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Vietnam dissident needs medical care

Posted on: Tuesday, 29 August 2006, 01:04 CDT

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."

Source: REUTERS

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