Ngo Hao’s Family: Appeal for Help

Ngo Hao

Ngo Hao

APPEAL FOR HELP!

Phu Yen, September 01, 2013
To:
– The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
– U.S. President Barrack Obama and Democratic Governments of the World
– The Chairpersons of the Senate and the House of Representatives of the US and the Democratic Countries
– The Commission on International Religious Freedom USA
– The U.S. Embassy in Vietnam
– The Human Rights Foundations of the World
– The World’s Media
– The Overseas Vietnamese National Communities
– The Overseas Executive Board of the Hoa Hao Central Church
– Domestic news agencies and international radios RFA, VOA, BBC, RFI…
I, undersigned Nguyen Thi Kim Lan, born in 1957,
− currently residing at 17/6 Nguyen Trai Street, Ward 5, Tuy Hoa City, Phu Yen Province, Vietnam,

− Phone: +84-122-660-6052; E-mail: trung.hieu.dao2010@gmail.com),

Today, would like to report that my husband has been “temporarily” detained by the Phu Yen provincial police at the provincial detention center for the last seven months, but so far we have only very unclear information about him.

My husband, named NGO HAO, 65 years old (born in 1948), used to send e-mails to inform his friends about cases of injustice occurring in the country, especially cases of religious persecution, and to ask that his friends forward these informations to various governments and human rights organizations to petition them for an intervention. The e-mail addresses that he used are:

 trung.hieu.dao2008@gmail.com,
− dao.hieu.trung2010@gmail.com.

From left to right: Thich Nhat Ban, Thich Thien Minh and Ngo Hao

From left to right: Thich Nhat Ban, Thich Thien Minh and Ngo Hao

On Feb 08, 2013 (i.e. two days before the Lunar New Year), my husband was invited to the police station “to work” (i.e. to be interrogated). The reason they gave was that my husband had written articles on the Internet against the Communist Party and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. At first I thought the police only invited him for questioning as they had done many times before. But at 9:00am of the same day, my son, Ngo Minh Tam, was called to the police station. When he came back, my son informed me that my husband had been arrested; this news was so sudden and badly foreboding that I became extremely stunned and scared.

It should be said that before my husband’s arrestation, both he and my son had been invited by the police for a month of continual interrogation: my husband was invited by the provincial police, but my son was invited by the security in southern Vietnam. The reason of the invitations was that both had written against the state.

Since my husband’s arrestation, we have not received any official information about him from the police. When we asked the authorities, they tried to evade answering. On the occasions when we brought food to my husband, we learned that his health was very bad. The first few times we sent him food, I received his signature as a receipt. But on succeeding times, I received only a scrawled signature, and sometimes no signature whatsoever, the answer of the prison cadres when asked was that my husband was not there to sign them; there was one time when I received a signature which was not a real one. Before his arrestation, i.e. during the time they were detained, I did not know whether my husband and son had eaten anything given them by the police during their interrogation, but after that, I saw that they both were sick for a month with attacks of continuous headache.

According to my view, my husband did nothing against the state. He only raised his voice against cases of injustice, or gave his opinions about what was wrong in the system of the state. Such as raising his voice on behalf of Venerable Thich Thien Khanh, former principal representative of the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam (UBCV) in Phu Yen province, and Venerable Thich Nhat Ban, principal representative of the UBCV in Dong Nai province, when they were unjustly persecuted; also for Venerable Thich Thien Minh and most recently for the Council of Bia Son (a great business installation of a religious sect unjustly taken with force by the government).

My husband’s raising of his voice was nothing more than using his right to Freedom of Speech which had been stipulated in the Constitution, while the Communist Party and Government always exhorted people to live and work under the Constitution. Unfortunately anyone who, with a constructive spirit, speaks up about what is wrong in the ruling apparatus are all suppressed, persecuted, imprisoned and beaten severely, such as the case of my husband.

In my situation of extreme worry for my husband’s life, and I myself being an elderly woman with many diseases such as stomach pain, high blood pressure … and not knowing what the status of my husband is like now, I respectfully ask the United Nations and other Governments, Human Rights Organizations, the media agencies, the Overseas Vietnamese organizations, all the Freedom-loving Agencies in the world for raising their voice and intervening for my husband’s release so that he might return to live with his family, and more immediately for me to know the status of my husband.

Together with my family, I would be very grateful to you for your intervention and help.

Best regards,

Nguyen Thi Kim Lan