Vietnam: Activists Beaten in Concert Raid | WPN World People News

Vietnamese government officers and men in civilian clothes raided a concert in Ho Chi Minh City on August 15, 2018, and severely beat the performer and two prominent activists in the audience, Human Rights Watch said on August 22. Vietnam should conduct an impartial, transparent, and thorough investigation of the attack.

“This kind of shocking and brutal physical assault against human rights activists, bloggers, and artists is rapidly becoming the new normal in Vietnam,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “By failing to investigate or hold accountable those committing these thuggish acts, the authorities are signaling that attacks against dissidents will enjoy impunity.”

On the evening of August 15, a crowd of approximately 50 people, including children and elderly people, gathered at Café Casanova in Ward 7 of District 3 in Ho Chi Minh City for the musical show A Memory of Saigon by the singer and rights activist Nguyen Tin. At about 9 p.m., a group of uniformed government officers, security agents, and men in civilian clothes, some wearing surgical masks, burst into the cafe.

While some of the intruders filmed the scene, government officers demanded that the concert organizers produce papers to show that they had permission to hold the event. Others demanded that audience members produce their government-issued identification cards. As members of the audience started to leave, several of the intruders grabbed Pham Doan Trang, an activist in the audience, and dragged her to a car outside the cafe. Pham Doan Trang is a prominent and outspoken journalist, activist, and blogger whose writing covers a wide range of topics, many related to human rights and the rule of law. She is one of the few journalists in Vietnam who publishes bilingually in Vietnamese and English.

Trinh Huu Long, the editor-in-chief of Luat khoa Tap chi, an online magazine that focuses on law and human rights and includes Pham Doan Trang as an editor, wrote on his Facebook page that she “was taken to the police headquarters of Ward 7, District 3, where she was beaten repeatedly during interrogation…. The police confiscated her laptop, ID card and ATM card, and several hundred thousand VN dong.”

After the interrogation, the police took Pham Doan Trang from the station in a taxi, dropped her off on a dark street, and gave her 200,000 Vietnamese Dong (US$8.50) to order a new taxi. As soon as the police left, six men on three motorbikes arrived and assaulted her, beating her over the head with a motorcycle helmet. She wrote on her Facebook page: “When I was able to sit up, I touched the wound on my head, and tried to slow down the bleeding, I saw a broken helmet and many fragments of the helmet by the side of the road.” She suffered multiple bruises, nausea, and dizziness. At the hospital, doctors diagnosed her with a concussion. Security agents harassed and beat her friends who tried to visit her at the hospital.

The intruders also interrogated and beat Nguyen Tin, the singer, at the cafe. He told a reporter for the internet website Dan Lam Bao that “[security agents] took me to a corner of the room and began to punch and kick me hard with their hands and feet. Worse still, they used a water bottle to hit my [left] eye. I could not see anything. I covered my face. After beating me for about an hour, they asked me for the password of my cell phone. When I did not comply, they intensified the beating. They asked who organized the concert. I said I didn’t know. They then tied my hands [behind my back] so tight that it hurt a lot. They covered my head with a plastic bag so that I could not see who was beating me. They stripped off my shoes, kicked my feet, and took me to a car.”

Security agents took his money, mobile phone, and identification papers and abandoned him in a deserted rubber plantation in Cu Chi district, 60 kilometers from the center of Ho Chi Minh City.

Nguyen Tin sometimes performs sentimental songs composed during the historical period of the former Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) that remain prohibited by the communist regime. Recently, he has begun to sing about social and human rights issues and the plight of political prisoners.

The concert organizer Nguyen Dang Cao Dai was also beaten at the cafe, taken away in the same car, and abandoned at a different spot in Cu Chi. He revealed that that security agents “beat me a lot, took a rest, then beat me again.” They punched him in the stomach and head, knocked him on the ground, and stamped him with their shoes. Both Nguyen Tin and Nguyen Dang Cao Dai suffered multiple bruises and soft-tissue injuries.

Nguyen Dang Cao Dai is a construction engineer and a human rights advocate who has helped support political prisoners. He previously participated in a democracy movement known as Bloc 8406, named after the date of its founding on April 4, 2006.

The attack at Café Casanova is not an isolated incident. It is one of a series of recent assaults against activists who are under police surveillance. In Lam Dong province in June, men in civilian clothes broke into the house of Hua Phi, a campaigner for Cao Dai religion in Vietnam. The attackers beat him and cut off his beard.

In June and July, also in Lam Dong province, unidentified men threw rocks and a hand-made incendiary device into the house of labor activist and former political prisoner Do Thi Minh Hanh. After fellow activists Dinh Van Hai and Vu Tien Chi visited Do to show support, two men in civilian clothes attacked them with wooden sticks. Dinh Van Hai was hospitalized with two broken ribs, and injuries to his right hand and left shoulder.

In June 2017, Human Rights Watch published a report, “No Country for Human Rights Activists: Assaults on Bloggers and Democracy Campaigners in Vietnam,” highlighting 36 incidents in which unknown men in civilian clothes beat rights campaigners and bloggers between January 2015 and April 2017, often resulting in serious injuries. Many victims reported that beatings occurred in the presence of uniformed police who did nothing to intervene.

“This pattern of brutal physical assaults carried out by shadowy thugs, in apparent coordination with the police, is an intensification of the government’s persecution of political activists,” Robertson said. “International donors and trade partners of Vietnam should condemn the use of violence and urge the country to immediately stop its thuggish behavior.”

Source:Human Rights Watch