~ Le Viêt Nam, aujourd'hui. ~
The Vietnam News

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[Year 2002]

Two prominent dissidents arrested in Vietnam

Vietnamese officials have arrested two prominent dissidents over the weekend, Radio Free Asia has reported, citing unnamed sources in Vietnam and the United States. Pham Que Duong, a former army colonel and historian, was arrested on Saturday local time at a train station in Ho Chi Minh City, along with his wife and three others.

The five were enroute to Hanoi after visiting Professor Tran Khue, who has been under house arrest for pro-democracy efforts, the sources told Radio Free Asia on condition of anonymity. The sources say Professor Khue was arrested at his home on Sunday local time, with authorities seizing his computer along with two disks.

Another dissident, Nguyen Thanh Giang, called the arrests a warning to Hanoi's critics, as Mr Duong and Professor Khue have become defacto spokesmen for the dissident movement within Vietnam. Vietnamese officials were not immediately available for comment.

ABC News, Radio Australia - December 30, 2002.


Vietnam jails 8 from hill tribes Group had tried to reach Cambodia

BANGKOK - Vietnam announced this week the latest in a long string of prison terms as part of a crackdown on the mostly Christian hill tribe minorities known as Montagnards. The longest sentence, 10 years, was given to Y Thuon Nie, 30, a church leader and land-rights advocate who led an attempt to flee into neighboring Cambodia on Christmas a year ago. Seven other men were given eight-year sentences.

A court in Daklak Province in the Central Highlands found the men guilty of "organizing illegal migration to Cambodia" and "undermining state and Communist Party policy," according to the official Vietnam News Agency. The crackdown began in early 2001 after thousands of Montagnards converged on provincial and district government offices in some of the most widespread protests in Vietnam in recent years. They were protesting restrictions on their evangelical Protestant churches and government-sponsored encroachments on their land by migrants from the lowlands.

Since then, human rights groups say, dozens of people have been sentenced to prison terms of up to 12 years. They include church leaders, people suspected of supporting a land-rights movement and, as in the latest case, people who have tried to seek asylum in Cambodia but have been forcibly returned to Vietnam. Since the crackdown began, hundreds of people have fled into Cambodia's highlands. Many were housed temporarily in refugee camps, but when those were closed earlier this year 900 people were promised asylum and were resettled in the United States.

Many Montagnards fought together with the United States during the Vietnam War and are still distrusted by the Communist government. The eight men sentenced this week were accused of having links with former members of a guerrilla group known by its acronym, FULRO, who are now in the United States. Vietnam has accused an affiliated American organization called the Montagnard Foundation of helping to instigate the protests last year. Since the closing of the refugee camps in March, Cambodia has ceased offering even temporary asylum to any new arrivals, and hundreds of people have been deported.

"We have documentation that in April and May alone, more than 400 Montagnards were deported after the camps closed," said a spokesman for Human Rights Watch.

San Francisco Chronicle - December 28, 2002.