2014-03-14
A provincial court in northern Vietnam on Friday sentenced a Hmong Christian to 18 months in jail for defying a government campaign forcing the ethnic minority group to return to older funeral practices now considered wasteful by many in the community.
Hoang Van Sang, 60, was handed an 18-month jail term by a court in Tuyen Quang province for “abusing democratic rights to infringe on the State and others’ benefits” under Article 258 of Vietnam’s penal code, his lawyer Tran Thu Nam told RFA’s Vietnamese Service on Friday.
The charges appeared to stem from Sang’s efforts to raise funds within his community to build a funeral home to meet Hmong reforms for caring for and burying the dead, Nam said.
Community members “contributed money to build the funeral house and assigned Hoang Van Sang to buy materials for it,” Nam said. “No one demanded that he return any money. There is no victim here.”
Nam added that he had urged the court and local prosecutor’s office in considering Sang’s case to hand down only a warning rather than a criminal conviction.
“Hoang Van Sang had only committed an administrative mistake by building the house without official approval from the local government,” he said.
Sang, a follower of reformed burial and wedding practices proposed by Hmong Christian leader Duong Van Minh—now in ill health in Hanoi—had at first faced a jail term of up to 21 months, but the sentence was reduced to 18 months following a hearing, Nam said.
Read more: http://www.rfa.org/english/news/vietnam/hmong-03142014162845.html
