The California-based organization Vietnam Human Rights Network on November 20 announced the voting results to award the Vietnam Human Rights Prize 2021, according to which five people who are being imprisoned by the Vietnamese government will be honored.
There are three people in the same family fighting for land petitioners, including Mrs. Can Thi Theu and her two sons, Trinh Ba Phuong and Trinh Ba Tu; along with two human rights activists, Ms. Dinh Thi Thu Thuy and Mr. Nguyen Van Tuc.
This year’s awards ceremony will be held at the Westminster Community Hall, California, on December 12, on the occasion of the 73rd International Human Rights Day, the Vietnam Human Rights Network said in a statement.
This organization said that they established the Vietnam Human Rights Prize in 2002 and so far 54 individuals and 5 organizations have received the award for their outstanding and influential contributions to the civil rights and human rights movements in Vietnam.
This award is also an opportunity for overseas Vietnamese to show solidarity with those who are engaged in the relentless fight for basic rights for the Vietnamese people, still following the network.
Among the five recipients of this year’s prize, Mrs. Can Thi Theu’s parents and children have been fighting against the Vietnamese government’s arbitrary and unfair land grabbing in Hanoi for more than 10 years.
Mrs. Theu was jailed twice in 2014 and 2016. In June 2020, she and her two sons were detained by Vietnamese authorities.
In May this year, a provincial court sentenced her and her son Trinh Ba Tu to 8 years each in prison and 3 years of probation for the crime of “making, storing, distributing or propagating information, documents, and materials aimed at destroying the state.” And Trinh Ba Phuong is still waiting to go to court and faces a prison sentence for “conducting propaganda against the State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam” that can be up to 20 years in prison.
The other members of Mrs. Theu’s family including her husband, daughter, and daughter-in-law are also brave human rights fighters and are the spiritual and material support for Ms. Theu and her children who are imprisoned, Vietnamese rights said.
About the two winners, the Vietnam Human Rights Network said it was environmental activist Dinh Thi Thu Thuy in Hau Giang province and human rights activist Nguyen Van Tuc in Thai Binh province.
Ms. Thuy, born in 1982, initiated many activities to protect and improve the living environment for farmers in some localities in the Mekong Delta. In addition, she expressed support for efforts to fight for basic rights and national sovereignty.
In April 2020, Hau Giang authorities arrested her and in January this year, she was sentenced to 7 years in prison for “conducting propaganda against the state.”
Nguyen Van Tuc, born in 1964, started speaking out against the government’s policy of land expropriation in 2003.
In September 2008, he was arrested by Vietnamese police for “making, storing and distributing many documents with anti-state content” and was jailed for 4 years.
In September 2017, Thai Binh province police arrested this activist on charges of subversion, and in April 2018, the Thai Binh provincial court ruled that Mr. Tuc must be punished 13 years in prison followed by 5 years of probation.
Thoibao.de (Translated)
