Ðảng Dân chủ Nhân dân

The People’s Democratic Party

http://ddcnd.org/main/

For Immediate Release  

Condemning the Excessive Exploitation of Vietnamese Political Prisoners

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.

It is known that the Xuan Loc prison camp has cruelly exploited prisoners’ labor, such as forcing them to denude 25 kilos of cashew nuts from their shells each day. Prisoners have to meet the quotas no matter how long the process would last, if not they  would be punished. Due to the harsh labor requirements and excessive quotas, many have not  been able to meet the demands, not to mention the injuries sustained in the process of denuding cashew nuts where the toxic sap would come in contact with prisoners’ flesh causing festering sores on their bodies. The warden has threatened Doctor Le Nguyen Sang with solitary confinement and legs shackles because he could not meet his quotas. Many political prisoners have been burned and infected with toxic saps due to the denuding labor.

The Ministry of Vietnam Public Security (Police) has contracted with state-owned companies to process and export cashew nuts as well as many other manufacturing plants in order to capitalize on its prison labor. Many prisoners in the Southwestern  provinces and the Saigon outlying areas have been thus physically exploited. The fruit of these deplorable physical conditions would become the authority’s profit in the exportation of cashew nuts to foreign markets. While in the Southern provinces, forced prison labor is concentrated on the seafood products, prisoners have to clean shrimps so the state-owned companies can export them.

 Viet Nam using political prisoners as forced labor for cashew nuts and shirmps exportation

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.

Respectfully,

Do, Thanh Cong – Spokesperson of the People’s Democratic Party