HANOI, Sept 24, 2009 (AFP) – Relatives of Vietnamese dissidents facing imminent trial on Thursday urged UN chief Ban Ki-moon and world leaders to press Hanoi at this week’s UN meeting to release the detainees.
The family members made their call in a letter to the United Nations secretary general and heads of state attending the UN General Assembly in New York, which Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet is joining until Friday.
“We urgently call on the UN secretary general and heads of state to directly intervene with Nguyen Minh Triet and request the government of Vietnam to abide by UN human rights conventions, to stop repressing political dissidents, to respect human rights, and to release our relatives,” said the letter.
“Our relatives have been charged with ’propaganda against the state’ under Article 88 of the Vietnamese Penal Code, when in fact they have spoken out for Vietnamese territorial sovereignty and called for freedom, democracy and human rights.”
The dissidents had already been detained for about a year, added the letter, which AFP received from the US-based Viet Tan, or Vietnam Reform Party — labelled a “terrorist group” by Hanoi.
Nguyen Thi Nga, the wife of detained writer Nguyen Xuan Nghia, separately confirmed to AFP that she and the relatives of four other dissidents had signed the letter.
The dissidents face several years in prison if convicted.
Vu Hai, a lawyer for Nghia, said he had been officially notified that the trial of his client and five others had been postponed because one defendant was seriously ill. The trial was scheduled for Thursday and Friday in the northern port city of Haiphong.
A separate trial for another accused, Vu Hung, has also been delayed after it was set for Friday, the lawyer said.
Hung’s wife told AFP she had also signed the appeal to Ban.
An eighth accused, the poet Pham Van Troi, 37, was to be tried Thursday in Hanoi. His wife and a lawyer said that, as far as they knew, the case was going ahead.