Vietnam Frees Political Prisoners

Human Rights Watch’s advocacy led the Vietnamese government to release five ethnic Khmer Krom Buddhist monks imprisoned for participation in a 2007 peaceful protest. Following our criticism of the shrinking space for dissent in the country, Vietnamese authorities also freed or pardoned nine Khmer land rights protesters arrested in 2008 and a journalist charged with “abusing democratic freedoms” for exposing a major corruption scandal. Human Rights Watch wrote a letter to the Vietnamese foreign minister and issued an in-depth report detailing the harsh government response to the monks’ protests and calling for greater religious freedom and more Khmer-language education. Human Rights Watch also obtained and made public internal official documents describing the government’s strategies to monitor and silence Khmer Krom activists. An upcoming Human Rights Watch project will examine prison conditions in Vietnam, where more than 400 political and religious prisoners remain behind bars and are subjected to torture, lack of sufficient food and medical care, and forced labor.