Inmates at a prison in southeast Vietnam have been staging hunger strikes to protest filthy water, poor medical care and unfair food distribution, the mother of one told Radio Free Asia this week.
Nguyen Thi Hue visited her son Huynh Duc Thanh Binh at Dong Nai province’s Xuan Loc Prison on Tuesday and said she was shocked by what she heard.
Binh is serving a 10 year sentence for activities aimed at overthrowing the government, following his arrest in 2019. Vietnam’s communist government is intolerant of dissent and deals harshly with people who promote pro-democracy views or criticize government policies.
He told his mother he’d refused food for most of February along with other political prisoners, to protest the state of the water they were given to drink and wash with. It is pumped unfiltered from a well, causing skin rashes and kidney stones, he said.
“The water source and general medical care in the prison are very poor,” Binh’s mother told RFA. “Prisoners’ health really suffers. The diseases are terrible.”
A former inmate told RFA he’d experienced similar conditions in Xuan Loc.
“During the dry season, if they use the underground well without any filtration system, it pumps up mud. I complained and talked to all the prison guards but they still haven’t resolved the problem,” said Nguyen Ngoc Anh who spent four-and-a-half years there before his release last August.
Binh told his mother he was also furious about a change in how meals were served. He said guards stopped going from cell to cell and now just abandon the food cart, allowing nearby inmates to serve themselves huge portions while others go hungry.
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After ending his hunger strike Binh said he was short of food this month, because he hadn’t bought extra from the canteen in February. Inmates often supplement rations this way, even though the prison charges four times the market price and limits each inmate to spending the equivalent of US$80 a month.
Angry at the meagre provisions, Binh and his cellmate decided to extend their hunger strike into this month, not eating until March 15 when Binh received food sent by his mother.
RFA tried to phone Xuan Loc Prison to ask about food, water and medical facilities but the number listed did not work.
RFA called Dong Nai provincial authorities and was told the message would be passed on to officials the following day but still has not received a reply.
Translated by RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Stephen Wright and Mike Firn.