(WAN/IFEX) – WAN welcomed the announcement on 28 August 1998 that Vietnam had amnestied prominent dissident Doan Viet Hoat, the winner of WAN’s 1998 Golden Pen of Freedom award. **For background to case, see IFEX alerts of 2 July and 29 June 1998; 4 November and 29 January 1997; 4 March 1996; and others** “We […]
(WAN/IFEX) – WAN welcomed the announcement on 28 August 1998 that Vietnam
had amnestied prominent dissident Doan Viet Hoat, the winner of WAN’s 1998
Golden Pen of Freedom award.
**For background to case, see IFEX alerts of 2 July and 29 June 1998; 4
November and 29 January 1997; 4 March 1996; and others**
“We are delighted and gratified that the Vietnamese government has
ultimately been convinced that Professor Hoat should be freed,” said the
Director General of WAN, Timothy Balding. “We eagerly await his release and
his return to his family.”
Mr. Balding said Vietnam had clearly responded to a massive international
campaign for Professor Hoat’s release.
“This is evidence that governments that are hostile to freedom of
expression can be influenced by international opinion, and it highlights the
need to continue such campaigns wherever journalists and other prisoners of
opinion are jailed and persecuted,” he said.
The European Parliament and human rights organizations world-wide had called
for Professor Hoat’s release. WAN, which organized a massive opinion
campaign for Professor Hoat’s release, appealed directly to Vietnamese
President Tran Duc Luong in June to include Hoat on the list of prisoners to
be amnestied on Vietnam’s National Day.
Professor Hoat, who was among more than 5,000 prisoners amnestied by
President Luong on Friday 28 August, has been serving a 15-year jail
sentence for his work with the pro-democracy newsletter “Dien Dan Tu Do”
(Freedom Forum). He has spent much of the past three decades in prison.
He is the laureate of WAN’s 1998 Golden Pen of Freedom, awarded annually for
outstanding contributions to the struggle for a free press. The award was
presented to his wife, Tran Thi Thuc, at WAN’s annual Congress in Kobe,
Japan, in June.
The presidential amnesty decision was effective 28 August, but the timetable
for the actual release of prisoners was not made available.
