Viet Nam, January 5, 2008 - At the Xuan Loc prison on December 7, 2007, a prisoner of the Hoa Hao Buddhist sect named Phong was punished by solitary confinement. To protest this treatment, political prisoners such as attorneys Tran Quoc Hien and Nguyen Bac Truyen, doctor Le Nguyen Sang and various other prisoners of the Hoa Hao Buddhist sect have gone on hunger strike en masse for two consecutive days on December 9 and 10. In the face of such collective action by the political prisoners, the prison warden had no choice but returning Phong back to his former cell. The People’s Democratic Party urgently condemns the prison system of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, of its deliberate policy of retaliation against the prisoners who are currently being incarcerated. We are making an appeal to the international communities, Amnesty International, and various human rights organizations to ask for their intervention and to raise their voices against the Hanoi authorities and their trampling on human dignity. At the same time, we are imploring public opinion and people worldwide, particularly those international concerns that are doing business with Vietnam in the seafood products and cashew nuts to reconsider their trade in the face of such travesty of human rights. Thanh Cong Do, Spokesperson of the People's Democratic Party   more »