Before Revolutionary Press Day, police assault a journalist

 

 

Doan Trang – VNRN

June 21, 2015

The police at Van Quan ward in suburban Ha Noi attacked a young reporter of the Tuoi Tre Thu Do [Capital City’s Youth] using electric shock sticks, just three days prior to the “Revolutionary Press Day” of June 21. The shocked victim was taken to hospital at 3 a.m., and the police themselves said they were “investigating the allegations.”

Reporter Tong Van Dat said he was just “carrying out a duty assigned to him by the editorial board”, under which he had to verify readers’ claims that the Van Quan police often set up illegal “traffic camps” to stop and fine drivers.

“It was about 9.15 pm, June 18, and I was filming the Van Quan police’s working group when a policeman suddenly pinioned my arms,” Tong Van Dat wrote in his complaint. “Though I told them I was a reporter performing duty, the group of police kept pinioning my arms and hitting me on my head and body.”

Witnesses told the press that Dat was “beaten mercilessly” by a group of 7-8 policemen and some youths with tattoos before he was dragged from the road into police car.

Dat’s complaint wrote, “After I was pushed into their vehicle, those police kept beating me and a policeman named Nam pressed his electric shock stick on my face and the back of my neck so that I got moveless. Only when two colleagues of mine came, tried to calm them down and pulled me off their vehicle was I able to get out.”

Some photos spread on Facebook showed Dat lying unconscious on the road.

However, Mr. Vuong Tien Dung, Head of the local police department, denied that Dat was beaten or attacked with electric shock sticks. “The police only used wooden clubs as a kind of supporting tools. It is not that every policeman is equipped with an electric shock stick; they can only use those sticks when controlling criminals,” he asserted and concluded that “the case is being investigated.”

Assault and battery against journalists is not something strange in Vietnam. A report issued by RED Communication, a Hanoi-based research organization, in October 2011, listed physical assault as one of the 12 forms of obstruction against journalists. Dozens of reporters get beaten every year by civilians, thugs, even police forces. On April 24, 2012, in the infamous land eviction in Van Giang district, two journalists of VOV (Voice of Vietnam) were brutally attacked by the armed police who mistook them for the resistant farmers. That was one of the most serious cases of assault and battery against media workers in the recent three years.

No one was held liable, however, for any attack against journalists (and certainly, bloggers).

 

 

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