Police harass information hero on Vietnam War anniversary

The authorities have gone out of their way to gag independent journalists and bloggers today, which the Communist Party is celebrating as the 40th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War and its victory over the United States. One by one, citizen-journalists and bloggers have been placed under close surveillance, subjected to intimidation and, in some cases, given beatings. House arrest measures have been reinforced and independent reporters are being prevented from covering today’s celebrations and demonstrations. Dung, who is on the Reporters Without Borders list of “information heroes,” has released the text of a letter he has written to local Communist Party secretary Le Thanh Hai and Ho Chin Minh City police chief Nguyen Chi Thanh complaining about the harassment and restrictions on free movement to which he has been subjected for months. President of the Independent Journalists Association of Vietnam (IJAVN), which was founded last year and is supported by Reporters Without Borders, Dung promotes media freedom and constantly criticizes the party’s control of the media, in which he used to work. Last year, the authorities confiscated his passport to prevent him from travelling to Geneva to participate in a UN Human Rights Council conference. “In illegally preventing me from travelling, the behaviour of the authorities constitutes living proof of how the State of Vietnam tramples on the human rights defended by the UN Human Rights Council,” Dung’s letter says. READ THE LETTER (Vietnamese) “We call on the Vietnamese police to immediately end its targeted acts of intimidation, which are completely illegal,” said Benjamin Ismail, the head of the Reporters Without Borders Asia-Pacific desk. “We also call on the international community to condemn these practices and to bring individual economic sanctions to bear against those within the Communist Party who are responsible for this persecution.” Those persecuted include Trinh Anh Tuan, a blogger known by the pseudonym of Gio Lang Thang. A few days ago, he was badly beaten by three individuals in civilian dress and had to be hospitalized. He identified his assailants as police officers who were part of the group that had been posted outside his home for months. The blogger Pham Minh Hoang was also roughed up last November by the plainclothes policemen assigned to watch his home. When the French consul rushed to the scene after being alerted by Hoang, he was attacked by the same individuals. Freedom of information is steadily worsening in Vietnam, which is ranked 175th out of 180 countries in the 2015 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index.