Vietnam dissident needs medical care

By Grant McCool

HANOI (Reuters) – A jailed Vietnamese cyber-dissident due
for release under a government amnesty would need medical care
after his expected return home on Tuesday or Wednesday, his
wife said.

The Communist Party government announced on Monday that
Pham Hong Son, championed as a political “prisoner of concern”
by international human rights groups and foreign governments,
would be freed after serving more than four years on a
conviction of spying.

Supporters of Son, 37, said he was jailed for translating
and posting on the Internet an article entitled “What is
Democracy?” from a U.S. government web site. The one-party
state sentenced him to 13 years in 2003, which was reduced to
five on appeal.

“When I visited my husband in early August, he was not
well, he was coughing blood,” Son’s wife Vu Thuy Ha, said by
telephone. “He does not have tuberculosis, but he needs medical
care.”

She said medical care and tests in prison in Thanh Hoa
province 200km south of the capital, Hanoi, did not reveal the
cause of his condition.

Ha said she expected Son to be released to their home in
Hanoi late on Tuesday or Wednesday, but that the government had
not yet provided specific information.

“I’m very happy. It will be good to have him with his
family again,” Ha said. The couple has two young children.

Son’s release was part of an annual presidential amnesty to
mark National Day on September 2 when the Southeast Asian
country celebrates independence from French colonial rule.

Diplomats said Vietnam was responding to international
pressure to improve its record on religious freedom and human
rights as the country prepares to join the World Trade
Organization this year and host the Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation forum summit in November.

The government said 5,313 prisoners convicted of a variety
of offences would be given amnesty, but more than a dozen cited
by U.S. and European diplomats as religious or rights activists
were not included.

International human rights groups praised Son’s release,
but noted he would remain under what the government called
“administrative surveillance,” which usually means a travel
restriction or even house arrest.

“We call on the government to grant him complete freedom
without condition,” the New York-based Committee to Protect
Journalists said in a statement.

Julien Pain, a spokesman for Paris-based Reporters without
Borders said: “If he really does get out, it’s obviously
excellent news and it shows that international pressure does
work in Vietnam.”