Sick And Injured Inmates In Vietnam Face Inadequate Medical Treatment, Torture

An inmate who was diagnosed with a brain hemorrhage in January 2019 told his family that he did not get proper treatment and was sent back to prison after about a month in the hospital.

34-year-old Ha Van Truong is currently serving a nine-year-sentence for manslaughter in the case resulting from a land dispute between farmer Dang Van Hien and Long Son Commercial and Investment Company (Long Son), a private company in Dak Nong Province in October 2016.

On March 31, 2019, Truong was, again, admitted to the hospital with the same diagnosis. But his family informed us last night that his conditions have gotten worse. They also stated that during both of his stay in the hospital, he was subjected to shackling – a practice which international human rights law defines as torture.

Last year, the trial of Dang Van Hien and Ha Van Truong received extensive news coverage due to an unusually heightened public sympathy for the defendants, who were perceived as victims of land-grabbing. In Vietnam, land-grabbing has become an increasingly urgent social and political issue that the whole nation often paid close attention to.

After Dang Van Hien was sentenced to death for homicide, more than 3,000 people signed an online petition, asking the president of Vietnam to commute his sentence. Earlier this year, in February 2019, Hien’s case was proceeding towards a trial for cassation – a review of both the law and facts that could give him a second chance at life.

Truong was initially sentenced to 12-year-imprisonment, but an appellate court in Ho Chi Minh City reduced the term to 9 years which again showed the impact of public support on the case.

However, Truong has been a victim of police brutality and torture, and he also did not receive adequate medical care. His family told us that Truong suspected his brain hemorrhage was a result of the injuries he received from police beating during his pre-trial detention. Since then, he has been suffering from a chronic headache, but the prison’s medical clinic only gave him pain reliever medication. He did not receive a proper diagnosis until he fainted and was admitted to the hospital in January 2019.

During his first admission, the authorities waited for two days before informing his family without any specific reasons. Truong was left alone in the hospital with no one to care for him. He was unable to eat solid food, but the police fed him with only rice and pork. The families of other patients had to give him some milk to drink until his family found out about his whereabouts and visited him.

Truong’s current prognosis is not looking too positive. His family said that his body has been frail so he would need assistance to move around and that he often passed out.

In such dire conditions, Truong is still subjected to shackle 24/7 even when he is lying on the hospital bed. Initially, the police chained both Truong’s hands and feet, but now, they only applied such treatment to his feet. The use of shackle on inmates is a violation of the UN’s Nelson Mandela Rules on the treatment of prisoners.

Truong’s situation is not the exception but rather a depiction of the overall picture of prison conditions in Vietnam.

Families of prisoners of conscience and political dissidents, over the years, repeatedly made allegations about the substandard conditions of Vietnamese prison centers and the mistreatment of prisoners, especially those who needed medical care.

In 2014, prisoner of conscience Dinh Dang Dinh, a teacher, passed away shortly after his release from prison. Dinh maintained his innocence until the day he died. He was collecting signatures of residents in his hometown to protest the government’s plan to mine bauxite in the Highlands of Central Vietnam. Dinh was arrested in 2011 and sentenced to 6-year-imprisonment in 2013 for propagandizing against the state. When his health deteriorated, he received a pardon and an immediate release, but it was too late.

His family alleged that the lack of proper medical care and the continued refusal to hospitalize Dinh during his incarceration contributed to his untimely passing.

In March 2019, the UN Human Rights Committee expressed its concerns about the country’s prison conditions, finding that there were: “consistent reports of poor conditions of detention, including overcrowding, use of prolonged solitary confinement, shackling, abuses by other prisoners at the instigation of prison officials, and non-separation of healthy prisoners from those with contagious diseases, intentional exposure of prisoners to HIV infection, denial of medical care; and punitive transfer of prisoners”.

Ha Van Truong remains in critical conditions today, but he has been transferred to Cho Ray Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City – one of the top medical facilities in the country. His family continues to hope and pray for a speedy recovery. But at the same time, they also ask: why didn’t he receive adequate medical treatment during his first hospital admission two months ago?