For
Immediate Release
Vietnam: Cultural
Revolution-Style Attacks on Rights Activist
Leading Dissident Pressured to End Government Criticism
(New York,
December 7, 2005) – Vietnamese authorities should cease its campaign of
attacks on 83-year-old democracy activist Hoang Minh Chinh, Human Rights
Watch said today.
Vietnam's international
donors should insist that the Vietnamese government cease its campaign
against the elderly dissident when they meet Wednesday in
Hanoi for their annual Consultative Group
meeting, co-chaired by the World Bank and
Vietnam's Minister
of Planning and Investment.
Hoang is a former high-ranking Vietnamese Communist Party cadre who has
become increasingly outspoken in defense of human rights. He and his wife
have been physically attacked twice during the last two weeks by
orchestrated mobs and vilified and called a "traitor" in the
government-controlled media.
“The Vietnamese government should be more mature than to sanction attacks
against an 83-year-old man whose only weapon is his words,” said Brad
Adams,
Asia director of Human Rights Watch.
“What are they afraid of?”
In August, while in the
United States for
medical treatment for prostrate cancer, Hoang made several public
statements criticizing
Vietnam's poor human
rights record and calling for democracy. He delivered a lecture at
Harvard
University and
submitted a statement to the House International Relations Committee.
In October and November, Hoang was accused of committing "treason to the
nation" in more than thirty articles in the Vietnamese state press, some
of which were read out over public address systems. In response, Hoang
filed a libel suit on October 31 against seven government newspapers.
Shortly after Hoang's return to
Vietnam in
mid-November, a police officer warned Hoang's family that he could not
guarantee Hoang's security because many people were angry about his
criticism of the government. The police did not protect those who
“betrayed” the government, the officer said to the family.
Two days later, on November 21, a mob surrounded Hoang's daughter's home
in
Ho Chi Minh City, where he was
temporarily staying to rest after his operation. One person threw a bucket
of water mixed with a chemical solution, thought by the family to be a
type of acid, over the fence, creating white smoke and fumes, burning the
seat of a motorcycle, and causing members of his daughter's family to
become ill.
On December 1, Hoang and his wife returned to their home in
Hanoi. There they were met by
another mob of close to 100 people. They surrounded Hoang and his wife,
shouting that they were traitors. The couple was pelted with tomatoes and
rotten eggs as they tried to get in the door. About 30 members of the mob
entered the courtyard of the house, smashing a window. During the incident
which lasted several hours, approximately 10 ward-level uniformed police
officers reportedly stood by without intervening.
“This crude behavior is reminiscent of China during the Cultural
Revolution, not a country that has signed onto the major human rights
treaties and receives billions in aid every year from donors including the
European Union and the United States,” said Adams. "It's time for
Vietnam to accept
that its citizens have the right to express their opinions."
Vietnam's bilateral and
multilateral donors, who pledged a record U.S. $3.4 billion to
Vietnam last year,
are scheduled to make their annual pledges Wednesday.
Hoang Minh Chinh joined the Communist Party in 1940. He was director of
the Marxist-Leninist Institute until 1967, when he was imprisoned after
writing a 200-page document entitled "Dogmatism in
Vietnam" that
criticized the Vietnamese Communist Party.
He has been imprisoned several times, for a total of 12 years from
1967-1972, from 1981-1987, and again for one year in 1995. He has also
been put under house arrest and surveillance numerous times. He has
written public appeals to
Vietnam's leaders
pressing for greater freedom of _expression, advocated the formation of an
anti-corruption association, and bravely stood outside courthouses during
the trials of fellow dissidents, talking to the media despite the presence
of police and plainclothes security officers.
“The government wants us to be frightened or afraid but if we are
frightened or afraid we just turn ourselves into speaking animals,” he
told reporters during the trial of dissident Tran Dung Tien in 2003.
For further information, please contact:
In
Brussels, Vanessa Saenen:
+32-2-737-1488
In
London, Brad Adams:
+44-20-7713-2788
In
New York, Minky Worden:
+1-212-216-1250