{"id":42499,"date":"2023-12-11T13:23:06","date_gmt":"2023-12-11T21:23:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sweet-pascal.52-27-215-206.plesk.page\/vietnamese-man-gets-8-years-for-facebook-posts\/"},"modified":"2023-12-11T13:23:06","modified_gmt":"2023-12-11T21:23:06","slug":"vietnamese-man-gets-8-years-for-facebook-posts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vietvalley.com\/en\/vietnamese-man-gets-8-years-for-facebook-posts\/","title":{"rendered":"Vietnamese man gets 8 years for Facebook posts"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Vietnamese court on Monday sentenced a man to eight years in prison for his Facebook posts in a trial with no defense lawyers that lasted only two hours.<\/span><\/p>\n

The An Giang People\u2019s Court found Nguyen Hoang Nam, 41, a member of the Hoa Hao Buddhist community, guilty of \u201cdisseminating, propagandizing information, materials against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam\u201d in violation of Article 117 of Vietnam\u2019s Penal Code, a law that is often criticized by rights activists to be a vaguely written tool that the government uses to silence dissent.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was only my husband and I in the courtroom. Witnesses did not come,\u201d Nam\u2019s wife Lam Thi Yen Trinh told RFA Vietnamese. \u201cThey were invited [by the court], but it costs hundreds of thousands of dong (tens of U.S. dollars) to travel to the court, and they couldn\u2019t afford that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The indictment said Nam had used four Facebook accounts to share and disseminate images and video clips with content against the ruling Communist Party and the state, state media said.<\/span><\/p>\n

He had live-streamed many times on his Facebook profiles to satirize and insult local authorities and regularly took photos and filmed local government employees who passed by his home, and posted the videos on social media for offense and defamation purposes, the indictment said.<\/span><\/p>\n

During the trial, Nam denied the accusations, saying that he had only taken photos of those who often insulted and teased him, his wife said.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to Trinh, her family signed a contract to hire an attorney from Ho Chi Minh City but the attorney was not allowed to not see Nam before the trial or participate in the trial due to a prohibition put in place by the head of the law firm. She did not know the name of the law firm and refused to disclose the attorney\u2019s name.<\/span><\/p>\n

Her husband pleaded innocent, disagreed with the sentence, and announced that he would make an appeal, she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hoa Hoa sect<\/p>\n

Vietnam\u2019s government officially recognizes the Hoa Hao religion, which has some 2 million followers across the country, but imposes harsh controls on dissenting Hoa Hao groups, including the sect in An Giang province, that do not follow the state-sanctioned branch.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rights groups say that authorities in An Giang routinely harass followers of the unapproved groups, prohibiting public readings of the Hoa Hao founder\u2019s writings and discouraging worshipers from visiting Hoa Hao pagodas in An Giang and other provinces.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Vietnam government’s absurd idea of what constitutes a \u2018crime\u2019 is on full display in the outrageous eight year prison sentence given to Nguyen Hoang Nam simply because he posted opinions on Facebook that the government didn’t like,\u201d Phil Robertson, Deputy Director of\u00a0 Human Rights Watch\u2019s Asian Division told RFA.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cLocking people away for years for peacefully expressing views is what petty dictatorships do, and shows just how the Vietnamese government falls pathetically short in meeting its obligations to respect human rights,\u201d Robertson said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Robertson also called on the Vietnamese government to immediately release Mr. Nguyen Hoang Nam and \u201cend its campaign of harassment against Hoa Hao Buddhists who refuse to come under the state’s rigid control.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The eight-year conviction of Nam for conducting \u2018anti-state propaganda\u2019 is outrageous, CIVICUS Monitor’s Asia-Pacific researcher Josef Benedict told RFA via text messages. CIVICUS Monitor is a research tool that provides data on civic freedoms in 196 countries.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt highlights the severe punishment faced by activists in Vietnam and the relentless efforts by the authorities to silence individuals who have critical or dissenting views,\u201d said Benedict. \u201cThis is a clear violation of the country\u2019s obligations under international human rights law. CIVICUS calls for his immediate and unconditional release.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Benedict called on Vietnam to stop using vague laws like Article 117 to silence online criticism and live up to its status as a member of the UN Human Rights Council.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSuch actions are the reason why the CIVICUS Monitor continues to rate Vietnam\u2019s civic space rating as \u2018closed\u2019, the worst rating a country can have.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Nam was previously sentenced to a four-year jail term in 2018 for \u201cdisrupting public order\u201d and \u201cresisting officers on official duty\u201d along with five other Hoa Hao Buddhists.<\/span><\/p>\n

Translated by Anna Vu. Edited by Eugene Whong.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tin t\u1eeb RFA Read More<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Vietnamese court on Monday sentenced a man to eight years in prison for his Facebook posts in a trial with no defense lawyers that lasted only two hours. The An Giang People\u2019s Court found Nguyen Hoang Nam, 41, a member of the Hoa Hao Buddhist community, guilty of \u201cdisseminating, propagandizing information, materials against the …<\/p>","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[82,239],"tags":[246,251],"class_list":["post-42499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society","category-vietnam","tag-english","tag-rfa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vietvalley.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vietvalley.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vietvalley.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vietvalley.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vietvalley.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42499\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vietvalley.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vietvalley.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vietvalley.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}