Vietnamese Dissident Receives Death Threats Over Criticism of China’s COVID
Vaccines
Mac Van Trang told officials in Ho Chi Minh City not to accept Sinopharm doses
donated by a local conglomerate.
RFA | 2021-09-23
A professor and popular Vietnamese dissident said Thursday that he has received
death threats by phone after publishing a series of social media posts
criticizing the use of China’s coronavirus vaccines in Vietnam.
Mac Van Trang, known for his critical voice on sociopolitical issues in Vietnam,
said he received threatening calls after he posted stories on the Chinese
vaccines on his Facebook page, including a letter he wrote to the Ho Chi Minh
City leaders, advising them not to accept millions of doses of the Sinopharm
vaccine.
“One recent evening, an anonymous man called me on the phone, saying that I
shouldn’t keep talking about it and should behave myself; otherwise I would put
my life in danger,” Trang told RFA. “He also said that people are dying, and
it’s good to have vaccines, and it would be a crime to prevent it. Therefore, I
should mind my tongue!”
Vietnam is experiencing a surge in coronavirus cases with the spread of the more
contagious Delta variant, and large areas of the country of more than 98 million
people have been under lockdown. Only about seven percent of Vietnamese adults
have been fully vaccinated.
Earlier this week, the Ministry of Health decided to allocate an additional 8
million doses of China’s Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine donated by the Van Thinh
Phat Group to 25 cities and provinces, the country’s Tuoi Tre News reported.
But citizens throughout the country have expressed concern, fearing the
Sinopharm doses might produce hidden side effects, Ngo Tri Long, former rector
of the Ministry of Finance’s Price and Market Research Institute, told RFA in an
earlier report.
Trang, 83, was a long-term member of the Communist Party of Vietnam, but he
resigned on Oct. 26, 2018, when the party decided to discipline Chu Hao, a
well-known intellectual who criticized the government. Trang currently lives in
Ho Chi Minh City and posts critiques of sociopolitical issues on his Facebook
page.
It was not the first time that he had received such calls, Trang said, adding
that threats were made after he spoke out about sensitive incidents in Vietnam,
including a deadly land-rights dispute in January 2020. At that time, about
3,000 security officers raided a hamlet in Dong Tam commune to intervene in a
long-running dispute over a military airport construction site about 25 miles
south of Vietnam’s capital Hanoi.
“In our society, there are many people who have been indoctrinated for a long
time that whatever contradicts the [Communist] Party’s policy and guidelines is
considered hostile,” he said of the threats he has received.
“From the general secretary, prime minister, and president to others in the
government, they always talk about enemies and hostile forces,” Trang said.
“This has created a dangerous mindset among party fanatics who exist when the
party exists, and who see anyone who criticizes it as a hostile force.”
In addition to the 8 million new shots, Vietnam has received roughly 50 million
vaccine doses, including 20 million Sinopharm doses — more than six million of
which were donated by China and five million of which were purchased by Ho Chi
Minh City, Tuoi Tre News said.
Before the new allocation, 5.5 million Sinopharm vaccine doses had been
administered to people in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Quang Ninh province, Hai
Phong city, Binh Duong province, and Dong Nai province, the report said.
Vietnam’s President Nguyen Xuan Phuc traveled to Havana last weekend for an
official visit, where he met with Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel and
finalized a deal for Vietnam to buy 10 million doses of Cuba’s Abdala vaccine.
Italy has also promised to donate 800,000 doses of the British-Swedish
AstraZeneca vaccine to Vietnam, raising Rome’s commitment to Hanoi to over 1.6
million doses through the COVAX program co-led by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance;
the World Health Organization; and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness
Innovations.
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