A Vietnamese Facebook user was jailed for eight (8) years because of this.
A Vietnamese Facebook user was jailed for eight (8) years after a lightning-quick trial that was denounced by rights groups in the country.
This, as Nguyen Quoc Duc Vuong was accused of “defaming” Vietnam’s leaders for broadcasting his “pro-democracy views” on his account.
Protesters were swiftly silenced by the country’s authoritarian government which had stepped up the persecution of critics ahead of its leadership transition at the peak of the ruling Communist Party.
The arrest of Nguyen Quoc Duc Vuong followed the imprisonment of the number of high-profile activists and journalists in recent months ahead of the Vietnamese government’s five-yearly party congress which was scheduled for January 2021.
Human Rights Watch said that Nguyen Quoc Duc Vuong, a 29-year-old Vietnamese Facebook user, had spoken of his support for democracy in the country and shared news of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong prior to his apprehension last September.
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In a report on Vietnam News Agency, Vuong had aired videos with more or less 110 total hours of airtime and also posted 366 articles “humiliating” Ho Chi Minh, state leaders, and other party and “defaming” socialism and the Communist Party.
Vuong pleaded “not guilty” to charges of sharing anti-state propaganda, telling the court in central Lam Dong province that he’d simply voiced his personal views. However, Vietnam News Agency reported that the court said that Vuong’s behavior was “a danger to society”.
Phil Robertson, a deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch, said that his sentence was “unacceptable” and “outrageous”, adding that the Vietnamese government should cease its crackdown against activists and bloggers.
Prior to this, the same court where Nguyen Quoc Duc Vuong was sentenced to eight years in prison had sentenced three others for up to seven (7) years for allegedly aiming to put an end to the Communist party.
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