The Vietnamese authorities should immediately drop all charges and release the independent political candidate Le Trong Hung, Human Rights Watch said today. Le Trong Hung campaigned as an independent candidate for the 15th National Assembly election in May 2021.
Facebook / Nguyen Van Son Trung
Police in southern Vietnam’s Binh Thuan province have freed a Facebook user after holding him for five days of questioning over social media posts opposing authorities, the blogger said on Wednesday.
Nguyen Van Son Trung was detained April 9 following the arrest of ethnic Cham poet Dong Chuong Tu, who was released on April 10 after being held and questioned for three days.
A third friend, Tran Duc Tin, was arrested on April 10 but was also freed after several days of questioning.
All three had discussed on Facebook the procedure for nominating independent candidates for election to Vietnam’s National Assembly and local People’s Councils, a political process tightly controlled by the country’s ruling Communist Party, which carefully vets named candidates for Party approval.
Facebook pages of Đồng Chuông Tử and Nguyễn Văn Sơn Trung
Police in Vietnam have released an ethnic Cham poet after detaining him for four days for investigation, the candidate revealed on social media.
Prior to his April 10 release, Nguyen Quoc Huy, who goes by the pen name Dong Chuong Tu, had been missing since April 7, after police in Thuan Bac district in the country’s southern coastal Binh Thuan province asked him to come to the station for a meeting while he was in the area for a visit.
“On Tuesday [April 6,] Dong Chuong Tu visited his hometown in Ma Lam to handle some business. Then he met some friends there that he hadn’t seen in a long time,” a friend of Tu, who requested anonymity for security reasons, told RFA’s Vietnamese Service on April 9.