{"id":8667,"date":"2021-01-15T00:19:54","date_gmt":"2021-01-15T00:19:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=150284"},"modified":"2021-01-15T00:19:54","modified_gmt":"2021-01-15T00:19:54","slug":"jailed-vietnamese-democracy-advocate-hospitalized-as-hunger-strike-hits-day-50","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/01\/15\/jailed-vietnamese-democracy-advocate-hospitalized-as-hunger-strike-hits-day-50\/","title":{"rendered":"Jailed Vietnamese Democracy Advocate Hospitalized as Hunger Strike Hits Day 50"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A jailed Vietnamese democracy advocate has been hospitalized in failing health in Nghe An province after reaching the 50-day mark in a hunger strike launched to appeal for a reduction in his prison term, family members say.<\/p>\n

Tran Huynh Duy Thuc, now serving a 16-year sentence for subversion for writing online articles criticizing Vietnam\u2019s one-party communist state, was admitted on an emergency basis to the Vietnam-Poland Hospital in Nghe An\u2019s Vinh City, Tran\u2019s younger brother Tran Huynh Duy Tan told RFA on Thursday.<\/p>\n

The date of Tran\u2019s admission to hospital is still unclear, but reports of the hospitalization, previously denied by hospital staff, were confirmed to his family by the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi, Tran\u2019s brother said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe U.S. Embassy told my family that the reports circulating that my brother had been urgently hospitalized in Nghe An were correct,\u201d Tran Huynh Duy Tan said, adding that reports that his brother was in hospital were also confirmed by family friends in Nghe An.<\/p>\n

Launched on Nov. 24, 2020, Tran\u2019s hunger strike had already left him in a severely weakened state, Tran\u2019s brother told RFA on Monday following a Jan. 9 visit to Tran at Camp No. 6 of Nghe An\u2019s Thanh Chuong detention center.<\/p>\n

\u201dMy brother\u2019s health was very poor, and he said he had by then reached the 47th<\/sup> day of his hunger strike,\u201d Tran Huynh Duy Tan said.<\/p>\n

Arrested in May 2009 because of his writings online, Tran Huynh Duy Thuc was convicted in 2010 on charges of plotting to overthrow the government under Article 79 of Vietnam\u2019s 1999 Penal Code.<\/p>\n

He is now calling for the charges against him to be changed to involvement in \u201cpreparations to commit a crime,\u201d an offense calling only for a five-year term of imprisonment under Vietnam\u2019s revised 2015 Penal Code, and Tran\u2019s family and lawyers have petitioned authorities several times for his sentence to be reduced in line with the new law.<\/p>\n

Reached for comment on Thursday, a hospital staff member confirmed Tran had been admitted, saying, \u201cDid you ask about a person from the No. 6 detention camp in Nghe An? Yes, he is here now.\u201d But ten minutes later, after being called for more details, a staff member denied Tran was there.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was staying at the No. 6 detention camp, not at my hospital,\u201d the staff member said. \u201cHe didn\u2019t have any illness, so why should he be hospitalized?\u201d<\/p>\n

An email seeking comment from the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi received a reply stating they had \u201cnothing to share,\u201d while an email to the German Embassy received no response.<\/p>\n

Long hours at hard labor<\/strong><\/p>\n

An Australian citizen jailed in Vietnam on charges of engaging in terrorism is meanwhile being subjected to long hours at hard labor in prison, Australia\u2019s ABC news service said on Wednesday, citing information received from a former prison inmate.<\/p>\n

Chau Van Kham, an ethnic Vietnamese resident of Sydney, Australia, and member of the banned U.S.-based Viet Tan opposition party, was sentenced on Nov. 11, 2019 to a prison term of 12 years, while his colleagues Nguyen Van Vien and Tran Van Quyen were handed terms of 11 and 10 years respectively.<\/p>\n

Labeled a terrorist group by Vietnam in October 2016, Viet Tan describes itself instead as committed to peaceful, nonviolent struggle to promote democracy in Vietnam.<\/p>\n

Australia\u2019s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has raised Chau\u2019s case nine times between January 2019 and June 2020 over humanitarian concerns, but Chau\u2019s family and lawyers have criticized the Australian government for what they say has been a \u201dlack of urgency\u201d in pursuing the case, ABC reported.<\/p>\n

Rights activists and relatives of political prisoners in Vietnam called this week for sanctions to be imposed under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, a U.S. law, on Vietnamese officials deemed responsible for torture and other abuses in the country\u2019s jails, as criticisms of Hanoi\u2019s repression of critics and dissenters mounts around the world.<\/p>\n

The call comes as authorities in Hanoi prepare for the Jan. 25 launch of the 13th<\/sup> ruling Communist Party Congress, cited by activists and rights experts as the reason Vietnam\u2019s already low tolerance of dissent deteriorated sharply in 2020 with the round-up of independent journalists, publishers, and Facebook commentators.<\/p>\n

Reported by RFA\u2019s Vietnamese Service. Translated by Huy Le. Written in English by Richard Finney.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A jailed Vietnamese democracy advocate has been hospitalized in failing health in Nghe An province after reaching the 50-day mark in a hunger strike launched to appeal for\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8667"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8667"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8668,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8667\/revisions\/8668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}