Hanoi-based Activists Continue Demonstrations to Demand for End of Gov’t-support Assaults against Local Human Rights, Democracy Campaigners

Protestors hang banner to demand end of government attacks against activists

By Vu Quoc Ngu | May 16, 2015

Many Vietnamese activists gathered in Hanoi’s center on Friday [May 15] for the second consecutive day to protest the brutal government-support attacks against local human rights and democracy advocates, according to local media.

During the two consecutive days, nearly one hundreds of activists marched in Hoan Kiem Lake, with banners to demand the communist government to stop harassments and persecutions against those who bravely have expressed their opinions on socio-economic issues and criticized wrongdoings of state officials in different levels, from the top to the grassroots one.

The demonstrators say they will continue their protests until the Vietnamese government take specific measures to stop attacking against local political dissidents and human rights campaigners.

The demonstrations started several days after Mr. Nguyen Chi Tuyen, one of leading activists, was brutally beaten by plainclothes agents with iron bar near his private house in Long Bien district.

Mr. Tuyen, an officer of a Hanoi-based publishing house, is a famous social activist. He is a leading member of the No-U, a campaign that opposes China’s violations of Vietnam’s sovereignty in the East Sea, and one of the main figures of “For Green Hanoi,” a campaign protesting Hanoi’s plan to fell 6,700 healthy aged trees in city’s main streets.

The attack against Tuyen has drawn international attentions. Diplomats from the German, U.S. and Australian Embassies came to his private house to visit him while Vietnamese-American California-based Senator Janet Nguyen urged Ambassador Ted Osius and the New York-based Human Rights Watch to take specific measures to bring the attackers to court.

The attack against Tuyen was made several weeks of that against Nguyen Anh Tuan (aka Gio Lang Thang), another active member of the green campaign which forced Hanoi’s authorities to suspend its VND270 trillion ($12.5 billion) plan aiming to replace thousands of valuable aged trees with young seedlings in city’s main streets in the 2015-2020 period.

Along imprisoning local dissidents and human rights activists with fabricated allegations based on controversial articles such as Articles 79, 88, and 258 of the Penal Code, and barring them from meeting with foreign diplomats and going abroad, Vietnam’s communist government has sent plainclothes agents or hired thugs to attack government critics in a bid to silence them.

A number of social activists have become victims of the government-support assaults, including human rights lawyers Le Quoc Quan and Nguyen Bac Truyen, labor activist Tran Thi Nga and Nguyen Hoang Vi, independent journalist Truong Minh Duc, democracy advocate Nguyen Van Dai, social activists Ha Thanh and Son Nguyen.

Many victims have reported the attacks to police which pledged to conduct investigations on these cases, however, no progress has been recorded.

Ha Nam province-based Nga , whose legs were broken by thugs last May, and was kidnapped by policemen in March, said the real attackers will not be brought to the court since they are plainclothes policemen.

Many victims have recognized that policemen who have been following them for months, were involved in these attacks.

The Vietnamese communists have ruled the country for decades, and they have vowed to keep the country under one-party regime, so they have not tolerated criticisms which may challenge their political dominance in the Southeast Asian nation.