“Grandma said that I could ask you to buy me a gift in my favor, then I would take it as a gift from her,” Huy excitedly talks to his mother after visiting his grandma at Detention Center No.5 in Thanh Hoa province. His grandfather rode a bike to take him there.
Mrs. Cấn Thị Thêu is a grandmother of four. Thành and Nguyên are two sons of her first child, Mr. Trịnh Bá Phương. When their father was arrested, Thành was 2 years old, and Nguyên was just 4 days old. Besides Thành and Nguyên, Mrs. Thêu has two other grandchildren, Huy and Hương. Since the arrest and detention of their grandmother, their father, and their uncle, who is Mrs. Thêu’s youngest son, the lives of these four little kids have been profoundly affected.
Shortly after Grandma, Dad and Uncle were arrested, Huy and his mother had to immediately return to Hoa Binh for the family’s pomelo garden, once Grandma and Uncle’s responsibility. Huy had just turned 4 years old at the time. In Hoa Binh, unlike Hanoi, there were overgrown gardens everywhere. One time when it was raining heavily, Huy’s mother had to leave him at home alone to work in the garden. While Huy panicked and burst out crying, Mom had no choice but to let him grow used to it despite how painful it was for her.
During the widespread coronavirus epidemic in Hanoi, Thành and Nguyên’s mother took them to Hoa Binh by bus to avoid the outbreak. Together with Huy and his sister, Hương, though they could tuck at the same toys, these four children formed a really close bond. Among them, Nguyên loves hanging with Hương the most. There were always two little kids that cycled a bike together to every corner of the neighborhood.
Last April, Huy’s grandfather took him on a bike to Detention Center No.5 in Thanh Hoa to visit Grandma. “Grandma said that I could ask you to buy me a gift in my favor, then I would take it as a gift from her,” Huy excitedly talked to Mom. Huy, as well as Hương, Nguyên, and Thành, are loved and missed by Grandma badly. Perhaps, Mrs. Thêu longs to see Thành in person the most. He was just 4 days old on the day of her arrest, and they’ve never seen each other’s faces but through photos taken by the family.
Back in the day, whenever Mrs. Thêu had time to visit her grandchildren in Hanoi, they would drop by a little store around the corner together for new toys. Huong would totally love new crayons, Huy’s choice would be a toy car, and Thành would take goodies and stuff. It was Children’s Day yesterday, had Grandma been home, she would have probably given each of the four kids a small gift.
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Trịnh Bá Phương and Trịnh Bá Tư are two sons of Cấn Thị Thêu. Three of them are farmers and land rights activists in Vietnam. They were arrested in June 2020 and charged with “making, storing, and disseminating information, documents, items, and publications with contents against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam” under article 117 of the Penal Code 2015. Trịnh Bá Phương was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment and 5 years’ probation, and his appellate court is pending. Trịnh Bá Tư and Cấn Thị Thêu’s legal procedures were finished, and both were sentenced to 8 years’ imprisonment and 3 years’ probation.
