CORRESPONDENCE - 85A COMBINED REPORTS OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN VIETNAM 2012

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- On 30 March 2011, police Jr. Capt. Vo Van Ut Deo, Warrant Officer Danh Nhan, and Sergeant Tran Tuan Khai, together with militiaman Tran Quoc Thang of the Nga Nam town, Soc Trang province, used a baton to hit Mr. Tran Van Du, 44, a resident of hamlet 3 in the same town, and beat him unconcious. They then dragged him to the hedge next to the town administrative office and let him die there in the dark. - On 25 April 2011, Mr. Nguyen Cong Nhut, 30, former Head of the Product Management office of Kumbo car tire company, died while in temporary custody by the police legal assistance section of Ben Cat district, Binh Duong province, after 5 days of illegal detention. His family was subsequently told by the police that he had hanged himself, however, they found signs of beating on his body, a lot of blood, and electric torture marks on his limbs. - On 10 January 2012, Bac Giang provincial police severely hit Mr. Nguyen Van Hung, 50, a resident of Quyet Tien hamlet, Tien Phong village, Yen Dung district, and a protester against forced land confiscation. Due to his poverty, he could not afford to pay for his treatments in a hospital and died at home on 26 January 2012. When local authorities had mobilized both police and civilian guards to forcibly take away one acre of his land, he tried to prevent their forcible seizure. They later accused him of resisting authorities as they tried to carry out their duty. The brutal resort to force by government forces affects not only individuals but also a wider range of victims in different Vietnam Human Rights Network * Annual Report 2011 environments. In June, July, and August of 2011, while thousands of demonstrators paraded peacefully both in Hanoi and Saigon to stir public opinion and warn the government of the risk of losing land and sea territories to the greedy Chinese expansionists, the government mobilized a large police force, especially plainclothesmen, to pursue, arrest, and brutally beat many of them right on the streets. The image of a demonstrator being carried like a pig with his face upward by 4 policemen to a bus for another policeman in civilian clothes standing at the door of the bus to pound on his face with his boot several times, has been widely circulated on the Internet to stunt the world. To deal with the demands of the victims of land injustice in their class- action petitions or with the people's obstruction of forced and unjust confiscation that is happening more and more every day, the government, instead of talking with the people, used riot police and trained dogs together with vehicles to brutally repress them, injuring them and even causing fatalities to them. (See section "Victims of Land Injustice" of this report) Especially, minority people living in remote areas hard to access by the outside world have to suffer systematic suppression by police resort to brutality. Most outstanding is the case in May 2011 in Muong Nhe district, Dien Bien province, when thousands of police and border guards carried out a bloody massacre against the H'Mong demonstrators for freedom of religion and respect for their own culture and customs. According to a report by the US -based Center for Public Policy Analysis, the number of casualties reached 72 people.9 9 Vietnam Forces Kill 72 Hmong, Hundreds Arrested and Flee, http : / /www.cppa - dc.org /id67.html (accessed 21 Jan 2012) 16