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Vietnam court convicts four pro-democracy advocates of subversion

By Bernard Hibbitts (editor) and University of Pittsburgh School of Law students.

[JURIST] A Vietnamese court on Wednesday convicted four democracy activists of subversion. After a one-day trial, prominent human rights lawyer Le Cong Dinh was sentenced to five years in prison. Le Thang Long also received a five-year sentence, Nguyen Tien Trung was sentenced to seven years, and Internet entrepreneur Tran Huynh Duy Thuc received a 16-year sentence. The defendants were accused of activities aimed at ending Vietnam's communist rule. Dinh, the best known of the defendants, admitted to advocating multi-party democracy in Vietnam and joining the banned Democratic Party of Vietnam. Last month, a Vietnamese court sentenced pro-democracy dissident Tran Anh Kim to five-and-a-half years in prison for subversion. Dinh was charged in June with "colluding with foreign reactionaries to sabotage the Vietnamese State," in violation of Article 88 of the Vietnamese penal code, for the alleged distribution of anti-government documents. He was also disbarred following his arrest. Earlier this year, two Vietnamese newspaper editors were dismissed from their jobs for protesting the arrests of two journalists who reported on government corruption. The arrested reporters, who were accused of "abusing freedom and democracy," were sentenced to two years of prison and "re-education" for reporting on the so-called PMU 18 corruption scandal.

Full post as published by JURIST - The Paper Chase on January 20, 2010 (boomark / email).