Vietnam's Stealth Repression

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a supposed spy, Dr. Pham Hong Son was never particularly secretive. After all, he once sent a personal letter to the head of Vietnam's Communist Party, Nong Duc Manh, urging him to hold free elections. But it was his pro-democracy writings on an overseas Vietnamese website that landed Son in jail in 2002, convicted a year later of spying for "hostile forces"—government code for anti-communist exile groups. His sentence to 13 years in prison (later reduced to five), made the 37-year-old physician, who worked for a pharmaceutical company, Vietnam's first and most famous "cyber-dissident." On Wednesday, Son was released in a general amnesty along with 5,312 other prisoners, and picked up right where he left off: openly calling on the Communist Party to give up its monopoly on power. "I want to see Vietnam have a free political system," Son told TIME by telephone hours after returning home, where he remains under house arrest. "I support all who fight for democracy and freedom."

Son, however, is under no illusions about the timing of his release, which he said came "to benefit the authorities." In November, Hanoi will host the annual Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, with world leaders including U.S. President George W. Bush expected to attend. Foreign diplomats have been lobbying for Son's release for years, with the U.S. particularly disturbed that Son's translation of a U.S. State Department essay titled "What Is Democracy?" was used as evidence against him in his trial. Dissident groups maintain that Son was released purely to help Vietnam's government avoid awkward criticism from visiting heads of state during APEC. If so, the strategy seems to have had some success. U.S. embassy officials praised Son's release—as well as those of Protestant pastor Ma Van Bay and Y Oal Nie, a tribal activist from Vietnam's troubled Central Highlands—as "a move consistent with trends within Vietnamese society toward a spirit of greater openness and debate."

However, critics like the Paris-based Vietnam Committee on Human Rights—which called the amnesty a "propaganda exercise"—say that the real trend is towards stealthier methods of repression, like house arrest and intimidation, to silence dissidents. "In reality, Vietnam is increasing controls and legislation against dissidents every day," committee president Vo Van Ai said. He claims the country still has more than 300 political and religious prisoners behind bars. That's not including an unknown number of others under house arrest, including 87-year-old Buddhist patriarch Thich Huyen Quang, head of the banned Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam, and his deputy, Thich Quang Do. Also reporting harassment are members of the 8406 Group, a dissidents' umbrella organization formed in April this year. One founding member, Nguyen Khac Toan, 51, says he was abducted from a Hanoi internet café in March by police and interrogated for four hours; earlier this month police raided his home and seized his computer, mobile phone and papers. Another member, Nguyen Van Dai, a 38-year-old lawyer who has represented several dissidents, says his office was raided too, and that he had been repeatedly called in for questioning and ordered to quash "Freedom and Democracy", an independent newspaper the group was preparing to publish. "These wrongdoings will not kill our will," Dai says. "Instead, it just strengthens our will to fight for freedom and democracy."

Vietnam's government refuses to answer questions about dissidents being raided and incarcerated, other than repeating its standard line: "Vietnam has no political prisoners," Government spokesman Le Dung declared recently. But with the release of Son, it has gained one more critic. "My ideas haven't changed and I will continue to speak out openly and frankly," Son says. He'll have to find creative ways to do so. A day after his release, Son's home phone and mobile phone lines were cut off.