State media said a leading independent journalist sentenced to 30 months in a Facebook post criticizing the government on Thursday in a Vietnamese court.
Truong Huy San, 63, whose pseudonym is Huy Duc, was convicted of posting 13 articles on Facebook that “negatively affect social order and security,” the state-run Vietnam News Agency said in a report.
The report said SAN pleaded guilty at trial. Reuters was unable to comment immediately with his attorney.
Despite the thorough economic reforms and increasingly openness to social change, the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam retained a strict media censorship and tolerated very little criticism.
San was arrested in June last year as a former soldier and the author of The Winning Side, a book about post-war Vietnam that was banned in the country. Prior to the trial, journalists without borders, the Commission for Protecting Journalists and Pen America have called on the government to release SAN.
“When writers and journalists like Truong Huy San are silent, it’s not just his voice that is stifled. It’s the right of society as a whole to seek truth and accountability.”
“When writers and journalists like Truong Huy San are silent, it’s not just his voice that is stifled. It’s the right of society as a whole to seek truth and accountability.”
