Vietnam

RWB condemns the 15-month jail sentence that a Hanoi court passed on dissident blogger Pham Viet Dao for “creating a bad image of the Communist Party and the government” in a total of 91 blog posts.

Vietnamese blogger Dinh Dang Dinh is suffering from end-stage stomach cancer and was transferred to hospital on 15 February 2014. PEN is also seriously concerned for the health of poet, essayist and, scholar and Catholic Priest Father Nguyen Van Ly, and writer and activist Nguyen Huu Cau, both of whom are serving lengthy prison sentences.

Blogger Truong Duy Nhat is being jailed for his commitment to Vietnam’s right to an alternative to the information provided by the state propaganda machine, said RWB.

It is believed that Mr. Quan’s detention is politically motivated and a reaction to his blog, where he frequently exposed human rights violations by the Vietnamese government.

Jailed Vietnamese blogger and human rights lawyer Le Quoc Quan has launched a hunger strike to protest the refusal by prison authorities to provide him access to legal counsel, access to legal and religious books, and access to a priest for spiritual guidance, ahead of his appeal trial on 18 February 2014 in Hanoi.

RWB is shocked by the violence that plainclothes police officers used against bloggers and activists in the southern province of Dong Thap, Vietnam. Eight people were arrested as they headed to the home of Nguyen Bac Truyen, a lawyer who had just been arrested arbitrarily.

ARTICLE 19 and PEN International urged the international community to address the increasingly severe crackdown on free speech in Viet Nam, while at the UN in Geneva. Rather than improving, the human rights situation in Viet Nam has deteriorated markedly since 2009, when the country last underwent a Universal Periodic Review (UPR).

EFF has analyzed malware targeting the organisation’s own staff, as well as a well-known Vietnamese mathematician, a Vietnamese pro-democracy activist, and a Vietnam-based journalist at the Associated Press.

The political police have been arresting and mistreating bloggers in Vietnam in recent days, both before and after an 8 December ceremony in Paris at which the Vietnam Human Rights Network and the France-Vietnam Solidarity Association paid tribute to Vietnamese bloggers.

Vietnam has so far this year locked up more Internet bloggers than in 2012. The Network of Vietnamese Bloggers (NVB), launched on 10 December, aims to ensure that the Vietnamese government implements its obligations and commitments to the UN Human Rights Council through actions rather than mere political statements.

Following the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention determination that Vietnamese human rights lawyer Le Quoc Quan’s detention is illegal, 12 NGOs issued a joint appeal to the authorities calling for his immediate release.

Vietnam’s amended Constitution fails to address popular aspirations for change and reform. Vietnam’s donors and development partners should redouble their efforts to press the government for constitutional and legal reforms to protect basic rights, such as freedom of expression and association.

Blogger Nguyen Van Hai of Vietnam, popularly known as Dieu Cay, is serving a 12-year jail sentence in connection with his politically sensitive blog posts.

Vietnam’s government keeps cultural activities from web comics to concerts under its watchful eye, for sex as much as sedition.

Vietnamese blogger and activist Dinh Nhat Uy received a 15-month suspended prison sentence for crticising the government on Facebook.

The politically-motivated sentencing of blogger Le Quoc Quan is designed to gag and punish a dissident and is part of a strategy orchestrated by the Communist Party to persecute all independent news and information providers in Vietnam, said RSF.