Security Forces in HCM City Lock Local Activist’s Apartment to Prevent Her from Going out

Ms. Loan and Mr. Tran Bang hold a banner to commemorize Gac Ma fallen soldiers

By Defend the Defenders, March 12, 2017

Security forces in Ho Chi Minh City have maintained their constant harassment of Nguyen Thanh Loan, a local human rights defender, the victim told Defend the Defenders.

At 11:00pm on Saturday March 11, a security officer came to her private residence in Go Vap district and told her that she had to stay inside and not to go out on Sunday to search for a new apartment since her current landlord, under the pressure of local authorities, had requested her to leave.

In order to prevent her from going out on Sunday, the day when some activists had called for a peaceful gathering to protest the polluting Formosa plant, authorities in Go Vap sent six plainclothes agents to station near Ms. Thanh’s apartment on Saturday evening. The police officers locked her apartment from outside with a big lock and an iron chain, Loan said.

During the night, the policemen played music and talked loudly and when Thanh requested them to keep quiet, they became even louder.

Ms. Thanh has been harassed by the local police in recent months. She was summoned to the local police station where she was interrogated about her relationship with pro-democracy activist Nguyen Vinh Luu, who was arrested on November 6, 2016 and charged with “attempting to overthrow the people’s government” under Article 79 of the Penal Code.

Thanh participated in a number of peaceful demonstrations on environmental issues and to protest China’s violations of Vietnam’s sovereignty in the East Sea (South China Sea). She has posted a number of articles on her Facebook page to call for enhanced human rights and multi-party democracy.

Meanwhile, security forces in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City have deployed a large number of police officers and militia around the private residences of local activists on Saturday and Sunday, effectively placing them under de facto house arrest for the second consecutive weekend.

Last weekend, despite enhanced security, dozens of southern activists gathered at the Notre Dame Saigon Church in the center of Ho Chi Minh City to hold a demonstration to protest the Taiwanese Formosa plant, the government’s bad management of socio-economic issues and its increasing suppression of local dissent. However, they were quickly detained by security forces and militia at police stations, where they were interrogated and forced to confess of causing public disorder before being released several days later. Many of them said they were brutally beaten by police officers and militia in their custody and in police stations.

Activist Le Trong Hung from Hanoi reported that plainclothes agents beat him and his six-year-old boy in the morning of March 12 when they tried to go out. The attack occurred near the private residence of the activist, who was said to have close relations with detained Vu Quang Thuan and Nguyen Van Dien.

Authorities in Vietnamese localities are on alert of rising public discontent on a number of issues, including systemic corruption, human rights violations, and the authorities’ weak response to China’s violations of Vietnam’s sovereignty in the East Sea. Since mid-February, former prisoner of conscience Catholic priest Nguyen Van Ly and other activists have called for a nationwide general protest every Sunday from March 5 to oppose the Communist government.

On March 14, local activists plan to gather to pay tribute to the soldiers who were killed in Gac Ma Island (Johnson South Reef) in the Truong Sa (Spratlys) by the People’s Liberation Army of China in 1988 when the northern neighbor held a military operation to invade the Vietnamese island.

Vietnam’s communist government has violently dispersed commemorations of the loss of the Hoang Sa (Paracels) to China in 1974 and the Chinese military invasions of Vietnam’s six northernmost provinces in 1979 and Gac Ma Island in 1988.

On March 10, authorities in the southern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau violently detained three activists, Suong Quynh, Le Cong Vinh and Tam Le, when they held a tribute to the Gac Ma fallen soldiers. Police interrogated the three activists, beating Vinh and Le and destroying Ms. Quynh’s cell phone before releasing them on the same day.