'Still No Trial Date for Two Vietnamese Land Rights Activists Detained Over a Year Ago', 21 July 2021

Authorities in Vietnam have yet to set a trial date for two land rights activists detained more than a year ago for their criticism of the government in a high-profile land dispute, members of their family told RFA.

Trinh Ba Phuong and Nguyên Thi Tam, of the capital Hanoi’s Duong Noi district, were arrested June 24, 2020 on charges of propagandizing against the state for posting online articles and livestreaming videos critical of the government’s brutal response to a long-running dispute over a military airport construction site about 25 miles south of the city.

Phuong’s mother Can Thi Theu and brother Trinh Ba Tu were also arrested that day on the same charges and sentenced on May 5 to eight years in prison and three years on probation each on the charge of “creating, storing, disseminating anti-State materials.”

Phuong and Tam remain in pre-trial detention...

On Jan. 9, 2020, around 3,000 security officers conducted a raid on Dong Tam commune’s Hoanh hamlet to intervene in a long-running dispute over a military airport construction site about 25 miles south of Vietnam’s capital, Hanoi.

Dong Tam village elder Le Dinh Kinh, 84, was shot and killed by police during the operation, and Kinh’s sons Le Dinh Chuc and Le Dinh Cong were sentenced to death on Sept. 14, 2020 in connection with the deaths of three police officers who were also killed in the clash.

In an earlier flare up of the Dong Tam dispute that goes back to 1980, farmers detained 38 police officers and local officials during a weeklong standoff in April 2017. Three months later, the Hanoi Inspectorate rejected the farmer’s claims that 47 hectares (116 acres) of their farmland was seized for the military-run Viettel Group—Vietnam’s largest mobile phone operator—without adequate compensation...