Vietnamese court jails four for slandering Hanoi

A court in southern Vietnam this week jailed four dissidents for “spreading distorted information to undermine the state.” According to the English-language daily Vietnam News, the defendants slandered the Vietnamese state on a U.S.-based “reactionary Web site” and distorted facts by telling Radio Free Asia that Vietnam represses workers and arrests demonstrators.

Most of the defendants were detained in October last year after founding the United Workers-Farmers Organization (UWFO), banned in Vietnam and formed ahead of the November 2006 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Hanoi. The group has campaigned for the right to form independent labor unions and defended farmers whose land has been confiscated.

On Monday, the Dong Nai Province People’s Court sentenced UWFO founder-member Doan Van Dien to four and a half years’ prison, Tran Thi Le Hong to three years, and Doan Huy Chuong to 18 months, the newspaper said.

Another defendant, identified as Phung Quang Quyen, received 18 months in jail, the newspaper reported. Dien had also prepared and distributed anti-state leaflets during the APEC summit, Vietnam’s largest international conference so far, when world leaders including the United States, Chinese and Russian presidents visited Hanoi, according to official media.

Writes the official Vietnam News Agency (VNA): “The court gave Doan Van Dien, born in 1954, 4 years and 6 months; Tran Thi Le Hong, born in 1959, 3 years; and Doan Huy Chuong, born in 1985, and Phung Quang Quyen, born in 1956, 1 year and 6 months each, in prison, for abusing democracy and freedom rights to infringe the interests of the State, and legitimate rights and interests of organizations and citizens in accordance with Article 258 of the Criminal Code.”

“According to the verdict, Dien, Hong and Quyen since April 2005 have collected complaints of land use in Viet Nam and sent to Trinh Thi Ngoc Anh in the U.S. to change their contents before uploading them onto an reactionary Web site in order to slander the Vietnamese State.”

Dien even asked his son Chuong to role-play a worker to give a phone interview to Hoa Mai Club Radio (name of the reactionary Web site) and the Radio Free Asia (RFA), to distort facts, saying the Vietnamese authorities repressed workers and arrested demonstrators,” VNA said.

But the press coverage didn’t stop there. China’s own official Xinhua news agency ran the same story in English, republishing the VNA account more or less verbatim.

The nonprofit media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF), it seems, won’t have to radically rewrite its icy 2007 assessment of press freedom in Vietnam anytime soon, it seems. After that storied APEC summit in Hanoi, RSF wrote earlier this year, the government launched its counter-attack.”

The foreign ministry spokesman, Le Dung, said it was unacceptable that people should abuse the ‘mask of democracy, with false, distorted, and invented claims about the situation in Vietnam.’ The authorities [also] gave a firm reminder that dissident publications were illegal.”