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The largest global union federation of journalists’ trade unions called Tuesday for the immediate release of Duong Van Thai, a blogger who was arrested for his anti-corruption reporting in which he criticized the ruling Communist Party and its members.
“The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) condemns the blogger’s ongoing prosecution as a violation of press freedom and calls for the immediate release of all Vietnamese journalists detained for their reporting,” read the IFJ press release.
The court sentenced him after a one day, closed-door trial on October 30 under Article 117 of the Vietnamese penal code which outlaws “making, storing, disseminating or propagating information aimed at opposing the state of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.”
Thai had fled to Thailand in 2019, where he was granted refugee status and registered with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
In April 2023, the blogger was reported missing after friends and neighbors found themselves unable to contact him. Later that month, the Vietnamese police confirmed that the blogger was in their custody, claiming he was detained after attempting to enter the country illegally. Rights groups accused the Vietnamese authorities of having kidnapped him, according to a Barron’s report.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) issued statements expressing outrage over the detention and prosecution of Thai.
In CPJ’s statement, senior Southeast Asia representative Shawn Crispin described Thai’s harsh sentencing as “grotesque” and “an outrage,” accusing the Vietnamese state of being the “real criminal [in this case].”
The EU delegation to Vietnam, along with the Canadian, British, and Norwegian embassies in Hanoi, issued a joint statement expressing concern over Thai’s sentencing and the lack of response to trial observation requests.
The joint statement also stressed that as a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Vietnam “is obliged to respect, protect and fulfill the right to freedom of opinion and expression.”
In January, the International Federation for Human Rights published a report naming various “vaguely-worded” security laws, including Article 117, as “severely restrict[ing]” Vietnamese enjoyment of human rights despite those same rights being enshrined in the 2013 Constitution.
The severe sentencing reflects the Communist Party of Vietnam’s harsh stance on political dissent, evidenced by other high-profile cases in which activists and journalists have been detained and tried. Accordingly, Vietnam ranks 174th out of 180 in RSF’s Press Freedom Index.
