Rights group documents extrajudicial harassment in Vietnam

BANGKOK (AP) — Human Rights Watch says more than 170 activists have been put under house arrest, blocked from traveling and sometimes assaulted by agents of the Vietnamese government in a little-noticed campaign to silence its critics. The New York-based group says such tactics are “often overlooked” in reporting on the communist government’s imprisonment of dissidents and other “suppression of fundamental liberties.” The cases the group documented from 2004 to last year included Nguyen Tuong Thuy, an army veteran who took up the cause of political prisoners. Human Rights Watch says he was harassed, intimidated, assaulted, and banned from traveling before being sent to prison last year. Vietnam has said it is fully committed to protecting human rights.