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Vietnam Prisoner Transferred to Hospital

HO CHI MINH CITY — Ms. Le Thi Hong Lien, suffering in prison from severe mental illness for many months, has been transferred to a hospital that treats the mentally ill. Family members have visited her at the hospital in Bien Hoa, fifty kilometers northeast of their Ho Chi Minh City home.

This follows a concerted international appeal to Vietnamese authorities to provide Ms. Lien with the care and treatment she needs.

On February 1, her father, Mr. Nguyen Quang Du, also sent a letter to high officials, asking that she be treated because she was weak and mentally deranged.

When he went to visit his daughter at the Ho Chi MInh City's Chi Hoa Prison on February 22, he was told that she was transferred to the Tong Le Chan prison in the jungle in Binh Phuoc province, 170 kilometers/105 miles north of Ho Chi Minh City.

The next day he went to this prison, and reported that his daughter's health was poor. She was unable to care for her personal hygiene, was suffering from edema and had not eaten for several days.

On March 1, Mr. Du was informed that she was taken to the Bien Hoa Mental Hospital. He later learned that she was transferred on February 28.

A few days later her father, mother and brother visited her for 20 minutes, and she exhibited the same poor health. As they prayed with her, she did not even look at any of them.

Her father expressed frustration with "those who are unable to repent and continue to do things which are not right to my daughter, yet always give the impression that they are doing all they can for her."

On March 12, Mr. Du again visited Lien. Two policemen brought his daughter out of a room in which she was locked, and she sat opposite him, crying, her feet still swollen and her face covered with skin infection.

Writing the next day, Mr. Du described his concerns: "My daughter is not with any women at all, only with men — guards and police. I am very concerned about my daughter. Caught in a wolf trap, nothing has changed; her health situation is not improving, and her mental health is in no way restored."

"It is irrational for them to say my daughter understands what is going on. In reality, sitting opposite her, I finally came to realize that they do not have the ability to cure my daughter."

Ms. Lien was arrested June 30 in relation to a March 2, 2004 incident. She was sentenced November 12 to one year in prison.