A courtroom in Vietnam’s Dak Lak province has sentenced music lecturer Dang Dang Phuoc to eight years in jail and 4 years’ probation for allegedly “conducting anti-state propaganda,” his spouse and certainly one of his attorneys instructed RFA.
The 60-year-old teacher at Dak Lak Pedagogical Faculty in Vietnam’s Central Highland, continuously posted on Fb about academic points, human rights violations, corrupt officers and social injustice.
Police arrested him on Sept. 8 final 12 months, and charged him with “making, storing, spreading or propagating info, paperwork and objects aimed toward opposing the State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,” which carries a most 12-year jail time period. Although Phuoc didn’t obtain the utmost sentence, lawyer Le Van Luan stated the courtroom ought to have been extra lenient in direction of his consumer.
“With the circumstances of the case, that sentence is just too heavy in comparison with what Mr. Phuoc did,” he stated.
Phuoc’s case has drawn worldwide consideration, together with from Human Rights Watch, who’s deputy Asia director Phil Robertson described the sentence as “outrageous and unacceptable.”
“What it reveals is the Vietnamese authorities’s whole intolerance for peculiar residents stating corruption, talking out in opposition to injustice, and calling for accountability by native officers,” he stated on listening to the decision.
“These had been exactly the issues that Dang Dang Phuoc did in Dak Lak, and now the federal government claims such whistle-blowing actions are propaganda in opposition to the state.”
Through the previous decade, Phuoc has campaigned in opposition to corruption and advocated for higher protections for civil and political rights. He has signed a number of pro-democracy petitions and known as for modifications to Vietnam’s structure, which grants the Communist Get together a monopoly on energy.
“This unjust jail sentence reveals Basic Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong’s anti-corruption marketing campaign is a sham sport that’s actually extra about holding on to energy, and marginalizing political rivals, however doesn’t care to deal with the Communist Get together of Vietnam’s widespread malfeasance in its ranks,” stated Robertson, evaluating Trong with China’s authoritarian chief Xi Jinping.
Police stored an in depth watch on Phuoc’s spouse Le Thi Ha forward of the trial, warning her she would lose her job if she talked concerning the case on social media.
She was allowed to attend the trial, together with Phuoc’s 4 attorneys.
Ha instructed RFA her husband plans to enchantment the decision.
Translated by RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Mike Firn.