Dissident Vietnamese Poet Jailed For 12 Years on ‘Subversion’ Charge
RFA | 2020-12-15
A court in central Vietnam’s Nghe An province on Tuesday sentenced a dissident
poet and blogger to 12 years in prison on a charge of subversion--activities his
lawyer said were merely an exercise of his client’s freedom of speech.
Tran Duc Thach, a co-founder of Vietnam’s online Brotherhood for Democracy, was
arrested on April 23, 2020 and charged with “activities aimed at overthrowing
the People’s Government” under Article 109 of Vietnam’s Criminal Code for
Facebook postings exposing government corruption and human rights abuses.
The Brotherhood for Democracy is not recognized by the Vietnamese government,
and many of its members have been imprisoned since its founding in 2013.
Tran will serve a further three years’ probation when his 12-year sentence has
ended, according to the sentence imposed by the Nghe An People’s Court
Speaking to RFA’s Vietnamese Service following Tuesday’s trial, Tran’s lawyer Ha
Huy Son said his client had been sentenced unjustly.
“In my opinion, the prosecution of this case was aimed only at preventing
political pluralism and multiparty ideologies [in Vietnam], because Tran’s
behavior was not dangerous and did not contradict the Constitution,” Ha said.
“Tran Duc Thach admitted to the activities that were described in the
indictment, but said they were not done with the aim of overthrowing the
government. Rather, he had only wanted to help build a better society according
to his own understanding,” he said.
Judge Tran Ngoc Son of the People’s Court had not allowed Tran’s defense team to
copy case documents used at trial, hampering his client’s defense, Ha said. The
court showed no regard for Tran’s wartime service when considering his sentence,
claiming there were no documents in the case file to support his claim.
Served during Vietnam War
Born in 1952 in Nghe An, Tran served with North Vietnamese forces during the
Vietnam War and was afterward an activist for human rights and democracy in
Vietnam for many years.
In his book A
Haunting Collective Grave, Tran tells the story of how North
Vietnamese soldiers killed hundreds of innocents at Tan Lap commune in Dong Nai
province’s Xuan Loc district during the final campaign of the war that ended
with communist forces’ victory on April 30, 1975.
Tran was earlier sentenced to three years in jail in October 2009 for
“conducting propaganda against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam” along with
fellow dissidents Vu Van Hung and Pham Van Troi.
Quoting Nghe An provincial prosecutors, Vietnamese state media said this week
that Tran’s writings and activities had “threatened social stability, encroached
upon national independence and socialism, reduced people’s trust in the
political institution of the state of Vietnam, and infringed upon national
security and social safety and order.”
Rights group slams sentence
In a Dec. 15 statement, Human Rights Watch deputy Asia director Phil Robertson,
slammed the sentence imposed on Tran by the Nghe An court, saying he should
instead be honored for his commitment to reform in the one-party communist
state.
“As a veteran of the People’s Liberation Army of Vietnam, Tran Duc Thach spent
his youth fighting for the cause of the very same government that now imprisons
him for speaking his mind and exercising his rights,” Robertson said.
“When is Vietnam going to realize that citizens like Tran Duc Thach should be
honored for their commitment to reform and rights, not persecuted for pointing
out shortcomings in government and society?”
“International donors and trade partners of Vietnam should end their silence on
Vietnam’s human rights abuses, and demand an end to the crackdown on those
exercising their rights,” Robertson said.
Vietnam, with a population of 92 million people, has been consistently rated
“not free” in the areas of internet and press freedom by Freedom House, a
U.S.-based watchdog group.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranked Vietnam 175 out of 180 in its 2020 World
Press Freedom Index. About 25 journalists and bloggers are being held in
Vietnam’s jails, “where mistreatment is common,” the Paris-based watchdog group
said.
Vietnam’s already low tolerance of dissent deteriorated sharply this year with a
spate of arrests of independent journalists, publishers, and Facebook
personalities as authorities continued to stifle critics in the run-up to the
ruling Communist Party congress in January.
Reported by RFA’s Vietnamese Service. Translated by Huy Le. Written in English
by Richard Finney.
Vietnam Human Rights Network |