October 15, 2009
Hanoi – One of nine Vietnamese dissidents sentenced to prison last week was staging a hunger strike, his wife said Thursday.
Vu Van Hung, a 43-year-old high school teacher, was sentenced to three years in prison and three years of probation last week for hanging a banner advocating multiparty democracy from a Hanoi overpass in August 2008.
Hung’s wife, Li Thi Tuyet Mai, said her husband was staging a hunger strike to demand that an appeals court reverse the verdict against him and that the prison cease placing him in cells together with common criminals.
Mai, who visited her husband Thursday morning, said Hung had not eaten since the verdict was handed down on October 7 and had drunk nothing but water.
’He said the verdict was nonsensical because what he did caused no harm to the country,’ Mai said.
Mai said prison officials tried to coax Hung to eat but that he had refused. She said prison officials had denied her permission to meet her husband in her first attempt on Tuesday because his hunger strike violated prison regulations.
Hung is being held at a prison called New Hoa Lo, about 15 kilometres from downtown Hanoi.
Le Hop Nha, an official at the prison contacted by telephone, refused to confirm any information regarding Hung.
Hung was one of nine dissidents sentenced to two to six years in prison last week for violating Article 88 of Vietnam’s legal code, which forbids ’spreading propaganda against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.’
The trials elicited protests from foreign countries and international human rights organizations.
The US embassy in Hanoi said Wednesday that it was ’deeply disturbed’ by last week’s convictions. It urged the government to ’honor its international human rights commitments and immediately and unconditionally release’ them.
Reporters Without Borders last week said the convictions were ’manifestly violations of free expression’ while Human Rights Watch announced Wednesday that it had awarded grants to six Vietnamese writers, three of them currently in jail. The group noted that Nguyen Xuan Nghia, a 2008 winner of grants for writers who have been victims of political persecution and are in financial need, was among the dissidents sentenced last week.
Another 2008 winner, Tran Khai Thanh Thuy, was ’beaten and arrested after she publicly expressed her support for the nine activists’ sentenced last week, the US embassy noted.
