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Two political prisoners in Vietnam have ended their hunger strike after authorities agreed to improve conditions, the sister of one of them told Radio Free Asia.
Trinh Ba Tu, 35, called his family on Wednesday, telling them he and Bui Van Thuan, 43, were eating again after 21 days drinking only water. He said they had both lost about 11 kilograms (24 pounds) in weight but had achieved their goal of opening the “tiger cage” used to hold political prisoners in solitary confinement in the facility in Nghe An province.
“The ‘tiger cage’ has been open for a week,” Tu’s sister Trinh Thi Thao told RFA Vietnamese.
“The ‘brothers’ in the four cells were allowed to go out into the common yard to play sports, play chess and talk for two hours on Friday morning, Sunday morning and Sunday afternoon.”
The tiger cage is a cube made of iron bars which separates four cells housing single prisoners from the exercise yard with a space of about one meter (3.3 feet) to move around in, according to Tran Huynh Duy Thuc, who was in the same camp as the hunger strikers – Prison No. 6 – and was released late last month.
Prisoners have not been able to leave their cells to exercise in the yard or grow vegetables in the garden since April, when Deputy Warden Thai Van Thuy ordered the “tiger cage” locked, Thuc told RFA.
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Reporters were unable to contact Prison No. 6 via its listed phone number to ask about the situation of prisoners and the detention regime.
Tu and Thuan are both serving eight-year prison sentences for “anti-state propaganda.” They began their hunger strike with Dang Dinh Bach, former director of the Center for Law and Policy Research for Sustainable Development, who was sentenced to five years in prison for “tax evasion.”
Bach, 46, had to abandon the protest after 10 days because his health was suffering but he recovered after he began eating.
Translated by RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Mike Firn.