Vietnam jails leading journalist for 30 months over Facebook posts critical of government
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Huy Duc, a journalist whose real name is Truong Huy San, said he did not intend to oppose the Communist Party or the state, but admitted some content violated its interests.
PHOTO: AFP
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HANOI - A Vietnamese court on Feb 27 sentenced a leading independent journalist to 30 months in prison over Facebook posts that criticised the government, state media said.
Huy Duc worked for influential state-run newspapers before authoring one of Vietnam’s most popular blogs and Facebook accounts, where he criticised the country’s communist leaders on issues such as corruption, media control and relations with China.
The court in Hanoi convicted the 63-year-old of “abusing democratic freedoms to infringe upon the interests of the state” through posting 13 articles on Facebook, according to Vietnam News Agency (VNA).
Huy Duc said he did not intend to oppose the Communist Party or the state, but admitted some content violated its interests, for which he took responsibility and was “very sorry”, VNA reported.
The trial lasted just a few hours.
“These articles have a large number of interactions, comments, and shares, causing negative impacts on social order and safety,” the indictment read, according to state media.
Shortly before his arrest last June, Huy Duc – a journalist whose real name is Truong Huy San – took aim online at Vietnam’s most powerful leader To Lam, as well as at his predecessor Nguyen Phu Trong.
It was unclear whether the charges related to those particular posts.
Vietnam, a one-party state, clamps down hard on any dissent.
It is the fifth-biggest jailer of journalists in the world, with 38 currently detained, according to the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) press freedom campaign group.
The trial in Hanoi came just months after blogger Duong Van Thai – who had almost 120,000 followers on YouTube, where he regularly recorded live streams critical of the government – was jailed for 12 years on charges of publishing anti-state information
In January, a prominent former lawyer was jailed for three years over Facebook posts.
‘Invaluable source of information’
Huy Duc, a former senior army lieutenant, was fired from a state news outlet in 2009 for criticising past actions by Vietnam’s former communist ally, the Soviet Union.
Huy Duc spent a year at Harvard University on a Nieman Fellowship in 2012.
While abroad, he published The Winning Side, his account of life in Vietnam after the end of the war with the United States.
RSF said his articles were “an invaluable source of information enabling the Vietnamese public to access censored information by the Hanoi regime”.
“By handing this heavy prison sentence, the regime showed its contempt for press freedom, as well its determination in silencing independent voices that report on facts that are not in line with the regime’s propaganda,” RSF advocacy manager Aleksandra Bielakowska told AFP.
Rights campaigners say the government has in recent years stepped up a crackdown on civil society.
“No country can develop sustainably based on fear,” Huy Duc wrote on Facebook last May, the month before he was arrested.
In December, Vietnam enacted new rules requiring Facebook and TikTok to verify user identities and hand over data to authorities.
Under Decree 147, all tech giants operating in the country must verify user accounts by phone numbers or Vietnamese identification numbers, and store that information alongside their full name and date of birth. AFP
