BANGKOK (AFP) – Prominent climate activist Hoang Thi Minh Hong has been released early from jail, her husband told AFP yesterday, hours ahead of a visit by Vietnam’s top leader to the United States (US).
A second high-profile detainee, dissident Tran Huynh Duy Thuc, was also released, his friend and former human rights lawyer Le Cong Dinh said.
The release of Hong and Thuc comes as General Secretary To Lam, Vietnam’s top leader, departed yesterday for the US for a working visit and to attend the 79th Session of the United Nations General Assembly. Last September Hong was sentenced to three years in prison for dodging USD275,000 in taxes related to her environmental campaign group CHANGE. She was one of five environmentalists jailed for tax evasion, in what activists have called a campaign to silence them.
“She has been fully pardoned,” her husband Hoang Vinh Nam told AFP.
“It was very sudden.”
Nam said they had speculated whether there could be some positive news about Hong ahead of Lam’s US visit, but they had no clear information until yesterday about her release from jail in Gia Lai, a mountainous province in Vietnam’s Central Highlands.
