Vietnam blogger jailed for posts about China deported to US

Nguyen Van Hai, known online as Dieu Cay, freed from prison after being jailed in 2012 for ‘anti-state propaganda’

 

 

Kate Hodal in Phnom Penh

The Guardian, 22 October 2014  

One of Vietnam’s best-known dissidents has been released from prison and deported to the US, where he has promised to fight to return to his home country.

Blogger Nguyen Van Hai, 62, known online as Dieu Cay, was jailed in 2012 for 12 years for disseminating “anti-state propaganda” related to his internet posts, a sentence rights activists allege was little more than trumped-up charges for his critical views on China.

“My father was the first to talk about China’s intentions [towards Vietnam],” Hai’s son Nguyen Tri Dung told the Committee to Protect Journalists last month. “Now, everybody is saying what he said about China, even government leaders.”

Hai was one of the first to criticise China’s encroaching influence over Vietnam, particularly over sovereignty issues. But the view has gained far greater hold in recent months, with anti-China riots in various cities highlighting Hanoi’s battles with Beijing over the South China Sea, which holds rich oil and gas reserves. It is believed that US senator John McCain – a former prisoner of war in Vietnam – may have helped secure Hai’s release during a visit to the country in August.

The US – which has warmed relations with Hanoi greatly as part of its “Asia pivot”, even recently ending a lethal-weapon sales ban – said it welcomed Vietnam’s decision to release Hai, considered a prisoner of conscience.

“We have consistently called for his release and the release of all other political prisoners in Vietnam,” said spokeswoman Marie Harf.

A founder of Vietnam’s Club for Free Journalists, which was set up as an alternative to state-controlled news, Hai has been in and out of detentions since 2007. Increasingly unwell, he fought against his alleged ill treatment in prison by going on repeated hunger strikes.

Just how Hai has ended up in America – rather than his home town of Saigon – is still unclear. According to the US state department, it was Hai’s decision to travel to America. But even Hai himself, and his family, recount a different tale. Speaking to Radio Free Asia, Hai’s ex-wife said he was removed suddenly from his jail cell, taken to the airport and put on a plane to Los Angeles – without any prior warning.

“They did not let [his] family know anything about his release. There was no signal or notice,” she said, claiming he phoned them briefly while in transit in Hong Kong to tell them the news. “They deported him to exile, they did not release him.”

According to Hai, Vietnam sent him abroad on Washington’s wishes.

“This trip is the decision of the US government,” he told reporters in Los Angeles. “The US government wants me to become a citizen of the US but I don’t understand why the Vietnamese government wants to deport me.”

He vowed to fight for his return back to Vietnam, as well as the return of all other Vietnamese exiles in America.

Hai is the second high-profile dissident to be welcomed in America this year. French-trained lawyer Cu Huy Ha Vu, a vocal critic of the ruling Communist party, was released from prison earlier this year and moved to the US in April.

Activists applauded Hai’s release but expressed concern over the conditions of his departure.

“It’s very good news that blogger Dieu Cay is free, but no one should forget for an instant that he should never have been in prison in the first place,” said Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division. “The Vietnam government severely persecuted him for years because he was brave enough to voice his opinions and tell inconvenient truths that leaders in Hanoi didn’t want spreading via the internet among the Vietnamese people. They should not receive applause for forcing him into exile as the price of his freedom.”

Some 26 other bloggers are still detained in Vietnam, according to Reporters Without Borders, which calls the country “the world’s third biggest prison for netizens”.

 

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