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VIETNAM 14 <br />In February authorities released political activist and former police officer Tran <br />Van Thieng, age 75. A court in Ho Chi Minh City had convicted him in 1991 of <br />attempting to overthrow the government by "trying to publish a book that distorted <br />historical information" about Vietnam and had sentenced him to 20 years' <br />imprisonment. <br />In October 2010 the Can Tho Police Security Investigation Agency and the <br />People's Procuracy of Can Tho released Doan Van Chac from any wrongdoing and <br />declined any further investigation into his case. Police had arrested him in June <br />2010 after he had evaded arrest since participating as a juvenile in a 1983 <br />campaign against the government that resulted in the deaths of three officials. <br />Civil Judicial Procedures and Remedies <br />There is no clear or effective mechanism for pursuing a civil action to redress or <br />remedy abuses committed by authorities. Civil suits are heard by administrative, <br />civil, and criminal courts, all of which follow the same procedures as in criminal <br />cases and are adjudicated by members of the same body of judges and lay <br />assessors. All three levels were subject to corruption, lack of independence, and <br />inexperience. <br />By law a citizen seeking to press a complaint regarding a human rights violation by <br />a civil servant is required first to petition the officer accused of committing the <br />violation for permission to refer the complaint to the administrative courts. If a <br />petition is refused, the citizen may refer it to the officer's superior. If the officer or <br />his superior agrees to allow the complaint to be heard, the matter is taken up by the <br />administrative courts. If the administrative courts agree that the case should be <br />pursued, it is referred either to the civil courts for suits involving physical injury <br />seeking redress of less than 20 percent of health -care costs resulting from the <br />alleged abuse, or to the criminal courts for redress of more than 20 percent of such <br />costs. In practice this elaborate system of referral and permission ensured that <br />citizens had little effective recourse to civil or criminal judicial procedures to <br />remedy human rights abuses, and few legal experts had experience with the <br />system. The government continued to disallow the use of class action lawsuits <br />against government ministries, thus limiting land rights petitioners from sending <br />joint complaints to numerous government agencies. <br />Property Restitution <br />