Rights group documents extrajudicial harassment in Vietnam

Human Rights Watch says more than 170 activists have been put under house arrest, blocked from traveling and sometimes assaulted by agents of the Vietnamese government in a little-noticed campaign to silence its critics

BANGKOK -- More than 170 activists have been have been put under house arrest, blocked from traveling and sometimes assaulted by agents of the Vietnamese government in a little-noticed campaign to silence its critics, a human rights group said Thursday.

The tactics to obstruct people's movement are “often overlooked” in reporting on the communist government’s imprisonment of dissidents and other “suppression of fundamental liberties,” Human Rights Watch said in a report.

The group said it found more than 170 people who were subject to travel bans and other pressure from 2004 to last year. They included Nguyen Tuong Thuy, 72, an army veteran who took up the cause of political prisoners.

“Security agents have harassed, intimidated, assaulted, and arbitrarily detained him, and imposed house arrest and a travel ban,” said the report. Nguyen Tuong Thuy was sentenced last year to 11 years in prison on a charge of “making, storing, disseminating, or propagandizing” anti-state information, Human Rights Watch said.