Vietnamese former political prisoners detained after gathering

By RFA Vietnamese2024.11.04

A group of about 20 Vietnamese former political prisoners and relatives of current prisoners were detained on Friday after meeting at a restaurant, with police forcing them to make posts on social media disavowing their activism in order to be let free.

Members of the group were seized while departing the restaurant and then forcibly separated and taken to different police stations in Ho Chi Minh City, according to a source who spoke to Radio Free Asia on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from authorities.

“A large security group including traffic police, security and police stopped us under the pretext of checking alcohol levels,” the source said. “But only forced a few people to blow into breathalyzers.”

“After that, they forced us to get in the car and go to the police station under the pretext of drug testing, then said they suspected there was a bomb in the restaurant so we needed to be investigated. However, after returning to the station, they did not test for drugs.”

They were detained at about 10 p.m. on the Friday and most were allowed to leave by 5 a.m. on Saturday, the source said, but only after writing a note on their public social-media accounts pledging “not to share [news] articles critical of the party and the state.”

However, a visiting Vietnamese-Australian member of the group — for whom the dinner party was being held — was held by police for questioning until the following evening, the source explained.

The detained members of the group included two former Amnesty International prisoners of conscience — Do The Hoa and Ho Dinh Cuong — who were released from prison last year.

The spouses of two political prisoners were also among those detained: Nguyen Thi Chau, who is the wife of recently released Nguyen Ngoc Anh, and Le Thi Thap, who is the wife of Luu Van Vinh, who remains in jail.

According to the RFA source, police kept members of the group separate during interrogations and quizzed each about the purpose of the dinner and each person’s relations to each other.

Each person was also required to provide their phone and passwords to log-in to their social media accounts, including Facebook, before being told to post the pledges against sharing anti-state news. They were also told not to tell anybody about being detained, the source said.

RFA contacted the Ho Chi Minh City Police to request comment but was told to send a reporter in-person. A number of RFA Vietnamese contributors are behind bars in Vietnam, accused of “propaganda.”

Edited by Alex Willemyns and Malcolm Foster.