Activist Blogger in Vietnam Gets 3 Years Behind Bars for ‘Obstructing Traffic’

Policing traffic in Hanoi, 20 November 2013, by Cesar Torres. Demotix.

Policing traffic in Hanoi, 20 November 2013, by Cesar Torres. Demotix.

A court has sentenced prominent Vietnamese activist blogger Bui Thi Minh Hang to three years in prison for posing a “serious obstruction to traffic.” Her two other companions, Nguyen Thi Thuy Quynh and Nguyen Van Minh, received sentences of 2 years and 2.5 years, respectively.

The three were among the 21 arrested last February while riding motorbikes from Ho Chi Minh City to the Dong Thap province, where they planned to visit a lawyer and a former political prisoner. Of the group, however, police charged only the three with violating Article 245 of the criminal code (causing public disorder).

Bui Thi Minh Hang is a known anti-China activist, and also a vocal critic of the government’s policies on land, religion, and human rights. Nguyen Thi Thuy Quynh is a fellow activist blogger. Nguyen Van Minh is a Hao-Hao-Buddhist-sect follower and an activist for religious freedom.

After six months of detention, the guilty verdicts came in this week. Many people, as well as friends and relatives, gathered in the Dong Thap province to support the accused on the day of the verdicts, but the police kept the crowd at a distance, arresting anyone who came too close.

On his blog and on Twitter, Ngoc Nhi Nguyen narrated the extreme police measures used to quell the protest outside the court house:

Since early this morning, the police barricaded all entrances to the block where the Court is situated. Anyone trying to get pass would be stopped and asked to be searched and have their ids checked. Anyone taking photos had their phones or cameras confiscated. Many were arrested, put onto waiting police buses and taken away, unsure where to.

This is what the Vietnamese government, a member of the United Nations’ Human Rights Council, calls an open trial!!

According to reports, police even harassed some of the defendants’ relatives the night before the hearing:

…three groups of activists were locked in their hotels in Dong Thap, many of them are members of the Vietnam Path Movement, No-U Hanoi, No-U Saigon. Five members of the Vietnamese Association of Women for Human Rights were confined to their without food and water. One of them, Nguyen Thi Anh Ngan (Nguyễn Thị Ánh Ngân) had her seven-month old child with her.

Global human rights groups wasted no time condemning the prison sentences and the crackdown outside the courthouse.

Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, railed against Vietnamese authorities for using traffic laws to prosecute the pro-democracy activists:

The Vietnamese government is now resorting to bogus traffic offenses to criminally prosecute activists. The authorities should recognize this case is not worth the international ridicule it will cause and drop the charges immediately.

Rupert Abbott, Amnesty International’s Deputy Asia-Pacific Director, called on Vietnam to release all those who were detained by the police:

Today’s verdict appears to be another attempt to punish peaceful activism in Vietnam.

Vietnam should rein in its police and stop attacks on peaceful activists, their families and supporters.

All those imprisoned solely for the peaceful exercise of their human rights should be immediately and unconditionally released.

Even the United States Embassy in Vietnam has issued a statement expressing concern over the guilty verdict handed down to the activist bloggers:

The use of public disorder laws by Vietnamese authorities to imprison government critics for peacefully expressing their political views is alarming.

Vietnam is no stranger to criticism about its human rights. The national government has faced criticism for its severe treatment of dissident bloggers in the past. Indeed, this new trial that's put behind bars a prominent activist blogger and an advocate of religious freedom has further emphasized the gloomy state of human rights and free speech in the world's 13th-most-populous country.

2 comments

  • Terry K Offord

    As an individual, I have visited Vietnam on a number of occasions over the past 12 years, I was impressed with the friendliness of the people, the sheer beauty of the country as a whole and in particular, the ancient city of Hanoi and its remarkable history.
    I did notice however, the heavy hands of the Police Authority, even boat trips on certain rivers showed police presence (in civilian dress of course but easily spotted by western eyes) The heavy handed tactics of locking away Pro-Democracy ‘activists’ is a sign perhaps of the sordid relationship that Vietnam had when the Russians were present, alas, there remains a hierarchy of corruption that is plainly evident to an ‘outsider’ In particular within the ‘Police Force’ who are really defacto ‘enforcers’ who work for a number of highly corrupt ‘officials’. It is the corruption in the higher echelons of government, both National and at State level. I have, at first hand, noted that an exchange of US Dollars can bring about a reversal of a Police Action, this cash in hand approach to the law percolates through to the very top of the chain of command. It is high time that Vietnam
    started to modernise politically and to accept that, not everything the government says or does is acceptably correct, ‘a grain of rice becomes a substantial part of a larger harvest’, sadly this reflects Vietnam today.

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