Le Hoang Hung an investigative reporter for the newspaper Nguoi Lao Dong (Workers) died in hospital on January 29 from the injuries he received when an intruder sprayed him with chemicals and set fire to him while he was asleep in his home in Tan An, a town near Ho Chi Minh City in southern Vietnam, on January 20, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF).
“We are appalled by the barbaric fashion in which Le Hoang Hung was murdered and we call on the Long An province police to do everything possible to arrest those responsible as soon as possible,” RSF secretary-general Jean-François Julliard said. “Our thoughts are with the victim’s family. Such cruelty must not go unpunished.”
Fatal attacks on journalists are very rare in Vietnam even if the media are exposed to harassment and arbitrary treatment by the authorities. The last case was on January 21, 1988, when the journalist Duong Hung Cuong died in detention as a result of suspected mistreatment. Isao Takano, a Japanese journalist, was fatally shot in the head in Lang Son, near Vietnam’s border with China, on March 7, 1979.
Hung’s wife, Tran Thi Lieu, told the newspaper Tuoi Tre that she and her children were in another room when she saw her husband on fire, running and shouting: “Help me! Someone has tried to kill me!” She pushed him into the bathroom in order to put out the flames and then rushed him to hospital. She added that he had received anonymous threatening SMS messages shortly before the attack.
A local journalist said the attack was almost certainly an act of revenge. Hung covered prostitution, drug addiction and organised crime, including both Vietnamese and Cambodian gangs.
