Center for Constitutional Rights staff join hunger strike in solidarity with Dang Dinh Bach, environmental lawyer unjustly imprisoned in Vietnam

Center for Constitutional Rights staff members joined the global solidarity hunger strike for our colleague Dang Dinh Bach, an environmental lawyer in Vietnam who was unjustly sentenced to five years in prison on trumped up charges, in retaliation for his work to end the country’s reliance on coal. Bach has vowed to commence a hunger strike and maintain it, until freedom or death. Members of our staff were on hunger strike in solidarity with him this week. Learn more about Bach at standwithbach.org. The website contains information about Bach and other environmental defenders jailed in Vietnam. The website calls on governments, UN agencies, and others to demand his release, and provides ways to take action in support of the #StandwithBach campaign. Please share and sign this petition from Avaaz. You can also read a letter calling for Bach’s release, signed by over 90 organizations, including Center for Constitutional Rights.

“I have witnessed so many painful stories of poverty and terrible diseases that weigh on abused communities in Vietnam. They are deprived of their land and livelihoods and do not have opportunities to speak out for justice and the right to be human in the face of environmental pollution, especially in places with coal-fired power plants across the country. In order to conceal the truth and threaten the voices of people, the Vietnamese authorities have arrested, convicted and unjustly detained environmental and human rights activists in defiance of national and international law.”