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A U.N. Human Rights Council working group has issued an opinion on the case of a Vietnamese activist arrested in 2021 and sentenced to 10 years in jail for “anti-state propaganda,” saying that his detention was arbitrary.
Do Nam Trung, 41, was sentenced in December 2021 to 10 years in jail for “spreading supplies in opposition to the state” beneath Article 117 of Vietnam’s Penal Code, steadily utilized by authorities to limit freedom of expression and opinions deemed essential of Vietnam’s one-party communist state or authorities leaders. The activist is thought for his work selling freedom of expression, human rights and democracy within the Southeast Asian county.
Trung had participated in a number of social actions and had spoken out in opposition to official corruption in posts on his Fb web page. He additionally had posted criticisms of the build-operate-transfer highways that Vietnam has adopted lately, sparking uncommon protests over toll collections that many motorists deemed unfair.
Authorities arrested Trung in July 2021 in Hanoi whereas driving to work. On the time, about two dozen law enforcement officials searched his house, disabled web and cellphone connections and confiscated reminiscence sticks, enterprise playing cards and driving licenses.
Within the 11-page report dated March 9 and simply launched publicly, the Council’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention deemed Trung’s detention arbitrary as a result of his “conduct falls inside the fitting to freedom of opinion and expression protected beneath articles 19 of the Common Declaration of Human Rights and the Worldwide Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.”
The group additionally careworn that no trial ought to have taken place.
The working group requested that the federal government instantly treatment Trung’s scenario and produce it into conformity with related worldwide norms, together with these set out within the Common Declaration of Human Rights and the Worldwide Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
It additionally urged Hanoi to make sure a full and impartial investigation of the circumstances surrounding the arbitrary deprivation of Trung’s liberty and to take acceptable measures in opposition to these chargeable for violating his rights.
In June 2022, the working group requested Hanoi to supply detailed details about Trung’s scenario and to make clear the authorized provisions justifying his continued detention in addition to its compatibility with the nation’s obligations beneath worldwide human rights regulation.
The Vietnamese authorities requested an extension final August, however did not submit a response by the Sept. 15 deadline. It despatched a late response on Oct. 4, which the Working Group stated it couldn’t settle for as a result of it didn’t arrive on time.
The working group has given the Vietnamese authorities six months to answer the present opinion.
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The event comes as Paris-based Reporters With out Borders issued its 2023 World Press Freedom Index, which ranks Vietnam 178 of 180 nations, falling 4 locations from final 12 months. The group stated Vietnam, whose conventional media is managed by the state, is the third-largest jailer of journalists.
Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch, instructed Radio Free Asia that the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention had finished “a superb job of rejecting all of the Vietnamese authorities’s weak causes for Do Nam Trung’s detention and of giving clear-cut trigger for Trung’s instant launch.”
“As soon as once more, the disparity between worldwide conventions on human rights and Vietnam’s regulation is totally uncovered,” Robertson stated in an e-mail. “Vietnam is finishing up a widespread crackdown on political activists and utterly disregarding all human rights ideas.
A journalist in Vietnam, who spoke on situation of anonymity for security causes, instructed RFA that authorities have subjected impartial journalists and writers to fierce repression, convicting them beneath vaguely-worded articles beneath the 2015 Penal Code and beneath the Cybersecurity Regulation, which took impact in 2019.
“It appears that evidently the Vietnamese authorities disregards all worldwide criticism of her human rights violations,” the journalist stated.
Vietnam’s everlasting delegation to the United Nations in Geneva issued a response on March 24 to a November 2022 request by the Particular Procedures Department of the U.N. human rights company regarding the arbitrary arrests of 9 activists, together with Trung.
Authorities convicted them of propagating untruthful info and abusing the fitting to freedom of expression and democracy to distort and smear the federal government. Hanoi stated the arrests, detentions and convictions complied with Vietnamese regulation and the nation’s worldwide human rights commitments.
In January, Vietnam started a three-year time period on the 47-member Human Rights Council, regardless of objections by human rights teams that the nation ought to have been excluded due to its dismal rights file.
Translated by Anna Vu for RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.
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