Vietnamese Activists Barred From Home Visit After Raid

A group of about 10 bloggers, monks, and activists were detained and beaten by police on Tuesday while trying to visit the fiancée of dissident rights lawyer Nguyen Bac Truyen following a violent police raid on the couple’s home, according to the fiancée and rights groups.  

The group was stopped en route from southern Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City to Dong Thap province, where hundreds of police had stormed the home over the weekend and dragged Truyen, who is also a former political prisoner, away for detention.

Prominent dissident blogger Bui Thi Minh Hang and the rest of the group had been going to investigate the reasons for Truyen’s arrest and comfort those close to him, according to global press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF), which said it was “shocked” by the violence.

Truyen’s fiancée Bui Thi Kim Phuong said the group, which also included two former political prisoners and fellow members of her Hoa Hao Buddhist faith, had been surrounded by police before being taken to the Lap Vo district police station.

“I heard that some friends from [Ho Chi Minh City] tried to … come see our house. On the way, they were detained and attacked by Lap Vo police,” Phuong told RFA’s Vietnamese Service.

Hang and monk Vo Van Thanh Liem had been particularly badly beaten, and someone in the group had fainted in the encounter, Phuong said.

'Appalled' by violence

RSF said plainclothes police had carried out the beatings, and that Hang’s family had not been able to reach her since her detention.

It condemned the violence, adding that the incident occurred days after Vietnam came under fire at a human rights review by the U.N. for muzzling dissent.

“We are appalled by the continuing persecution of independent news and information providers, whose most fundamental rights, including the freedom of assembly and the right to information, are being openly flouted,” said Benjamin Ismaïl, the head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk.

“By ordering these arrests, the Vietnamese government is thumbing its nose at the United Nations despite having been appointed as a member of the U.N. Human Rights Council last year and despite having undergone a Universal Periodic Review by the council only last week.”

During the raid on the couple’s house, which came eight days before their planned wedding, police fired gunshots at the home and Truyen was assaulted, blindfolded, and handcuffed before being dragged away, according to Phuong and rights groups.

Truyen was held in custody until Monday evening and has been staying at his parents’ home in Ho Chi Minh City since then.  

Truyen had previously served three and a half years in jail for “anti-state propaganda” and had faced a series of incidents of official harassment since his release in 2010.

Reported by Mac Lam for RFA’s Vietnamese Service. Written in English by Rachel Vandenbrink.