Vietnamese political activists spanning the generations yesterday bade farewell to onetime senior Communist Party member turned dissident Hoang Minh Chinh, who died in his late 80s earlier this month.
Hundreds of people, many wearing white headbands of mourning, attended the funeral in Hanoi of the leader of the outlawed Democratic Party of Vietnam and founder member of "Bloc 8406," a diverse group of mainly Internet activists named for the date it was established in April 2006.
Several younger political activists, including some who in recent years have been jailed for opposing one-party rule, were among relatives and older friends who paid respects to Chinh. He died on Feb. 7 after suffering from prostate cancer.
"He dedicated all his life to the struggle for democracy and liberty," activist Pham Hong Son, who was released in Aug. 2006, said at the funeral. "I am of the younger generation and I wish to follow his legacy."
Son was arrested in 2002 and then tried after posting a translation of a US State Department article "What is Democracy?" on the Internet. He still lives under police surveillance and some restrictions.
Plainclothes police watched and filmed mourners at yesterday's funeral.
The Southeast Asian country has opened its economy to the world and reduced poverty through high economic growth, but it does not tolerate proponents of a multi-party system.
About 40 activists have been arrested in the past year, according to international human rights groups and Western diplomats. Some have been put on trial and sentenced to between three years and eight years in prison for "spreading propaganda against the state," a criminal offense in Vietnam.
A government spokesman says the defendants, who include lawyers, businessmen and union organizers, were not tried for their political beliefs, only for breaking Vietnam's laws.
Chinh's associates say he became a member of the Communist Party after the 1945 revolution in northern Vietnam, trained in the Soviet Union in the 1950s and was appointed director of the Marxist-Leninist Institute in Hanoi in 1960.
Seven years later he was removed and imprisoned for four years after writing an essay critical of the ruling party.
He was imprisoned at least twice more in the 1980s and 1990s. In 2005, he was allowed to go to the US for medical treatment, but faced abuse on his return after criticizing the Hanoi government while in the US, according to rights groups.
Chinh's casket was accompanied to a cremation ceremony by yellow-robed monks of the outlawed Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam.
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