ICC Note: Since Pastor Nguyen Trung Ton went to prison for participating in human rights activities, his wife Nguyen Thi Lanh and two of their children have been harassed by the Vietnamese authorities. Mrs. Nguyen’s daughter currently suffers from depression and she weighs only 20 kilograms. Even when Mrs. Nguyen received some money for her daughter’s medical bills from benefactors, a police officer intercepted her and took away her money accusing her of receiving it from terrorists. Mrs. Nguyen has asked the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights to intervene and stop the Vietnamese government from threatening her family.
11/20/2017 Vietnam (UCA News) – The wife of a prominent pastor who is imprisoned for human rights activities has called on the U.N. Human Rights chief to help stop the Vietnamese government terrorizing her family.
“My husband is an honest man and loves the people and motherland more than his life,” said Nguyen Thi Lanh, wife of Pastor Nguyen Trung Ton who was arrested in July and charged with acting to overthrow the communist government.
Lanh, who has not seen her husband since his arrest, said he dedicated his life serving and protecting the weak from oppression. The pastor worked with farmers who have their land grabbed by authorities and victims of environmental pollution, and trained other people in democratic values.
“The government which violates human rights most in the country disapproves of his activities,” she said in a Nov. 10 letter to Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Her husband’s detention has left her family in a difficult situation, said the mother of two who is from the northern province of Thanh Hoa.
Her blind mother-in-law recently had an operation on her legs and her 19-year-old daughter suffers from severe depression due to her father’s arrest. The daughter, who only weighs 20 kilograms and is 1.2 meters high, was hospitalized lately and needed a blood transfusion.
Lanh said she could not afford to pay their medical treatment and some benefactors gave her 2.3 million dong (US$101).
“After I left the bank, a police woman stopped me, took away all my personal papers and money, and questioned me at a nearby police station,” she said.
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