Information from camp No. 5 (K5) of the Z30A Xuan Loc Prison
Truong Minh Duc (Danlambao) - The women prisoners of conscience are opposing forced labor in cashew and fish processing. In hazardous work environments, many sick and weak prisoners, who cannot finish the hard workloads, have vowed to go on hunger strike if the prison guards continue to force them heartlessly to do the works.
For nearly a week, prison officials have suspended forced labor to investigate the case, attempting to find out who have “incited” the demands. Prison police have pointed their fingers at Do Thi Minh Hanh, a labor-exempted prisoner of conscience, accusing her for going around to incite other inmates like Ms. Tran Thi Thuy who has threaten to go on a hunger strike.
Currently, Ms. Tran Thi Thuy and other women prisoners haven’t had to work for nearly a week. Prison officials detain all of them in one cell and call them to their office for questioning on a daily basis. In an attempt to weakened the strength of unity among the inmates, prison officials exploit the differences between them, for example, religious issues, to create distrust, conflict, and disintegration. However, the prisoners have discovered their sinister plots and tried to inform the outside world.
According to relatives of the inmates, on Sunday morning, August 04, 2013, relatives must pay the prison a fee of 100,000 VND (5 USD) for visiting each prisoner.
Meanwhile, four young Catholics, Tran Minh Nhat, Ho Van Oanh, Tran Huu Duc, and Chu Manh Son have gone on a hunger strike to against the harsh treatments from prison guards in Thai Nguyen Prison.
Being a former prisoner of conscience, I had witnessed the method of detaining prisoners with different backgrounds into common groups, each group comprises about 40 inmates or more. The prison guards utilize the so-called "antenna" - prisoner who spies other prisoners - to inflict differences, distrust, and confrontation among the inmates. I could not imagine that almost 50% of 40 or more inmates in my cell were the "antennas" for the communist prison police. It is a sinister intrigue!
Understandably, prison police deliberately detain political prisoners and prisoners of conscience with common criminal prisoners to let criminal prisoners control the other two groups with their orders. If they detain all political prisoners together, they always find any possible means to create problems among the inmates.
In any circumstances, when the activists must spend their time in prison they need to stay alert in order to avoid the evil traps of dictatorship.
A visit to families of Catholic Youth in Nghe An
