December 26, 2011 by intellectualnovice
Nguyen Van Lia (photo) and Tran Hoai An have been sentenced to five years and three years respectively on criminal charges that involve “abusing democratic freedoms to infringe upon the interests of the state”.
The verdict was issued by People’s Court of Cho Moi District in the southern province of An Giang. Any questions for further comments on the charges and the verdict were declined. According to statements taken by family members, police surrounded the courthouse and banned family members from entering. The local police had raided their homes and confiscated 15 books, 64 CDs, and 36 documents and used them as evidence during the trial.
This is not the first time that Mr. Nguyen Van Lia has been sentenced to jail. He was incarcerated for 18 months in 2003 for commemorating the death of a founder of a Buddhist group that the Communist regime labels as a “sect”. Both men are members of the Hoa Hao Buddhist group.
Mr. Lia and his wife were arrested on April 24 on an orchestrated traffic violation. He has then been held incommunicado. When he and his family learned that he was charged with criminal article 258, he insistently maintained his innocence and refused to sign documents given by the police to incriminate him. They eventually acquired his fingerprint under duress for the documents.
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| Nguyen Van Lia Buddhist activist |
Mr.Lia appeared on the Communist government’s radar soon after he met up with a number of representatives from the US Commission on International Religious Freedom in 2009. Soon after the meeting, he was placed under constant surveillance and was chronically harassed by Cho Moi District Police. In December 2010, he and three other activists met with the representatives of the State Department at the US Consulate.
More information in Vietnamese and English on background of the Hoa Hao Buddhist Group can be found in this article on Human Rights Watch.
December 26, 2011
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