Singer-Activist Nguyen Tin Forced to Move out of His Apartment under Pressure of Ho Chi Minh City Police

Singer Nguyen Tin’s wife and his 14-month baby (Facebook May Phan)

Defend the Defenders, October 19, 2020

Activist Nguyen Tin who is a singer of patriotic songs has complained that the renting firm asks him to move out of his apartment under the request of Ho Chi Minh City’s police.

Tin said on October 15, his wife received a call from Quang Ninh province-based LHQ International Investment JSC which operates BEEHOME Building located in Tan Binh district, HCM City where Mr. Tin’s family is residing. A firm’s representative informed her that their family has to move out of their apartment within a week as the company was forced by the city’s authorities to cancel the three-month renting contract which was signed by the two sides less than a month ago due to security reasons stated by the local police.

The couple having a 14-month baby has been under de facto house arrest in recent days, Tin said, adding a group of several plainclothes agents is stationing near their apartment and block him and his wife from going out to seek for a new place. In addition, the firm has refused to return their deposits tripled of the monthly rent costs as well as the compensation for the early cancelation of the contract.

Mr. Tin is among activists in Saigon who often speak out about the country’s issues. In August 2018, with supports from the local activists, he made a live show in a small bar in Saigon, however, the local police came and requested him to stop singing and asked the audience to leave. Later, police detained him, prominent blogger Pham Doan Trang and several others at a police station where police officers interrogated and beat them for hours before releasing them at night.

After that, HCM City police have been harassing Tin’s couple, blocking their businesses, and pressuring on landlords to expel them. In the past three years, Tin has to move from one place to another three times.

Along with arresting and convicting activists of controversial articles of the Criminal Code with lengthy sentences, Vietnam’s police forces have been applying a number of tricks against other activists such as summoning activists to police stations for questioning, placing them under house arrest, beating them or blocking them as well as pressuring landlords to expel them from their apartments, just for exercising their basic rights enshrined in the country’s Constitution 2013 and the international treaties on human rights that the communist regime has signed and ratified by the rubber-stamped parliament.