ASEAN Beat | Politics | Southeast Asia

Vietnam Confirms Arrest of Viet Tan Activists Reported Missing in Cambodia

Rights groups claim that Nguyen Duc Thuan and Tran Hiep were abducted in Cambodia, in line with a pattern of growing transnational repression by the Vietnamese state.

Vietnam has confirmed the arrest of two activists, reported missing in neighboring Cambodia earlier this month, whom rights group claim were abducted by the Vietnamese authorities.

The Ministry of Public Security said yesterday that its Security Investigation Agency had detained three men after they “entered Vietnam illegally from Cambodia,” the state-run newspaper Tuoi Tre reported.

Nguyen Duc Thuan, 52, Ho Pham Hiep Huy (also known as Tran Hiep), 51, and Thai Cong Truong Son, 46, are under investigation for “Terrorism” under Article 299 of the Penal Code and “Forging seals and documents of agencies and organizations” under Article 341.

Under questioning, the three confessed to being members of Viet Tan, a U.S.-based pro-democracy group that the Ministry described as a “terrorist organization.” It said that they also admitted to “carrying fake documents to illegally enter Việt Nam to conduct terrorist and sabotage activities.”

The Ministry’s announcement came after Thuan and Hiep corresponded with two political activists who were reported missing in Phnom Penh by Viet Tan earlier this month. In an alert dated September 25, the organization, which says that it advocates a “peaceful, nonviolent struggle” for democracy in Vietnam, said that the two men had been missing in Cambodia since September 18.

Thuan, a Norwegian citizen, and Hiep, an Australian citizen, had arrived in Phnom Penh from Bangkok on September 15 and were due to leave Cambodia on September 19, but never boarded their flights, Viet Tan spokesperson Duy Hoang told Cambodia’s Kiripost news site. Hoang added that the pair came to Cambodia to meet with Vietnamese human rights defenders who lived in the country.

Viet Tan, which was formed by South Vietnamese exiles in 1982, is high on the hitlist of the communist authorities, who remain paranoid about any advocacy that is even tangentially linked to the cause of the defunct southern Republic of Vietnam.

After the arrest of the pair, Viet Tan accused the Vietnamese authorities of abducting Thuan and Hiep from Cambodia.

“Viet Tan strongly condemns the abduction of two of its members in Cambodia and the fabricated charges issued by the Vietnamese communist authorities to cover up an act of transnational repression,” it said in a statement yesterday. The Ministry of Public’s Security’s claim that the two men were arrested for entering Vietnam illegally was a “a blatant fabrication intended to conceal the fact that the Viet Tan........

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