AFP Tuesday - Oct 12, 1999
HANOI, Oct 20 (AFP) - Prominent Vietnamese dissident writer and scientist Nguyen Thanh Giang denounced police for seizing his computer and questioning him for two days, according to a copy of a letter obtained Wednesday. The 63-year-old geophysicist said his treatment by security forces was "barbaric and brutal," when about 10 police searched his home and seized his computer.
In an open letter addressed to the leadership of the communist party, the state and the government, Giang wrote to "urgently inform you of the risks brutally threatening my life and my family."
According to the October 14 letter, a copy of which was faxed to AFP, Giang said three days earlier police conducted an extensive search of his home, confiscated his computer and subjected him to two days of questioning.
"They took me to the police station where I was interrogated continuously for two days," he said, without specifying whether he was compelled to also spend the night there.
In the letter he demanded an end to police harassment, an end to his house arrest and the return of his computer.
Giang was held without trial for two months earlier this year for "possessing anti-socialist propaganda," based on a letter entitled "Advice to Party building."
In the October 14 letter, Giang said police suspected him of having authored an obituary for Hoang Huu Nhan, a former Haiphong communist party secretary who became an outspoken critic of the communist party after his retirement.
Giang, who retired from the Hanoi Geology Bureau in 1996, has written extensively in favour of democracy and reform of the Vietnamese political system.
His writings have been widely distributed on the Internet among overseas Vietnamese, some of whom the communist party believes want to overthrow the regime.
Since his March arrest, Giang said, his son was forced to quit his research job at a government science institute, and his daughter to give up her post at the ministry of labour.
His arrest and imprisonment provoked a sharp protest from the US State Department and the international group for the defense of human rights, Human Rights Watch, both of which demanded his release.