Ho Chi Minh aide jailed

X-URL: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...3/ixworld.html

Telegraph - Nov 13th, 2003

Ho Chi Minh aide jailed for attack on communism*

By Alex Spillius, South East Asia Correspondent
(Filed: 13/11/2003)

A former bodyguard of Vietnam's revolutionary president Ho Chi Minh
was jailed for 10 months yesterday for criticising the Communist Party
that his leader founded and inspired.

Tran Dung Tien, 74, who protected Ho for two decades, was arrested in
January, two days after writing an open letter calling for the release
of two dissidents, a former army colonel and an military historian. He
wrote: "To remain silent is to be irresponsible, for it amounts to
accepting the continuation of crimes and tyranny."

Tien joined the struggle against French colonial rule in the 1940s and
was a member of the elite Quyet Tu Quan unit before joining Ho's
guard. The then president died of natural causes in 1969, six years
before North Vietnam defeated the American-backed South.

Like many revolutionaries, Tien became disillusioned with the
Communist authorities in the 1990s, when the party liberalised the
economy, often to its own benefit, and kept a stiff grip on political
and social expression.

He left the party five years ago and has been an outspoken critic of
it since. Journalists and diplomats were barred from his two-hour
trial in Hanoi and received news from family members and anonymous
officials.

Outside, a fellow military veteran, Hoang Minh Chinh, 81, said that
like Tien he had known Ho but now opposed the government.

"The problem, that not just myself but the whole people face, is no
democracy. No democracy here is specifically no press freedom," he
said.

International rights groups and the US state department have
repeatedly criticised the Vietnamese regime for its repressive
treatment of religious and political dissidents. Hanoi maintains that
only lawbreakers are punished.

In the past year it has clamped down further on democracy advocates
with one critic receiving 13 years, later halved, for an open letter
attacking the government.

But Tien's sentence was shorter than expected, and he may be released
later this month, having spent almost the length of his term in
custody since his arrest.

"The shortness of the sentence is surprising but he should never have
been tried in the first place," said a Western diplomat. "I don't know
if this is a reaction to international pressure or his domestic
standing."