{"id":47914,"date":"2024-03-07T13:13:10","date_gmt":"2024-03-07T21:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sweet-pascal.52-27-215-206.plesk.page\/vietnamese-woman-fined-for-calling-judges-idiots\/"},"modified":"2024-03-07T13:13:10","modified_gmt":"2024-03-07T21:13:10","slug":"vietnamese-woman-fined-for-calling-judges-idiots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vietvalley.com\/en\/vietnamese-woman-fined-for-calling-judges-idiots\/","title":{"rendered":"Vietnamese woman fined for calling judges \u2018idiots\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

The wife of a prominent political prisoner said she has been fined more than US$300 for posting his <\/span>photo on Facebook<\/span><\/a> overlaid with text saying, \u201cIdiots judge the innocent.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Nguyen Thi Chau was slapped with a fine of 7.5 million dong for the text and photo of her husband Nguyen Ngoc Anh, who is serving a <\/span>six-year sentence<\/span><\/a> for \u201canti-state propaganda\u201d for videos he shared criticizing the Vietnamese government on several issues.<\/span><\/p>\n

She posted the photo the first time about four years ago, and has since reposted it around 10 times.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to police in the southern coastal province of Ben Tre, Chau\u2019s fine is for \u201cproviding false information, insulting the prestige of agencies and organizations\u201d under Article 101 of the Vietnamese government\u2019s Decree No.15 on penalties for administrative violations against regulations on postal services and telecommunications.<\/span><\/p>\n

Chau told RFA Vietnamese that the accusation against her is wrong. She said she had seen the photo and text on another social media post and she reposted it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI only posted information about my husband, not society. How come they accused me of that?\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I saw a photo of my husband with the phrase \u2018idiots judge the innocent\u2019 on the internet and believed my husband is innocent, I downloaded and put it up in Facebook posts from time to time,\u201d she said. \u201cI did not say that any agencies or organizations were \u2018idiots.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Chau was told that she must remove the \u201cfalse information\u201d on her Facebook account within seven days upon the receipt of the decision, otherwise, the decision will be coercively implemented.<\/span><\/p>\n

Freedom of expression<\/p>\n

In a <\/span>post<\/span><\/a> about the fine on her Facebook account, Chau said that in a meeting with the cybersecurity officers, she told them that she would sign the decision not because she feared the consequences but because it would mean that the police were claiming themselves as \u2018idiots\u2019 as the phrase does not refer to any one person or government entity.<\/span><\/p>\n

She said the police first questioned her about the photo on Feb. 28 but not at any point prior to that.<\/span><\/p>\n

Chau believes that by imposing the fine, the police are trying to prevent her from sharing information about her husband and commenting on social issues on Facebook.<\/span><\/p>\n

She said the fine violates her freedom of expression, a right enshrined in Vietnam\u2019s constitution and international conventions that Vietnam has signed.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cProvisions on penalties of Vietnam\u2019s laws are vague, so [the authorities] can do whatever they want while their citizens are not allowed to say anything, \u201c she said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn Vietnam, how can you have \u2018independence, freedom and happiness\u2019 if you don\u2019t have freedom of expression?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Translated by Anna Vu and Long Nguyen. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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

The wife of a prominent political prisoner said she has been fined more than US$300 for posting his photo on Facebook overlaid with text saying, \u201cIdiots judge the innocent.\u201d Nguyen Thi Chau was slapped with a fine of 7.5 million dong for the text and photo of her husband Nguyen Ngoc Anh, who is serving …<\/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-47914","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\/47914","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=47914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vietvalley.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47914\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vietvalley.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vietvalley.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vietvalley.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}