A court jailed a prominent former lawyer for three years over Facebook posts, a ruling condemned by rights groups as a fresh attack on freedom of expression in the country.
Tran Dinh Trien, former deputy chair of the Hanoi Bar Association, is the latest high-profile lawyer to be targeted by authorities for what they have written online.
Rights campaigners say the government in Vietnam has in recent years stepped up a crackdown on civil society and weaponised the law to silence critics.
The court in Hanoi on Friday convicted 65-year-old Trien on charges of “abusing democratic freedoms to infringe upon state interests” and sentenced him to three years in prison.
The court said he had written posts on his personal Facebook page containing “unauthenticated content” that “affected the reputation of the courts and the chief judge of the supreme court personally”.
Trien, head of the Vi Dan “For the People” legal firm in Hanoi, was arrested in June. His legal licence was suspended last week.
He has defended activists and represented clients on sensitive issues such as land confiscation.
The three Facebook posts he was charged over were uploaded in April and May last year.
In them, he criticised the chief justice of the supreme court, who he said prevented defendants’ family members from attending trials, and journalists and lawyers from recording video during open trials, according to Human Rights Watch.
Elaine Pearson, HRW’s Asia director, urged foreign governments to pressure Vietnam to free Trien.
“It is appalling that lawyer Tran Dinh Trien has been sentenced to three years in prison for peacefully expressing their views online – something that shouldn’t even be a crime,” she said.
The state Vietnam News Agency (VNA) said Trien and his lawyers had argued that he was exercising his right to free speech in the posts, and they did not violate the law.
But the court ruled that while free speech was recognised by the Vietnamese constitution, people must not “take advantage” of this to damage state interests, VNA reported.
“The trial panel determined that Tran Dinh Trien’s actions were very serious, negatively affecting security, order, and social safety,” VNA said. — AFP
