Foreign Minister Penny Wong has raised the ongoing detention of Australian citizen Chau Van Kham with Vietnam's top brass this week, after a United Nations body found he was arbitrarily detained and "forcibly disappeared".
Senator Wong discussed Chau's case with President Nguyen Xuan Phuc, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and Foreign Minister Bùi Thanh Sơn on Monday.
Her latest appeal — one of more than 70 representations from the Australian government since Chau was imprisoned — came during her first visit to Vietnam as Foreign Minister.
"The Australian government raises Mr Kham's case at all levels, in Australia and Vietnam," a spokesperson from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) said.
"The government of Vietnam is well aware of our interest in Mr Kham's case and his welfare."
It was welcome news to the detained man's wife, Trang Chau.
"I'm very glad to know that Foreign Minister Penny Wong raised my husband's case with the Vietnamese government during her recent trip to Vietnam," she said.
"I do hope that, with the Australian government's strong and active interventions, my husband will be released right now and reunited with me and my family in Sydney.
A retired baker from Sydney who fled Vietnam after the war, Chau, 72, was detained in Ho Chi Minh City in January 2019, after allegedly entering the country on a false document.
Vietnamese authorities later sentenced him to 12 years in prison on national security charges, due to his links with pro-democracy group Viet Tan.
The group is marked as a terrorist organisation in Vietnam, but is considered a legal and peaceful human rights organisation in Australia. His family and human rights groups have dismissed the idea he is a terrorist as ludicrous.
"Any kind of pressure is always good news, especially coming off from the UN's review [of] my dad's case, which is awesome," said Chau's son, Daniel.
UN working group calls for Chau's release
Chau's case was referred to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, which called for his immediate and unconditional release.
In an opinion distributed this month, the group said he was arrested without a warrant and his pre-trial detention of 10 months was "unacceptably long".
It also found the trial itself — which lasted about four and a half hours but amounted to 45 minutes per defendant — was too short, something the Vietnamese government rejected.
"The Working Group calls upon the [Vietnamese] government to take urgent action to ensure the immediate unconditional release of Mr Van Kham."
When a relative visited the prison in February 2020, the group said Chau "was no longer an inmate and prison authorities refused to disclose information as to where he had been moved until late June 2020".
"The government does not refute this allegation. The Working Group finds that, for this duration, Mr Van Kham was forcibly disappeared," it said.
The Vietnamese government submitted that members of Viet Tan have incited violence, smuggled weapons and recruited others to commit sabotage or trained them to use explosives.
But the opinion noted that Chau provided evidence during his trial that he was not involved in any violence, and the working group "has previously found that mere association with Viet Tan does not justify detention".
"He was deprived of his liberty for reasons of discrimination owing to his status as a human rights defender," it said.
DFAT told the ABC it was aware of the opinion but had not been consulted about it.
'Australia needs to keep up the pressure'
Daniel Chau said the findings were validating for the family, who felt his father should have never been imprisoned.
"It makes my dad's case more legitimate," he said.
"We always knew Australia was doing their best on their side … but hearing it from the UN, that my dad should be released, was really happy news.
"My mum's very excited … [we have] much more hope."
The family's lawyer, Dan Phuong Nguyen, said the working group's opinion would give the Australian government "ammunition" to lobby for Chau in a bid to secure his release".
Amnesty International has listed Chau as a prisoner of conscience, "detained solely for his peaceful political beliefs".
Rose Kulak, an Amnesty International campaigner, said the fact the UN Working Group had also referred his case on to other UN bodies for further investigation demonstrated the gravity of his situation.
She said the four-month period where his family were unaware of his whereabouts was especially devastating.
"No one knew where he was. It appears he was in that maze of Vietnamese prisons," she said.
"When people are forcibly disappeared, they don't always emerge. So, it's a really serious situation that he was actually in."
She added the Australian government fluctuated between diplomacy behind closed doors and making public statements.
"We need to be doing whatever works, whatever will bring him back to Australia as soon as possible.
"The Vietnamese government must let him be free to return back to Australia."
