Vietnam releases activist suffering advanced stage cancer

Activist Nguyen Thuy Hanh (2nd from R) is greeted by friends in Hanoi on her release from detention on Oct. 7, 2024.

Vietnamese authorities have released political prisoner Nguyen Thuy Hanh, who has been detained since April 2021 on charges of “anti-state propaganda,” her husband told Radio Free Asia on Monday.

Huynh Ngoc Chenh said his wife was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison at a secret trial on July 31, 2024.

Hanh, 61, spent the first year of her detention in a Hanoi prison, before being moved to a mental institution in the capital in 2022 to be treated for depression.

In January this year, her husband said Hanh had been diagnosed with advanced stage cancer. More than 200 people signed a petition calling for her immediate release but, following treatment at Vietnam’s largest cancer hospital, authorities moved her to the Hanoi police’s Detention Center No. 2.

Although Hanh has an apartment in Hanoi, her husband told RFA the police moved her to a prison camp in Thanh Hoa province 150 kilometers (93 miles) south of the capital on Saturday, before her Monday morning release.

“The whole family and I were preparing to pick her up at Detention Center No. 2, but they took her there so we couldn’t pick her up,” Chenh said.

“They were afraid that we would pick her up in a crowd, so they forced her into Thanh Hoa without informing us. This morning, Hanh got on the bus and contacted us on her return.”

Hanh ran unsuccessfully for a seat on Vietnam’s National Assembly in 2016. The following year she founded the 50K Fund to raise money for the families of political prisoners.

Photographs shared with RFA by her husband showed Hanh being greeted by relatives of political prisoners, including the mother of jailed author and journalist Pham Doan Trang, after returning to Hanoi on Monday morning.

Hanh is the third high-profile prisoner of conscience to be released in the past month. On Sept. 20, climate campaigner Hoang Thi Minh Hong was released after serving one year of a three-year sentence for tax evasion.

On the same day, authorities freed Tran Huynh Duy Thuc, eight months before the end of his 16-year sentence for “activities aimed at overthrowing the people’s government.” Thuc called it a “forced pardon,” because he was innocent of the charges.

The day after the two were released, Vietnam’s president and Communist Party general secretary, To Lam, headed overseas on a diplomatic blitz that saw him address the U.N. General Assembly in the U.S., a Francophone summit in France and meet the leaders of Cuba, Mongolia and Ireland.

Translated by RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Mike Firn and Taejun Kang.

By:RFA