Solitary Confinement Used as a Weapon: Lê Đình Lượng Punished for Demanding Medical Care

 

The Vietnamese Magazine | July 28 2025

The family of imprisoned Vietnamese dissident Lê Đình Lượng has raised urgent concerns on social media about his life-threatening medical condition after learning he is being held in solitary confinement at Nam Hà Prison, where he has had no access to medical care or family contact since early June 2025.

According to his relatives, all communication with Lượng has been cut off—no visitation, no food or medicine deliveries, and no official notification from the prison. The family only discovered his deteriorating situation when his wife and other relatives traveled to Nam Hà and were told that he was placed in solitary confinement for “opposing the prison.”

His family insists that his so-called defiance was not an act of violence, but a desperate outcry. Lượng had repeatedly requested medical treatment and raised grievances about prison conditions—only to be met with silence. Before his isolation, he reportedly went on a hunger strike in protest after being denied healthcare. Despite being elderly, frail, and suffering from chronic illnesses, the authorities have responded not with care but with punishment.

Instead of being transferred to a medical facility, Lượng has been subjected to indefinite solitary confinement—alone, without light, without medicine, and without hope. His family now lives in fear, uncertain whether he is alive or dead. “This is not just cruelty,” they said. “It is a slow, systematic killing.”

The family accuses Nam Hà Prison of using solitary confinement as a tool of political retribution, stripping Lượng of his right to life, healthcare, and basic human dignity. They believe the prison has fabricated charges of “defiance” to justify harsh and retaliatory measures aimed at silencing a man who dared to speak the truth.

In a public appeal, the family urgently calls on the Vietnamese community at home and abroad, international human rights organizations, and the global press to speak out and intervene before it is too late. Lê Đình Lượng was sentenced to 20-years-imprisonment in August 2018 under Article 79 of the 1999 Penal Code.

 

 

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