4 Jan 2012 | Asia and Pacific, Index Index, minipost
Vietnamese journalist Nguyen Van Khuong was arrested this week on suspicion of bribery after he ran an expose on corruption among traffic police in his newspaper, Tuoi Tre. The reporter is said to have paid a bribe of 15 million dong (458 GBP) to a police officer to secure the release of an impounded vehicle. The officer in question was arrested after Khuong’s story was published, and Khuong was suspended by the paper on 3 December. Tuoi Tre quoted him as saying he had made an error in gathering evidence for a series of stories about police corruption, but he did not say he had provided the bribe.
29 Nov 2011 | Asia and Pacific, Index Index, minipost
A Vietnamese court have halved the jail sentence of a blogger after international pressure from government’s and NGO’s. Pham Minh Hoang was sentenced to three years imprisonment for attempted subversion in August this year after he wrote 33 articles under a pseudonym, which were ruled by the court to “blacken the image of the country” and aimed to topple the government. Hoang will be released on January 13 after serving a 17-month sentence, but will then serve three years of house arrest.
6 Oct 2011 | Index Index, minipost
Two citizen journalists face trial in Vietnam today for operating pirate radio to China. Vu Duc Trung and Le Van Thanh face charges of illegally retransmitting radio programmes after they began broadcasting Chinese-language programmes from Sound of Hope Network, a Chinese radio station based in California. According to a Vietnamese Public Security Ministry document, the programmes, which were critical of the Chinese government, were the subject of a note to the Vietnamese authorities, asking them to stop the broadcasts. The trial, which was due to begin today, has been postponed for the second time.
30 Aug 2011 | Index Index, minipost
On 2 September, the Vietnamese government granted amnesty to 10,000 detainees, including blogger Nguyen Van Tinh and poet Tran Duch Thach, in celebration of the nation’s 66th anniversary of independence. The pair were convicted of “propaganda against the socialist state” for hanging pro-democracy banners in Haiphong in October 2009. Tinh was handed a three and a half year sentence for the crime, while Thach was sentenced to three years.
