Category: News

  • VIETNAM HUNGER STRIKE TESTS OFFICIAL INTIMIDATION

    BY MIKE IVES ASSOCIATED PRESS HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Cu Huy Ha Vu’s books come with pages torn out by prison guards. Only some of his letters reach home. He is not allowed to access evidence from his trial or to see his wife alone. This treatment, described by Vu’s wife, has driven the Vietnamese…

  • Vietnam Arrests Prominent Blogger

    Associated Press HANOI, Vietnam—Vietnamese police have arrested one of the country’s best-known bloggers for posting criticism of the communist government, intensifying a crackdown against Internet-fuelled dissent in the one-party, authoritarian state. The arrest of Pham Viet Dao, 61, indicates the level of concern in the Communist Party over the threat posed by Internet activism. Up…

  • JAILED SCHOLAR ON HUNGER STRIKE

    Dr Cu Huy Ha Vu, a Vietnamese legal scholar, has been on hunger strike since 27 May in protest at his treatment in prison. He is serving a seven-year sentence for “conducting propaganda” against the state. He has a chronic heart condition, and his health is at risk.   Dr Cu Huy Ha Vu, a…

  • Blow for Vietnam PM in first ever confidence vote

    Published: 11 June 2013 at 13.49 Vietnam’s premier suffered a setback Tuesday after a third of lawmakers in the one-party state voted against him in a first ever confidence vote, seen as a bid to deflect growing public anger at the communist regime. One hundred and sixty of some 500 lawmakers voiced “low confidence” in Prime…

  • I Begin a Supportive Hunger Strike

    From the blog of Pham Hong Son:    On June 08, 2013, the 13th day of hunger strike, on which a prisoner of conscience, Mr Cu Huy Ha Vu, has been going in prison since May 27, 2013 to protest illegal and inhumane conduct of the authorities, Tu Linh wrote an article proposing many ideas to support Mr Cu…

  • Vietnam Stonewalls Efforts to Rectify Religious Rights Abuses

    Officials cavalier or ineffective in face of murder, destruction. June 7, 2013 By Our Vietnam Correspondent   (Morning Star News) – In February, sustained night-time attacks by “villagers with the hand of the government behind them” in Vietnam’s Central Highlands destroyed the homes and thousands of coffee plants of ethnic Sedang Christians. Eventually four families in Ngoc…

  • US warns Vietnam ‘backtracking’ on rights

    BY AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSEPOSTED ON 06/06/2013 8:42 AM  | UPDATED 06/06/2013 8:50 AM WASHINGTON DC, USA – A senior US official warned Wednesday, June 5, that Vietnam’s record on human rights was deteriorating as he faced calls from Congress to put tougher conditions on the nations’ warming partnership. Joe Yun, the acting assistant secretary of state for East…

  • Vietnamese Anti-China Protesters called ‘Thieves’ and ‘Beaten’ in Detention

    2013-06-03 Vietnamese authorities branded anti-China protesters as “thieves and prostitutes” and brutally beat them at a weekend demonstration against the recent ramming of a Vietnamese trawler by Chinese navy vessels, an activist said Monday.  Some of the protesters at the rally in Hanoi Sunday were taken to a detention center in batches before they were…

  • Vietnam Breaks Up Anti-China Protest

    SUNDAY JUN 02, 2013  |  THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Vietnamese authorities detain scores as anti-China protest hits capital city HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — More than 15 demonstrators were detained Sunday during a protest march in Vietnam’s capital against China’s territorial assertiveness in Southeast Asian waters. The protest showed some of the domestic pressures the Vietnamese government faces…

  • Vietnam Jails Eight Montagnards for ‘Undermining National Unity’

    2013-05-29 A court in Vietnam’s Central Highlands on Wednesday sentenced eight ethnic minority Montagnards affiliated with an unregistered Catholic church to between three and 11 years in prison for “undermining unity” in the authoritarian state.  The Gia Lai provincial court said some of the eight had worked with a banned exile organization to establish an…