VIETNAMESE justice can be swift as
well as ferocious, as three bloggers discovered almost as soon as they came
before the People’s Court of Ho Chi Minh City, charged with having made
propaganda against the state. Their case has upset Western governments and
infuriated human-rights groups.
Panh Than Hai, who used to blog
under the alias of Anh Ba Saigon, is to be jailed for four years after pleading
guilty and promising to end all contact with “anti-state people”, whoever those
may be. Ta Phong Tan, whose mother died after setting herself on fire in
protest against her daughter’s detention, was sentenced to ten years. Nguyen
Van Hai, a 60-year-old whose case was cited in a complaint by Barack Obama, was
handed a 12-year sentence.
Their hearing, which lasted less
than a day, looked very much like an old-fashioned Soviet-style show trial.
Vietnam is still a one-party Communist state, whose government happens to be
struggling: with an economy on the ropes, a series of banking scandals and
allegations of corruption at the highest levels of office.
The three convicted bloggers had
established a club for freelance journalists and wrote about all of these
sensitive issues. Members of the club also covered bauxite mining, maritime
disputes in the South China Sea, land-grabs and other abuses of state power.
They managed to pick up a prestigious citation from Human Rights Watch while
being harassed by the authorities along the way.
Their prosecutors said the trio had
produced 421 stories over a three-year period which, taken together, “distorted
the truth about State and Party, created anxiety among citizens and supported
schemes to overthrow the government.” The court concurred and then put a cherry
on top, judging that the bloggers were “seriously affecting national security
and the image of the country in the global arena.”
Each has been sentenced to
additional years of house arrest, to be served after their release from
imprisonment. A fourth blogger, Le Xuan Lap, 54, who helped the other three by
compiling their stories, was placed under close supervision.
America led a chorus of
international outcry, demanding an immediate release for the accused. It argued
that the conviction of Nguyen Van Hai, for the peaceable expression of his
political views, was inconsistent with Vietnam’s obligations under the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as well as provisions of
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Mr Hai had used the blogging handle
of Dieu Cay, or “the Peasant’s Pipe”, and became perhaps the most prominent
member of Vietnam’s online community, which has thrived in recent years as an
alternative to the heavily censored (and badly written) state press. In
2008 Mr Hai urged Vietnam to boycott the Olympic torch relay in the lead-up to
the Beijing Olympics, and was jailed for it. That arrest had been part of an
earlier mass crackdown on citizen journalism.
The European Union, the Committee to
Protect Journalists, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and groups
formed by Vietnamese living abroad have all joined America in their calls for
concern about the perilous condition of free speech in Vietnam. On the
Press Freedom Index, Vietnam has slipped seven places from a year ago and is
now ranked in 172nd spot, just behind Yemen and Sudan and only six places ahead
of North Korea.
Vietnam’s government has been
unmoved by the international protests. A spokesman for the foreign ministry,
Luong Thanh Nghi, said the bloggers had been punished within the framework of
Vietnamese law, consistent with the international covenants.
Most of the custodians of those
international covenants would beg to differ. But Vietnam’s position is not
without some measure of foreign support. No sooner had Mr Hai and his
colleagues been jailed than Vietnam’s partners in the Association of South East
Asian Nations (ASEAN) met at the UN in New York and threw their collective
support behind Vietnam’s candidacy for a seat on the UN Human Rights Council.
And if not outright support, then at
least indifference. Though the guilty verdicts made headlines around the world,
in Vietnam’s official press they received only the barest coverage. The Vietnam
News, for example, offered double the space on the same page for new health
regulations to do with food storage. For those living abroad who may have
missed it: foodstuffs are henceforth to be stored within 20cm of the floor,
30cm from the wall and 50cm from the ceiling. Banyan for The Economist
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