Jailed Vietnamese climate activist to start hunger strike on Friday

A Vietnamese climate activist serving a five-year prison sentence for tax evasion will start a hunger strike on Friday unless he is immediately and unconditionally released, his wife told Radio Free Asia.

Lawyer and environmentalist Dang Dinh Bach, 44, who had campaigned to reduce Vietnam’s dependence on coal, was arrested in June 2021 and later sentenced to five years in jail.

Bach was director of the Sustainable Development Law and Policy Research Center, which works with communities affected by development, industrial malpractice, and environmental degradation to help them understand and assert their rights.

Authorities accused him of not paying taxes on sponsorships his organization received from foreign donors. He is one of several Vietnamese activists sentenced for tax evasion, a charge that rights groups say is politically motivated.

In a conversation with the RFA’s Vietnamese service on Thursday, Bach’s wife, Tran Phuong Thao, said she planned to go on hunger strike the next day. She said that he had already been skipping meals and that he had only been eating one meal a day since March 17.

“He wants to send his sincere love to all species and people,” Thao said. “The hunger strike is for the environment, justice and the climate. He wants to take action to spark everyone’s love to protect Mother Nature and fight climate change.”

Bach also told his wife that the Communist Party of Vietnam and the Vietnamese government should reconsider their stance on environmental activists, as they are not a threat to political security.

“(They should) stop baseless arrests and wrongful sentencing,” Thao said. “Furthermore, (Vietnam) should implement its climate change commitments responsibly and substantively.”

Thao said it would be her husband’s fourth hunger strike, which could last many days and be dangerous. Bach asked her family to stop sending her food to the prison, except for hydration packs and electrolyte replenishment for emergency use.

Bach said he would regularly send two letters to his family each month, he said, and if no letter arrived, it meant he was in danger in prison.

rights dialogue

The news from Bach’s wife comes on the eve of a bilateral human rights dialogue with the European Union.

The regional bloc should add cases like Bach’s to the discussion agenda, New York-based Human Rights Watch, or HRW, said in a statement Thursday.

“The EU claimed that its 2020 Free Trade Agreement would encourage Vietnam to improve its human rights record, but quite the opposite was true,” said Phil Robertson, HRW’s deputy director for Asia.

“Hanoi’s disregard for rights has already made it clear that the EU must consider actions that go beyond simply issuing statements and hoping for the best.”

HRW recalled that the expectation for the establishment of a National Advisory Group of the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement was to promote the participation of independent Vietnamese civil society groups in monitoring the implementation of the trade and sustainable development provisions of the EVFTA, but he cited the tax-related arrests of Bach, and another activist Mai Phan Loi, as evidence to the contrary.

HRW also urged the EU to put pressure on the Vietnamese government to amend or repeal several vague articles of the penal code that the authorities frequently use to stifle civil and political rights, as well as two constitutional articles that allow restrictions on human rights for reasons of national security than to go beyond what is permitted by international human rights law.

“The EU should be serious about pressing the Vietnamese government to turn rights promises into genuine reform,” Robertson said. “It’s not much of a rights dialogue if Vietnamese officials just go through the motions, express platitudes and wait for the meeting to end.”

political prisoners

In May 2023, HRW made a shipment to the EU on the human rights situation in Vietnam, and urged the bloc to put pressure on the Vietnamese authorities to immediately release all political prisoners and detainees.

Among the hundreds of cases raised in the filing was that of “Onion Bae” Bui Tuan Lam, who is serving a five-and-a-half-year sentence on propaganda charges.

Lam, 39, who ran a beef noodle stall in Danang, rose to prominence in 2021 after posting a video online impersonating Turkish chef Nusret Gökçe, known as “Salt Bae.”

The video was widely seen as a mockery of Vietnam’s public security minister To Lam, who was caught on film as the chef hand-fed him one of Salt Bae’s gold-encrusted steaks at his London restaurant. at a cost of £1,450. $1,790).

In a conversation with RFA about Lam’s recent trial in May, his long sentence and the upcoming EU-Vietnam human rights dialogue, his wife, Le Thanh Lam, said human rights organizations in the EU and the UN understand how the Vietnamese authorities have done many wrong things. the family.

“My children lost the right to have a father by their side as long as their father did not do anything illegal. Everything my husband did is (permitted) under the Constitution and the laws of Vietnam,” he said. “He Solo exercised freedom of expression and other human rights enshrined in the UN documents that Vietnam signed.”

Translated by Anna Vu. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.