Vietnam’s communist authorities have jailed democracy advocates Tran Khai Thanh Thuy and her husband, Do Ba Tan, the latest in a series of prosecutions that has seen at least activists jailed over recent months.
Thuy has been an active dissident since 2006, organizing workers and farmers to resist government-sanctioned land confiscations. She also contributes to an online pro-democracy journal and writes a blog:
Ms. Thuy has played a key role in Vietnam’s besieged democracy movement. In 2006, she started an association for victims of land confiscation (Hoi Dan Oan Viet Nam), helped found the Independent Workers’ Union of Vietnam, and joined the editorial board of the pro-democracy bulletin To Quoc (Fatherland), which is printed clandestinely in Vietnam and circulated on the internet.
The dissidents were sentenced to three and a half years in prison for allegedly assaulting two men over a parking dispute. The couple denied the charges, insisting that they had been the victims of an attack.
“Charging the victim of a beating with assault is yet another example of Vietnam’s Kafkaesque efforts to silence government critics,” said Brad Adams, Asia director for Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. “The thugs who attacked her, the people who sent them, and the police officers who refused to intervene should all be brought to justice.”
Earlier this week, Communist party Chairman Nong Duc Manh said the regime was “determined to “struggle against all the … hostile forces by preventing them from profiting from…democracy, human rights, multi-partyism and pluralism to sabotage the Vietnamese revolution.”
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