A pastor imprisoned in south-east Vietnam was further punished in early June for telling a visiting US diplomatic delegation about abuses he has suffered.
Nguyen Cong Chinh, serving an 11-year sentence for ‘undermining national solidarity’ by religious activities with ethnic groups in the Central Highlands, met US consular officials in Ho Chi Minh City.
Shards of glass
He told them about shards of glass being put into his food, and enduring corporal punishment and humiliation because, he said, he refused to do what prison officers require.
Immediately after the US delegation left the prison, Chinh was isolated from other prisoners and put into a cramped space, according to his wife, Tran Thi Hong, who saw him a few days later. Hong accused Vietnamese officials of using ‘shameful and divisive tactics‘ to put pressure on her husband when she discovered that he had been told that she had been unfaithful.
Hong, a mother of four, was herself tortured, beaten and questioned at a police station for two months after she too met a US delegation on religious freedom in March 2016 in Pleiku city, Central Highlands.
