Wednesday October 7, 2009

Vietnam teacher jailed for advocating democracy

By John Ruwitch

HANOI (Reuters) - A Vietnamese court sentenced a secondary school physics teacher on Wednesday to three years in prison followed by three years of probation for hanging a banner on a bridge calling for multi-party democracy.

Teacher Vu Hung (C) is handcuffed by policemen at the dock after his verdict in Hanoi City's People's Court, in this view taken from a court television screen October 7, 2009. A Hanoi court on Wednesday sentenced the secondary school physics teacher to three years in prison for hanging a banner that called for multi-party democracy. (REUTERS/Kham)

Vu Hung, who turns 43 on Saturday, was among nine people linked to banned pro-democracy group Bloc 8406 whose arrests last year and lengthy pre-trial detentions have been criticised by human rights groups.

All nine were on trial this week. A diplomat with knowledge of the case said they were affiliated with Bloc 8406, a three-year-old group advocating democratic reform.

The Communist government allowed a brief period of enhanced openness in the run-up to Vietnam's accession to the World Trade Organisation and hosting of the APEC summit in late 2006, but has since clamped back down on anyone with opposing views.

In a Hanoi court on Wednesday, Hung admitted to violating Article 88 of Vietnam's penal code, which outlaws "conducting propaganda against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam" and carries a maximum sentence of 20 years.

He said, however, that he had not intended to do anything in opposition to the state.

The banner he hung in July 2008 also decried corruption, high inflation and said the loss of land, maritime territory and islands -- a reference to long-standing land and sea disputes with China -- was a crime against the ancestors of Vietnam.

Foreign journalists and diplomats watched the trial, which took less than three hours, via closed circuit television in a separate room.

"This is excessive," his wife Ly Thi Tuyet Mai said later outside the courthouse.

ORIGINALLY DELAYED

On Thursday, six other people, including Nguyen Xuan Nghia, a leader of Bloc 8406, were scheduled to be tried in the northern port city of Haiphong, and another will go on trial in Hanoi.

The overseas opposition group Viet Tan said Tran Duc Thach, a poet based in Nghe An province and detained in connection with the others, was found guilty under Article 88 and sentenced on Tuesday to three years in prison and three years of probation.

The trials were originally scheduled to take place two weeks ago but were postponed. The government did not say why. But observers have speculated that the dates were shifted to avoid coinciding with President Nguyen Minh Triet's visit to the United States for a United Nations session.

Amnesty International said Hung was among 14 people arrested for demonstrating against China when the Olympic torch relay passed through Ho Chi Minh City in April 2008. Hung lost his teaching job in July 2008 for his activism, it said.

(Editing by Jason Szep and Alex Richardson)

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