A Vietnam court sentenced one of the country’s most influential journalists on Thursday to two and a half years to “abuse democratic freedoms” with around a dozen Facebook messages that have criticized or questioned the government.
The journalist, Truong Huy San – known by his pen name, Huy Duc – was arrested in Hanoi, the capital, in June.
He was sentenced under the penal code for 13 articles he published on his personal Facebook page between 2015 and 2024 which, according to the media managed by the State, “had a negative impact on the interests of the State, as well as the legal rights of organizations and individuals”.
Mr. San’s family was not allowed to enter the courtroom.
The case of Mr. San was closely monitored by international groups for the defense of human rights and journalists, to better understand the direction of regional power and a state to partisans who often pointed out that it wanted to be considered more open to the world and to innovation – while frequently repressing the organizations of speech and civil society.
At least one of Mr. San’s messages, which led to the accusations involved arguments against sudden police services. A screenshot of a deleted position of Mr. San last year which was kept by Project 88A non-profit organization based in the United States which focuses on human rights issues in Vietnam, said: “A country cannot develop according to fear.”
At this point, his Facebook page had around 370,000 subscribers.
Shawn Crispin, the main representative of Southeast Asia of the Committee to protect journalists, said that Mr. San “had been condemned and sentenced to having gathered and published independent news, which Vietnam treats as a criminal offense”.
“San and all independent journalists wrongly kept behind the bars of Vietnam should be released immediately and unconditionally,” said Crispin.
Vietnam currently has at least 16 journalists in detention. Last global census of the prison – Many of them have held to publish on social networks, which the government has tried to regulate strictly. Vietnam is the seventh prison of journalists from around the world, based on CPJ counting, tied with Iran and Eritrea.
According to the state media, Mr. San, 63, told the authorities that he did not intend to oppose the Communist Party or the State, but admitted that certain content focused on the interests of the State “for which he said he was” very sorry “.” “”
Mr. San grew up in a solid revolutionary family, in a collective farm managed by the state in the center of Vietnam, where he said He excelled more in mathematics than in literature.
In the 10th year, he volunteered for the Vietnamese army, calling strikes with an artillery unit during a brutal border war with China which began in 1979.
Later, as a military journalist, he continued to cover the Vietnam War against Red Khmer in Cambodia.
From the end of the 1980s, he was known as an investigative journalist with corruption for the popular newspaper of Ho Chi Minh, Tui Tre, where he often announced the help of his military relations. His reports frequently challenged the political culture of Vietnam during a period of ferocious internal political debates between the conservatives and the reformists.
There was then more openness to divergent voices, he said later, and in 2005, he left Vietnam to study at the University of Maryland Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowshipwhich connects people who treat critical global challenges.
Upon his return to Vietnam in 2006, he launched a blog which became popular for his social and political comments. Vietnamese authorities closed it in 2010.
His achievements also included a year at Harvard University on a Nieman scholarship in 2012. During his stay, he finished writing a book in two volumes, “The Winning Side”, a journalistic tour de force which quickly became the final story of Vietnamese history and politics from the end of the war in 1975 through the 90s.
Officially, the book is prohibited in Vietnam. But it was also widely read, online and in paper copies spent with friends. Mr. San said that he just hoped that the book, as for his other writing, would provide an honest report on the complex dynamics of the country.
“Everything he does is trying to tell what happened after 1975 and explain why it happened as it did,” said San San In an interview in 2013. “That’s it. I try not to accuse anyone of anything.
In recent years, he had transferred his comment to Facebook. Many of his friends, in messages there this week, have expressed their gratitude that his sentence is not longer. Some have promised to prepare the best possible homemade alcohol to celebrate when released.
