VIET NAM: SERIES OF ATTACKS ON POLITICAL ACTIVISTS, HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS AND THEIR RELATIVES MUST BE INVESTIGATED

Amnesty International | Jul 22, 2016

Three recent  attacks on people  who have been  deliberately knocked  off their motorbikes  appear  to be part of a wider series  of attacks against  political  activists, human  rights defenders and their relatives. Amnesty International urges the Viet Nam authorities to immediately  and impartially investigate these incidents and bring the perpetrators to justice.

Throughout  July 2016, there  were several attacks against  political  activists, human  rights defenders, and their relatives.  These included three incidents within four days where the victims were forced from their  motorbikes   as  they  travelled   at  speed. The  three  incidents,  described below,  bear  striking resemblances and  took place  in circumstances that  strongly indicate the  involvement  of police  or of people  working under  police orders.

On 10  July Lã Việt Dũng, well-known for his online political  activism,  was attacked after taking part in a football game with the No-U Football Club, a club which opposes  Chinese  foreign policy in Viet Nam. Dũng told Amnesty International that  when he arrived to take part in the game,  two uniformed police officers and eight to ten other men in plain clothes  were present. According to Dũng, these men ordered  the staff of the football pitch  facility to inform the team  that  they could not play. The players persisted, arguing that  they had reserved  the pitch  and paid in advance.

When they eventually  left the facility to congregate at a nearby restaurant, they were followed by the police and men in plain clothes. As the members of the team  ate in the restaurant, the police and plain clothes  men waited outside  in and on their vehicles,  which included one marked  police car and six motorbikes  without police insignia.  When the players emerged  from the restaurant and went their separate ways, several of them  were followed by these  men.

Dũng told Amnesty International that  when he was around  2km from the restaurant, travelling by motorbike,  and as he turned  on to a dark road he noticed  that  he was being followed by three motorbikes, each  of which had a rider and passenger. One of the motorbikes  cut in front of Dũng, causing  him to lose control.  When Dũng fell to the ground,  the two other motorbikes  stopped and their riders and passengers surrounded him, kicking him in the head  as he lay on the ground.  The motorbike  that  had cut him off turned  around  and its rider and passenger joined in the violence.  The men kicked Dũng countless times  in the head.  They also hit him several times  on the head  with a brick.

Dũng’s assailants left when people  emerged  from houses  along the road. A passing  car took Dũng to the hospital. He had sustained a number  of injuries  to the head.  He explained  to Amnesty International that  his injuries  would have been  much  worse had be not been  wearing a helmet.

On 13  July, retired  teacher and democracy  activist  Tô Oanh and his wife, Hoang Thi Nhu Hoa,  were travelling by motorbike  to their home in Bắc Giang province when a man,  who they say was in his 30s  and who was travelling in the same  direction, veered his motorbike  in front of theirs,  causing them  to lose control.  They both fell to the ground and were injured:  Tô Oanh was knocked unconscious and a bone in his face was broken,  and Hoang Thi Nhu Hoa sustained minor injuries. The assailant turned  his vehicle around  and rode back in the opposite  direction.

On the morning of the same  day, Nguyễn Trung Đức, whose mother  is  human  rights defender and recently  released prisoner  of conscience, Hồ Thị Bích Khương, sustained injuries  to his head  and arm in an almost  identical incident to that  involving Tô Oanh and his wife. As Đức was driving his motorbike  in Nghệ An province, two men riding parallel  to him on another  motorbike  cut across  him, causing  him to lose control of the vehicle.  Đức fell to the ground and was knocked  unconscious. He woke a short time later covered in blood. As in the case  of Oanh and Hoa, Đức’s assailant rode away from the scene.

Đức made  his way to hospital  where he received  dozens  of stitches to close a deep  wound running 15cm along the top of his head  and a 10cm wound running  along his upper  right arm. In the days before the attack  on Đức, men in plain clothes  known to be police were stationed outside  the house where he and Hồ Thị Bích Khương live in Nam Đàn district, Nghệ An province,  apparently keeping his mother  under  surveillance. On 8 July, Đức and Hồ Thị Bích Khương visited his grandmother’s house.  Shortly after they left there  via a back entrance, police entered the house  searching upstairs and downstairs, demanding to know where Hồ Thị Bích Khương had gone.

The three  incidents outlined  above were deliberate attacks. The circumstances surrounding these attacks raise serious  concerns that  these  attacks were undertaken by or at the instigation of police. Amnesty International calls on the Vietnamese  authorities to immediately  and impartially  investigate these  attacks and to prosecute those  suspected of responsibility for them,  regardless of their official capacity  or otherwise.

Viet Nam has a longstanding reputation of being one of Asia’s most prolific jailers of political activists and human  rights defenders. Amnesty International conservatively  estimates that  there  are currently  at least  84  prisoners  of conscience in the country.  In recent  years, physical  attacks against political  activists  and human  rights defenders have increased, with scores  injured  in vicious assaults committed by men in uniform or plain clothes  known or believed  to be police.

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