Immediate Concerns
Oct. 2024:
The daughter of land rights activist Nguyen Thi Tam reported that a hardened criminal named Nguyen Hong Hanh about to finish her 20-year prison sentence was put into Tam’s cell in April 2024 and has been harassing and abusing her verbally, trying to get her to react. Tam said the cell was already at maximum capacity when Hong Hanh was moved in, in violation of prison rules. Tam filed multiple complaints to prison authorities, and things seemed quiet down for a while. But since September, the situation has gotten so tense that Tam says she can not sleep at night out of fear for her own safety. She has had to drink a lot of coffee to stay awake because prisoner Hong Hanh lays next to her and often acts erratically or talks loudly, disrupting her rest. Tam’s daughter said her mother is experiencing a lot of stress on top of the physical pain she’s having due to uterine fibroids. She asks that the international community help put an end to what appears to be a deliberate tactic aimed at causing psychological damage to her mother. Project88 is working to further investigate this allegation of mistreatment.
April 2024:
Nguyen Thi Tam has been denied traditional medicine to treat her uterine fibroids, according to RFA. Project88 corroborated this allegation with Tam’s daughter, Nguyen Thi Mai. She reported that a recent phone call with her mother was cut after only five minutes by a female guard named Hoang Thi Anh Hong after Tam started to describe the ill-treatment she was receiving at Thanh Hoa’s Prison No. 5. This was the second time guard Anh Hong cut short Tam’s conversation.
Background
Nguyen Thi Tam is a farmer who lived and worked in Duong Noi. Tam and many farmers there were forcefully evicted from their lands in Duong Noi back in the 2010s.
Profile photo source: Nguyen Thi Tam’s Facebook post. The account was deactivated after her arrest.
History of Activism
Tam, along with Can Thi Theu, Trinh Ba Tu and Trinh Ba Phuong, has tried to use legal remedies to protect her legitimate rights and interests in Duong Noi. Currently, she is the plaintiff in a lawsuit filed against the Duong Noi People’s Committee.
She also shared her opinions on land rights and transparency issues on her Facebook account and did interviews with independent and foreign news outlets.
She was detained and held from June 11 until November 20, 2008 under suspicion of “disturbing public order,” Article 318 of the Vietnamese Penal Code.
Tam was tried and sentenced in 2014 when she participated in a demonstration against the Duong Noi local authorities’ eviction decision. They accused her of “resisting persons in the performance of their official duties.”
Since 2016, Nguyen Thi Tam has been increasingly active online through social media engagement on Facebook and Youtube, where she raised land rights and broader human rights issues. She has been actively commenting on the Dong Tam incident, posting information and commentary on Youtube. She has also supported strategic litigation, and the timing of her arrest should not go unnoticed, as a few days before, she was meant to appear in court as part of a suit against the Ha Dong government over a land rights issue. This hearing, scheduled to take place on July 7, was postponed because of her arrest.
