shirts. However, Phuong said he did not receive them even though the shirts were shown in the gift receipt record. After that, he went to meet the correctional officers to ask them about these items, but the officer reportedly cursed and beat him.

Phuong told Ha that a correctional officer named Nhat used a glass bottle to hit him in the face, and then several other officers rushed in to beat him and lock him in an isolated room. Ha added that her son was also punished by not being allowed family visits in December 2023. When she called Nhat to question the beating of her son, the officer allegedly admitted that the beating happened, but it was because Phuong "spoke rudely" to him and asked her to forgive the beating.

Ha told RFA that on Jan. 8, she went directly to the Ba Ria - Vung Tau Provincial Police Detention Camp to inquire about the incident. A detention supervisor named Luan apologized to her and asked her not to make a big deal of this incident. The officer named Nhat and the provincial detention camp did not immediately respond to RFA reporters' request to verify the incident.

Police in Hanoi have detained a former member of a YouTube channel on which videos about those who had suffered injustices were posted, his wife told Radio Free Asia on Tuesday.

Authorities apprehended Phan Van Bach, a former member of the CHTV channel, an independent television channel on YouTube specializing in social injustice issues, from his home in the capital’s Dong Da district on Dec. 29. They have held him for five days without informing his family, his spouse Nguyen Thi Lieu said.

Bach, 48, was involved in the channel from 2017 to 2019, according to Vu Manh Tuan, another CHTV member who now lives in Nha Trang city.

“Bach did not focus on any particular subjects,” he told RFA. “He used to conduct talks in an improvisational way. He used to talk about the bad things of the regime and society. Then, Bach announced he was quitting CHTV.”

It is common for security forces in the one-party communist state to detain activists for days of interrogation before publicly disclosing their arrest warrants and charges.

Lieu said her husband was home alone at the time of his arrest, and before leaving with authorities, gave his house keys to a police officer in charge of the residential area to hand over to his family.

That officer told Lieu that city police searched their home but confiscated nothing.

“The neighborhood police officer said that my husband had been ‘invited’ to a meeting by the city police,” Lieu said. “I went there [to city police headquarters] the next day to ask about my husband, but the staff said I’d better just leave my phone number, and their agency would contact me later.”

As of Tuesday, the family had not received any updates from police.

No word

During the past few days, Lieu dropped by city police headquarters multiple times only to receive the same response. She said she didn’t know why police were still holding her husband.

“Previously, they summoned him for meetings several times but let him return home on the same day,” she said. “However, this time [is different].”

RFA could not reach the neighborhood police officer for comment.

A staffer at the Hanoi police hotline said the service did not have information about Bach’s detention.

Bach participated in several peaceful demonstrations in Hanoi, including protests against China’s aggressive activities in the South China Sea since 2011, tree cutting in 2015, and the environmental disaster caused by a toxic waste spill that affected Vietnam’s central coastal area in 2016.

He also spoke up against government crackdowns on political dissidents, supported people facing injustice via Facebook, and took part in campaigns demanding the release of detained activists.

Founded by prisoner of conscience Vu Quang Thuan, CHTV covered hot-button socioeconomic issues in Vietnam.

Thuan along with members Le Van Dung and Le Trong Hung are in prison on charges of disseminating anti-state propaganda because of their involvement in CHTV.

Former CHTV member Tuan said police also summoned and questioned him about the YouTube channel, but released him the same day.

When visiting friends and some activists in the Central Highland province of Lam Dong in late December 2018, Bach was injured during a beating by local security forces, and then forced to return to Hanoi, said activist Pham The Luc.

In recent years, Bach worked with a company that sends Vietnamese people abroad as guest workers, according to information on his Facebook account.

Former political prisoner Pham Thanh Nghien, who emigrated to the United States with her husband earlier this year, reported that HCMC Police have surrounded their former neighborhood, Loc Hung Vegetable Garden in Binh Thanh District, which for years has been a contentious flashpoint against land-grabbing by the authorities. Since Dec. 6, work trucks have been bringing dirt, sand and other construction material to the site. Ambulances, fire trucks and frequency-jamming vehicles have been stationed in two schools near the area. All roads going in and out are monitored and controlled by police. Several people who live right outside Loc Hung have also been ordered not to leave their homes.

Political prisoner Nguyen Ngoc Anh’s wife, Nguyen Thi Chau, continues to be “invited” by Ben Tre provincial police in Binh Dai County to “receive guidance on fire prevention for small businesses and other related matters.” The latest “invitation” was on Dec. 8, with the previous one delivered on Dec. 4. Chau told the police to stop sending her these invitations because it causes her stress and she would not comply the next time.

The Internal Political Security Department of the Tra Vinh Provincial Police on Dec. 23 said it had issued a fine to Thach Tha, 56, and Kim Vu Linh, 33, both Khmer residents of Tra Cu District, Tra Vinh Province, for allegedly “posting and sharing false information” to “distort, slander and insult the reputation of government agencies and organizations,” according to the official announcement.

The Tra Vinh Provincial Police concluded that since 2022, Thach Tha had used his personal Facebook account to participate in online discussions organized by groups deemed as “reactionary,” which, according to Vietnamese authorities, share distorted information about the history of the southern region and seek to divide the “great national unity bloc.”

One specific incident occurred on Nov. 24, when Thach Tha shared on his personal Facebook account a 7:29-minute video clip from a social media page that allegedly accused the authorities of Vinh Long Province and its police forces of using brute force to crack down on religious freedom. The Tra Vinh Police Newspaper stated that during the questioning regarding the online posting on Dec. 21, Thach Tha admitted that the content in the video clip was “untrue.”

Meanwhile, the police alleged that Kim Vu Linh, another Khmer resident of Tra Vinh, on Aug. 27, 2022, live streamed on his Facebook account, Nhatliinh Kimvulinh, a 7:47-minute video clip with content that was considered “untrue, distorted, and insulting.” On Dec. 19, Linh was called in for a questioning session by the police, in which he reportedly admitted that the livestream content in the video clip was false and agreed to remove the video. The police did not comment on the content of the video Linh published on his social media.

Thach Tha and Kim Vu Linh received a fine of 7.5 million dong ($309) each for their alleged violations of Decree No. 15/2020/ND-CP issued by the government, which criminalized the activities of publishing “false information” on the internet.

Vietnamese human rights activist Lù A Da was arrested by Thai Royal Police at his rental home near Bangkok on Dec. 7, his wife said.

His arrest comes two weeks after he publicly denounced the Vietnamese government’s “systematic suppression of H’mong communities in Vietnam.”

“Last Thursday, the police arrested him and took him away while he and our daughter were washing a vehicle,” Lù’s wife Giang Thi A told Radio Free Asia.

“He’s now being held in a police station. If we pay 10,000 Thai baht, he will be transferred to the IDC [the Immigration Detention Center],” she said.

Giang explained that the 10,000 baht (US$280) bail is an administrative fee levied on Lù for having entered Thailand illegally in 2020.

If Giang does not pay the fee, her husband will have to remain detained at the police station for 20 days before being transferred to the IDC, she said.

RFA contacted the Thai Royal Police about his case, but has yet to receive a response.

Missionary and activist

Before arriving in Thailand, Lù worked as a missionary and preacher at the Northern Evangelical Church of Vietnam. He also served as the head of the H’mong Human Rights Coalition.

Lù fled to Thailand with his family in 2020 to escape ethnic and religious persecution and seek official refugee status from the UNHCR. His wife told RFA that their family has applied for refugee status twice since first arriving in Thailand.

Their first application was rejected, and their appeal – filed in March– has not yet been processed by the UNHCR, the U.N. refugee agency.

Because they have not been officially recognized as refugees by the UNHCR, Lù, Giang, and their two children now face being deported back to Vietnam.

Although Thai police have yet to issue an official statement on the case, Lù was likely arrested for denouncing Vietnam’s “systematic suppression of ethnic and religious minorities” in a video released by Boat People SOS, a U.S.-based advocacy group for Vietnamese refugees.

“Tens of thousands of H’mong people in Vietnam are not granted identification and birth and marriage certificates,” Lù stated in the video.

“As a result, children cannot go to school, adults cannot work, and seniors are not entitled to healthcare assistance provided by the government like others from the dominant ethnic group.”

The BPSOS video was released on Nov. 29 as a preview to the UN’s upcoming review of Vietnam’s implementation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. The findings of the U.N. review were officially released on Dec. 8.

Asylum-seekers in Thailand

As of December 2023, there are more than 1,000 H’mong asylum seekers living in Thailand, the H’mong Human Rights Coalition reports.

Because Thailand has not signed the International Convention on Refugees, Thai police can arrest asylum seekers without providing any justification.

In late November, Thai police arrested 11 members of the Montagnard ethnic minority in a raid near Bangkok. As of Dec. 13, they have not yet been released from detention at the IDC.

Like the H’mong minority, roughly 1,500 Vietnamese Montagnards have sought freedom from persecution in Thailand.

After her husband’s arrest, Giang Thi A sought assistance from the Center for Asylum Protection, or CAP, in Bangkok.

“Yesterday, an attorney there said that they would be paying the fine for my husband today so that the police could send him to the IDC right away,” she told RFA.

“After being transferred to the IDC, the attorney could talk to the Thai police to see how much money they would need [to bail him out].”

The head of CAP said that the organization was working with the UNHCR office in Bangkok to support Lù A Da.

He explained that individuals who are in the process of applying for or have already been granted UNHCR refugee status can be released from the IDC provided that they post a 50,000 baht bail.

RFA reached out to the UNHCR in Bangkok to seek information about Lù’s case, but the organization responded that they “can not provide applicants’ personal information.”

Former Vietnamese political prisoners and relatives of prisoners say police are monitoring their homes with surveillance cameras and they believe hackers may be planning to sell the images on social media.

Recently, state-controlled media have run a number of reports about hacker groups selling accounts that allow people to access hundreds of cameras in bedrooms, bathrooms, student dorms, spas and massage parlors.

One group posted an advertisement on the Telegram messaging network claiming: "The group specializes in hacking videos from super hidden cameras of families and facilities in Vietnam. They are hidden and offer hot scenes of families," according to the VnExpress news site.

Dissidents and relatives of political prisoners are doubly concerned, saying police are already monitoring their every move with cameras pointing at their homes.

Le Thi Ha is the wife of former Dak Lak Pedagogical College music lecturer Dang Dang Phuoc. He was sentenced to eight years in prison in June, accused of “propaganda against the state.”

She lives in Dak Lak province’s Buon Ma Thuot city. On Monday, she told Radio Free Asia the police were spying on her.

“Neighbors secretly told me that local police installed cameras on Dec. 15. The camera was installed on the neighbor's porch across from my house and pointed directly at my house," Ha said.

“I don't know whether images from the camera will be posted online or used for some other purpose. But having a camera pointed directly at my house violates my privacy and shows that they want to closely monitor my daily schedule."

RFA Vietnamese called the Tan Loi Ward police to ask about the camera but the person who answered the phone asked the reporter to go to the agency's headquarters. RFA also called the Dak Lak provincial police department to ask about the incident but no one answered the phone.

Nguyen Thi Chau, wife of prisoner Nguyen Ngoc Anh, told RFA that the police of Binh Dai district in Ben Tre province installed two cameras pointing directly at her house several years ago, after her husband was arrested and charged with "conducting anti-state propaganda.”

On Monday she told RFA the police had ignored her concerns about the cameras.

“When I complained to the local police, they said the cameras were installed to prevent crimes,” she said. “I asked them not to point them at my house and they promised to fix it, but they didn't fix it and just kept monitoring my family for the past three years."

Concerned about the invasion of privacy, Nguyen Thi Chau tried to disable or reduce the ability of the two cameras pointed at her home by putting a black grille over the gate and fence.

RFA reporters repeatedly called Binh Dai district Police to ask about the cameras but no one answered.

Former political prisoners face the same surveillance as the families of current prisoners. Le Quy Loc was released in early September after a five year prison sentence for "disturbing security" and is currently serving two years’ probation in Truong Quang Trong ward, Quang Ngai city. He told RFA that his gate now has a camera pointed at it.

This camera was installed in the house of a neighbor who works as a police officer about 10 days before he left the prison.

When he questioned the neighbor, he was told the camera was for the purpose of preventing theft, not aimed at former political prisoners.

However, he said the local police recently went to his house and planned to install a new camera near his house.

National monitoring system

In February 2021, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh approved a project of the Ministry of Public Security with a budget of VND 2.15 trillion (US$90 million) to install surveillance cameras and traffic command and control equipment across the country. The plan has now been taken up at a local level.

On Dec. 13, the Dak Lak Electronic Newspaper reported that the chairman of Buon Ma Thuot City People's Committee Vu Van Hung had announced plans to install over 100 security cameras in the city, including some with facial recognition, for security and order reasons. Buon Ma Thuot city has already installed 454 cameras in wards and communes. They will be connected to the surveillance center of the ward and commune police, the city police and the Provincial Smart Urban Operation Monitoring Center.

Vietnamese law has provisions to protect personal information. Article 38 of the 2015 Civil Code regulates the right to protect private life, personal secrets, and family secrets. According to the law, the collection, storage, use, and disclosure of information related to private life and personal secrets must be approved by the person concerned.

Article 21 of the Vietnamese Constitution stipulates: everyone is entitled to the inviolability of personal privacy, personal secrecy and familial secrecy and has the right to protect his or her honor and prestige. Information regarding personal privacy, personal secrecy and familial secrecy is safely protected by the law.

However, local security forces often send policemen to guard and monitor social events or visits by high-ranking foreign officials and the growing use of security cameras means that political activists and their families feel that the state is constantly watching them.

A Vietnamese court on Monday sentenced a man to eight years in prison for his Facebook posts in a trial with no defense lawyers that lasted only two hours.

The An Giang People’s Court found Nguyen Hoang Nam, 41, a member of the Hoa Hao Buddhist community, guilty of “disseminating, propagandizing information, materials against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam” in violation of Article 117 of Vietnam’s Penal Code, a law that is often criticized by rights activists to be a vaguely written tool that the government uses to silence dissent.

“It was only my husband and I in the courtroom. Witnesses did not come,” Nam’s wife Lam Thi Yen Trinh told RFA Vietnamese. “They were invited [by the court], but it costs hundreds of thousands of dong (tens of U.S. dollars) to travel to the court, and they couldn’t afford that.”

The indictment said Nam had used four Facebook accounts to share and disseminate images and video clips with content against the ruling Communist Party and the state, state media said.

He had live-streamed many times on his Facebook profiles to satirize and insult local authorities and regularly took photos and filmed local government employees who passed by his home, and posted the videos on social media for offense and defamation purposes, the indictment said.

During the trial, Nam denied the accusations, saying that he had only taken photos of those who often insulted and teased him, his wife said.

According to Trinh, her family signed a contract to hire an attorney from Ho Chi Minh City but the attorney was not allowed to not see Nam before the trial or participate in the trial due to a prohibition put in place by the head of the law firm. She did not know the name of the law firm and refused to disclose the attorney’s name.

Her husband pleaded innocent, disagreed with the sentence, and announced that he would make an appeal, she said.

Hoa Hoa sect

Vietnam’s government officially recognizes the Hoa Hao religion, which has some 2 million followers across the country, but imposes harsh controls on dissenting Hoa Hao groups, including the sect in An Giang province, that do not follow the state-sanctioned branch.

Rights groups say that authorities in An Giang routinely harass followers of the unapproved groups, prohibiting public readings of the Hoa Hao founder’s writings and discouraging worshipers from visiting Hoa Hao pagodas in An Giang and other provinces.

“The Vietnam government's absurd idea of what constitutes a ‘crime’ is on full display in the outrageous eight year prison sentence given to Nguyen Hoang Nam simply because he posted opinions on Facebook that the government didn't like,” Phil Robertson, Deputy Director of Human Rights Watch’s Asian Division told RFA.

“Locking people away for years for peacefully expressing views is what petty dictatorships do, and shows just how the Vietnamese government falls pathetically short in meeting its obligations to respect human rights,” Robertson said.

Robertson also called on the Vietnamese government to immediately release Mr. Nguyen Hoang Nam and “end its campaign of harassment against Hoa Hao Buddhists who refuse to come under the state's rigid control.”

The eight-year conviction of Nam for conducting ‘anti-state propaganda’ is outrageous, CIVICUS Monitor's Asia-Pacific researcher Josef Benedict told RFA via text messages. CIVICUS Monitor is a research tool that provides data on civic freedoms in 196 countries.

“It highlights the severe punishment faced by activists in Vietnam and the relentless efforts by the authorities to silence individuals who have critical or dissenting views,” said Benedict. “This is a clear violation of the country’s obligations under international human rights law. CIVICUS calls for his immediate and unconditional release.”

Benedict called on Vietnam to stop using vague laws like Article 117 to silence online criticism and live up to its status as a member of the UN Human Rights Council.

“Such actions are the reason why the CIVICUS Monitor continues to rate Vietnam’s civic space rating as ‘closed’, the worst rating a country can have.”

Nam was previously sentenced to a four-year jail term in 2018 for “disrupting public order” and “resisting officers on official duty” along with five other Hoa Hao Buddhists.

A Vietnamese court in Binh Thuy District, Can Tho City, on Dec. 6 sentenced Le Minh The, a social media user, to 30 months in prison on charges of "abusing democratic freedoms to infringe on the interests of the state and the legitimate rights and interests of other organizations and individuals," under Article 331 of the Penal Code. This is the second time he has been charged and convicted of violating Article 331.

The, 60, was arrested on Feb. 22 this year after the Department of Cyber ​​Security and High-Tech Crime Prevention and Control of Can Tho City Police found that The had allegedly used his two personal Facebook accounts, "Minh The" and "Le Minh The," to post, share and comment on articles containing content aimed at "distorting the Communist Party's guidelines and the state's laws and policies."

The police investigation agency added that The also posted livestreaming on social media, attracting anti-state critics living in Vietnam and abroad. The police alleged in a statement that those live streamings had “called for the overthrow of the government and demanded political pluralism and separation of powers in Vietnam.”

The refused his right to have a defense lawyer because he believed he was innocent, according to his family. Le Thi Nghia Tinh, his daughter, told Radio Free Asia (RFA) that the family had been informed about the trial a few days earlier. Tinh said in a message to RFA that her mother was allowed to attend the trial but was only allowed to observe the trial through a monitor in another room near the courtroom.

The Can Tho social media user was first arrested in October 2018 under Article 331. He was accused of using Facebook to "host livestreaming that contained propaganda defaming the VCP and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam." The police said his livestreaming sought to "sabotage national unity, cause divisions between the people and the party, and harm national security and social safety." He was convicted during a trial in March 2019 and was released from prison in July 2020.