Vietnam Activist Detained upon Landing in Noi Bai after Attending Regional CSO Meeting in Bangkok

Mr. Mai Van Tam at a meeting of ACSC/APF 2016 in Bangkok in April (Source: Facebook Mai Van Tam)

By Vu Quoc Ngu, April 5, 2016

Vietnam’s security forces on April 4 detained Mai Van Tam when he arrived in the Hanoi-based Noi Bai International Airport from Bangkok where he attended a meeting of the ASEAN Civil Society Conference (ACSC)/ASEAN People’s Forum (APF).

Security agents confiscated Mr. Tam’s passport and brought him to a police station near the airport for interrogation for eight hours from 4.30 PM. They also searched his personal items, including a cell phone, a pocket and baggage despite strong protest of the detainee.

At around 0.30 AM of April 5, police officers took him back to the airport without returning his passport, Mr. Tam told Defend the Defenders.

On the next day, Tam went to a police facility in Nguyen Dinh Chieu Street where security forces promised to return his passport. In the police facility, four security officers interrogated him and searched his items and body. After several hours, Tam was freed without his passport.

Tam reported that police in his central province of Quang Tri have continued to harass him, keeping him under close surveillance after he returned from Hanoi.

Mr. Tam, a member of the Brotherhood of Democracy, attended the 1^st Regional Consultation of ACSC/APF and the Civil Society Innovation Initiative East Asia Consultation and Expansion Meeting held in Bangkok on March 31-April 3 in his capacity as a representative of the Vietnam Independent Civil Society Organizations Network (VICSON), a newly-established non-profit umbrella body which advocates, protects and exercises basic human rights in the Southeast Asian nation.

During the meetings with participation of 38 delegations from East Asia, delegates discussed the development of civil society and difficulties that civil societies face.

Vietnam had two separate delegations in the events, one formed by the VICSON and another from the Vietnam Unions of Friendship Organizations (VUFO), a government-organized agency. During the meetings, while the VICSON’s representatives raised issues on human rights violations in Vietnam, the VUFO addressed issues related to the Mekong River and the territorial and maritime disputes in the East Sea (South China Sea), which were not a focus of regional civil society organizations during the meetings.

During meetings in Bangkok, the two delegations had sharp disputes over the right to represent Vietnam in ACSC/APF. The VICSON says that the VUFO is a government agency and does not represent the general public, however, the latter has participated in the ACSC/APF since 2009.

The VICSON’s participation in the meetings in Bangkok is part of the organization’s National Process to participate in the ACSC/APF.

Due to international travel ban imposed by the government on many activists, the VICSON couldn’t send its key members to the meetings while the Vietnamese government sent many officials to the events who tended not to address issues related to human rights and democracy in the country.

Along with banning hundreds of social activists from going abroad, Vietnam’s security forces often detain social activists when they return from foreign countries where they meet with their foreign counterparts.

Vietnam has thousands of civil society groups under government control and at least 30 independent civil society groups. In October last year, then Minister of Public Security General Tran Dai Quang, who has been elected as the country’s president on April 2, labeled the independent CSOs as “reactionary groups.”

Vietnamese communists, who have controlled the country for decades, vow to keep the country under a one-party regime.