Imprisoned activist denied medical care
The health of prominent human rights defender and prisoner of conscience Cấn Thị Thêu has worsened. On 17 January, Cấn Thị Thêu informed her family that she had been ill for 16 days with concerning symptoms associated with a stroke. Her request for medical treatment has been denied. Without proper care and regular visits from her family, there are grave concerns for her wellbeing. Cấn Thị Thêu has been imprisoned in Prison No. 5 in Thanh Hoa province for five years and allegedly subjected to torture and inhumane conditions of detention. Cấn Thị Thêu is a prisoner of conscience, detained solely for exercising her human rights, and must be immediately and unconditionally released.
Cấn Thị Thêu is a well-known land rights activist and human rights defender in Viet Nam. She became an activist after her family’s land was confiscated by the authorities in 2010. She began advocating against forced evictions and became a leading figure in the land rights movement. Thêu and her family supported victims of land grabbing, human rights violations, and prisoners of conscience. By documenting and reporting the issues on their social media accounts, which had more than 50'000 followers, the issues that Theu and her family raised were able to reach a large audience. They furthered their advocacy by providing human rights reports, especially on land rights and freedom of expression, to international communities.
Over the ten years that they had been activists, Thêu and her family faced intense harassment and surveillance from local authorities. Cấn Thị Thêu has been jailed twice; in 2014 (for 15 months) after leading a demonstration against a land grab, and again in 2016 (for 20 months) for filming a forced eviction. In total, she was in prison for two years and nine months. Her husband faced the same charges in 2014, and also spent 18 months in jail. After their parents' imprisonment in 2014, her sons Trịnh Bá Phương and Trịnh Bá Tư also became activists and human rights defenders. Upon her release from pris-on, Cấn Thị Thêu continued her activism with her sons and her husband.
Tensions reached a peak when Thêu and her two sons publicly advocated for the residents of Đồng Tâm village, who were victims of a high-profile land dispute with the government, from 2017 to 2020. In January 2020, police raided the village of Đồng Tâm, resulting in the death of a 84-year-old village leader and three police officers and the arrest of dozens of villagers. Despite the sensitivities and high risks associated, and with all state-owned media censored, Cấn Thị Thêu, Trịnh Bá Phương and Trịnh Bá Tư used social media to inform the public about the incident and human rights violations.
As a result, on 24 June 2020, police arrested Cấn Thị Thêu, Trịnh Bá Phương and Trịnh Bá Tư. At the time of the arrest, Phương had recently given birth to a son, who was just 4 days old when he was taken away.
On 5 May 2021, Cấn Thị Thêu and Trịnh Bá Tư were sentenced to eight years in prison with three years’ probation. Seven months later, on 15 December 2021, Trịnh Bá Phương was sentenced to ten years in jail with five years’ probation. The three were charged for «making, storing, or spreading information, materials or items for the purpose of opposing the State of the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam» under Article 117 of the Criminal Code. It is reported that, since 2011, at least 300 activists, human rights de-fenders and journalists in Viet Nam have been arrested under the Criminal Code. In September 2025, Trịnh Bá Phương was sentenced to 11 years in prison under Article 117, for possessing a banner opposing the Communist Party. This lead to a total of 21 years in prison from the previous charge in 2021.
During the pre-trial detention, there were several reports of the three activists' harsh treatment and torture. Allegedly, Trịnh Bá Phương had his genitals beaten by the police; Trịnh Bá Tư was also beaten, leading to kidney swelling. He also led a 20-day hunger strike to protest the harsh treatment. Thêu, to this day, continues to suffer from an eye infection that was caused by poor pre-detention conditions, being placed in a cell with no proper ventilation or sufficient water, and in extreme heat.
Once in prison, the harassment and beatings reportedly continued. Transferred to three different jails, far away from their hometown (around 1’000 km), it is incredibly difficult and costly for their family to visit them. In fact, it was only in March 2022 that they were even allowed a visit from their family. In September 2022, Trịnh Bá Tư was beaten and placed in solitary confinement for ten days with his feet shackled because. He had simply been advocating for another prisoner to access emergency healthcare.
In 2021, Amnesty International condemned the arbitrary arrest and unfair trials of Thêu and her two sons and also raised grave concerns over their ill-treatment in 2022. UN experts raised serious concerns UN experts raised serious concerns about the apparent systematic violations of the rights of human rights defenders in Viet Nam - including Cấn Thị Thêu, Trịnh Bá Tư and Trịnh Bá Phương - through arbitrary arrest, detention, unfair trials and criminal convictions in relation to the mere exercise of their right to freedom of expression and opinion.
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