Thursday, October 24, 2002
Vietnam Internet dissident to face trial on Monday
Agence France-Presse Hanoi, October 24
Internet essayist Le Chi Quang, detained for criticising Vietnam's border agreements with China, will go on trial next week, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said.
Quang was arrested on February 21 in Hanoi after writing a number of essays criticising the December 1999 land border agreement and the December 2000 accord outlining Sino-Vietnamese sea borders in the Gulf of Tonkin. The 32-year-old, who has been held in B14 prison in Thanh Tri district outside the capital ever since, will appear in court on Monday, the New York-based watchdog said, citing unnamed Vietnamese sources.
He will be tried on national security charges, including distribution of "reactionary and subversive documents", it said. Government officials could not immediately be contacted to confirm the trial date.
The CPJ said the state prosecutor's office, known as the Supreme People's Organ of Control, issued a document on September 24 saying he would be prosecuted under Article 88 of the Criminal Code, which bans the distribution of anti-government information.
If convicted, Quang could face between three and 12 years in jail. "Le Chi Quang should be released immediately and unconditionally," the CPJ's executive director Ann Cooper said in a statement.
"Vietnam's national security is not threatened by writers expressing their views, which is every person's right, but rather by the regime's draconian response to any criticism of its policies."
Quang's mother, who visited her son in prison in mid August, told CPJ sources that his health had deteriorated since his imprisonment began. He has lost much of his hair and is suffering from a kidney problem, she said. His arrest earlier this year was part of an ongoing crackdown against intellectuals and dissidents using the web to circulate news or opinion banned from the tightly controlled state press.
On October 14 several Hanoi-based writers and intellectuals wrote an open letter to the government demanding the immediate release of Quang as well as fellow writers Pham Hong Son and Nguyen Vu Binh.
Son was arrested on March 27 after translating and posting online an article entitled "What is Democracy?". He is also being held in B14 prison, according to the CPJ, but his trial date has yet to be announced. Binh was arrested on September 25 after writing an article criticising the China-Vietnam border agreements.
International human rights groups have long charged communist authorities with smothering all political dissent and routinely jailing democracy activists or critics.
Hanoi maintains that freedom of speech is guaranteed under the constitution, but insists that individuals are not allowed to "abuse" this right by harming the interests of the state.
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