Two Human Rights Groups Issue Joint Statement Against Harassment of Independent Publishing House

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have condemned the Vietnamese government for their escalating harassment of an independent publishing house.

Liberal Publishing House, established February 14^th, 2019, seeks “to promote human rights and freedom of information in Vietnam by printing and publishing books without censorship from the Vietnamese government”, in a mode similar to samizdat operations in former communist countries of Eastern Europe.

In a statement issued November 27^th, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch stated that Vietnamese “police have harassed and intimidated dozens of people connected to the Liberal Publishing House […] in what appears to be a targeted campaign” against both the publishing house’s readers and workers.

The statement also describes a situation in which police “detained and allegedly tortured a man in custody on October 15 in Ho Chi Minh City, allegedly to force him to confess to working for the publisher. Police detained him for more than 12 hours, during which time he was repeatedly beaten until his nose bled. Since being released he has gone into hiding, fearful of re-arrest.”

The police harassment has been nationwide, striking the three major Vietnamese cities of Hanoi (north), Hue (center), and Ho Chi Minh City (south), as well as the central provinces of Quang Binh and Quang Tri, the south-central province of Phu Yen, and the southern province of Binh Duong. Readers have reportedly been called into police stations for questioning and forced to sign statements declaring they will no longer purchase books from Liberal Publishing House; workers have reportedly been ensnared in police traps while carrying out deliveries.

Liberal Publishing House has acknowledged the police harassment and issued to its readers a series of precautions to take when ordering books, as well as what and what not to say when confronted by police. It has also made available for free a digital copy of its book A Handbook for Families of Prisoners to inform readers of their rights and guide them through the legal process.

Liberal Publishing House’s other titles include Politics for the Common People, Non-Violent Resistance, and the English-language title Politics of a Police State. Dissident blogger Pham Doan Trang, who recently received the 2019 Press Freedom Prize for Impact from Reporters Without Borders in September, is one of the publishing house’s main contributors.

Although freedom of the press is guaranteed by Article 25 of the 2013 Vietnamese Constitution, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam is a one-party, authoritarian state that does not tolerate challenges to its power. It controls all official media and publishing houses in the country and regularly censors material that does not conform to sanctioned historical or political narratives.