The Royal Thai Police Special Unit have investigated the case of a Vietnamese political refugee who went missing in Bangkok but then suddenly appeared in Vietnam and was arrested.
Blogger Duong Van Thai (YouTuber Thai Van Duong), who often shares unofficial information of many Vietnamese senior officials on YouTube with nearly 120,000 followers, went missing in Pathum Thani province, Thailand, in the late afternoon of April 13.
Three days later, Vietnamese media reported that the police of Huong Son district, Ha Tinh province, arrested him when he illegally entered from Laos on the afternoon of April 14.
Grace Bui, a Vietnamese-American human rights activist who has lived in Bangkok for many years, said people from the Thai Royal Police’s Special Unit contacted her and a group of close friends of the blogger to collect information his and the possibility that he was kidnapped and escorted by the Vietnamese secret service. She shared with Radio Free Asia (RFA) on April 20:
“Special Forces have started their investigation yesterday, they started investigating the disappearance of Duong [Van Thai].
I think this case is bigger than Truong Duy Nhat’s case [abducted in Bangkok in 2019] because in the case of Nhat there is a suspision that there were people from the Thai police involved to help his kidnap, but in this case I think the Thai police did not involve, as we spoke to the Bangkok police chief and he said he didn’t know anything. I think this case was done by Vietnam’s side.”
The RFA reporter emailed the Royal Thai Police to verify the above information but have not received a response.
The group of friends investigates the missing blogger’s traces
Ms. Grace Bui told RFA that in parallel with the Thai police investigation, her team began to collect information, security camera footage of Duong Van Thai’s path before he disappeared to refute the information given by the Vietnamese side.
The group’s goal is to bring justice to Duong Van Thai, protect Vietnamese refugees in Thailand, and let the world know about Hanoi’s human rights violations even though the country is a member of the UN Human Rights Council, she said.
The group is working closely with many international human rights organizations to clarify what happened to the brave journalist who dared to report on corruption and collusion by Vietnamese officials over the years.
Two days ago, the group reported to the local police about Thai’s disappearance and was granted permission by the regional authorities to collect information from public cameras in the area where the blogger might be present before going missing.
Ms. Grace Bui said Mr. Duong Van Thai on April 13 left home and went to a nearby coffee shop to buy two cups of coffee and then went to the park in Rajamangala University of Technology, far from Bangkok about 50 km to the north.
There, he drank coffee with a newly-acquainted refugee, Facebooker Loc AnHa. After that, the friend stayed and Mr. Thai went to his rent apartment and since then no one has been contacted.
The reporter contacted Facebooker Loc AnHa, whose real name is Nguyen Khac Dinh Loc, and was told by this person that the information Grace Bui collected was accurate.
Mr. Loc said that in the afternoon, Duong Van Thai called him and arranged to go to the park to escape the heat like many days before. The two drank coffee and the blogger did a live stream about US Secretary of State Anthony Bliken’s visit to Hanoi the next day and the trial of blogger Nguyen Lan Thang.
Around 5:30, Duong Van Thai ended the live stream and returned to his apartment. Mr. Loc sat for a while and then left.
Mr. Loc, a religious freedom activist in Ba Ria-Vung Tau and regularly harassed by local authorities, said he received news that Mr. Thai was missing the next afternoon (April 14) while waiting for him to come over so that the two of them could go to the market, like many weeks before.
He said the information that his friend illegally entered Ha Tinh from Laos was fabricated because Duong Van Thai had no intention of returning to Vietnam, and could not cross 920 km by road in one day from the center of Thailand to the Laos-Vietnam border.
More than 300 Vietnamese refugees in Thailand yesterday signed a petition to UN organizations, especially the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Bangkok, and many international human rights organizations to request to investigate the case, take measures to ensure their security, and promote their settlement in a third country.
The petition was sent by representatives of refugees to the office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Bangkok on April 19.
On April 20, the reporter emailed UNHCR and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights but did not receive a response.
Thoibao.de (Translated)
