HANOI (AFP) – A Vietnamese court sentenced a leading independent journalist yesterday 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 leaders on issues such as corruption and media control.
The court in Hanoi convicted the 63-year-old of “abusing democratic freedoms to infringe upon the interests of the state” by posting 13 articles on Facebook, according to the 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 – the journalist’s pen name – took aim online at Vietnam’s most powerful leader To Lam, as well as his predecessor Nguyen Phu Trong.
It was unclear whether the charges related to those particular posts.
Vietnam, a one-party state, has no free media and clamps down hard on any dissent. It is one of the world’s top jailers of journalists, 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 livestreams 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.
Huy Duc, whose real name is Truong Huy San, is a former senior army lieutenant.
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” for the Vietnamese public, giving them access to otherwise censored information.
“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.
