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Authorities in Vietnam arrested a journalist Thursday for social media posts criticizing tollbooths set up under a controversial infrastructure funding program, local media reported.

Truong Chau Huu Danh, a contributor to a popular Facebook page Bao Sach (Clean Newspaper), that discusses Vietnamese social issues, had posted criticism of build-operate-transfer (BOT) highways that Vietnam had adopted in recent years, sparking rare motorist protests over toll collection.

Truong has been active as a journalist for several Vietnamese newspapers, reporting on protests against what activists say is “illegal toll collection” and the “illogical construction of tollbooths” across the country.

He was detained by police in Can Tho, a province-level city in the country’s deep south, on charges of “abusing democratic rights to infringe upon the benefits of other individuals and/or organizations,” under Article 331, the Vietnam 2015 Penal Code.

They transferred Truong to authorities in his hometown in nearby Long An province. If convicted, he could serve up to three years in prison.

The procuracy in Can Tho approved detention of up to three months for investigation.

In his last status update on his Facebook fan page, Truong posted photos of Ho Chi Minh City’s deputy party chief Tat Thanh Cang and former transport minister Dinh La Thang, who were both recently arrested and prosecuted.

The photos had been altered to show them in prison uniforms, and Truong had titled the post “reunion.”

Truong is one of the founders of the Bao Sach Facebook page, which currently has more than 100,000 likes. The page has gained notoriety for raising concerns over a death sentence handed to Ho Duy Hai, who was arrested in March 2008 and convicted nine months later of plundering property and murdering two female postal employees in Long An Province.

Ho’s case has been marred by accusations of procedural errors, including Ho’s contention that he was made to confess while in pretrial detention.

CPJ denial

Also on Thursday, Vietnam rejected a report by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) about detained journalists worldwide.

The report, released Tuesday, said that Hanoi has arrested at least 15 journalists in 2020, not including Truong.

At a press briefing, Le Thi Thu Hang, spokeswoman for Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said the report was full of stereotypes about the Vietnamese situation.

“In Viet Nam, just like in other rules-based government across the world, every citizen is equal in front of the law and anyone who commits legal violations will have to be handled in accordance with judiciary procedures as codified in the existing laws,” she said.

Vietnam, with a population of 92 million people, has been consistently rated “not free” in the areas of internet and press freedom by Freedom House, a U.S.-based watchdog group.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranked Vietnam 175 out of 180 in its 2020 World Press Freedom Index. About 25 journalists and bloggers are being held in Vietnam’s jails, “where mistreatment is common,” the Paris-based watchdog group said.

Vietnam’s already low tolerance of dissent deteriorated sharply this year with a spate of arrests of independent journalists, publishers, and Facebook personalities as authorities continued to stifle critics in the run-up to the ruling Communist Party congress in January.

On December 15, the People’s Court of Vietnam’s central province of Nghe An convicted try local human rights defender and democracy fighter Tran Duc Thach on allegation of subversion under Article 109 of the Criminal Code, sentencing him to 12 years in prison and three years of probation.

The first-instance hearing lasted only three hours, said Hanoi-based lawyer Ha Huy Son, adding Mr. Thach’s wife and younger brother were permitted to be in the courtroom to obseve the trial. It is likely no foreign diplomats have been present in the hearing.

The 68-year-old activist did not admit his wrongdoing but declared to appeal the court’s verdict, saying he just exercized his basic rights to protect the country amid China’s increasing aggressiveness in the East Sea (South China Sea) and voice against human rights abuse.

He has not fully recovered from high blood pressure and other diseases, said attorney Son who visited him one day prior to his trial in police custody. His trial was initially scheduled on November 30 but it was cancelled due to his poor health.

Mr. Thach, born in 1952, is a former prisoner of conscience from the central province of Nghe An, the home of late communist leader Ho Chi Minh. Thach is a founding member of the unregistered group Brotherhood for Democracy (BFD).

On April 23, security forces arrested Mr. Thach on allegation of conducting “Activities against the people’s government,” with the highest punishment of 20 years in prison or even death penalty. Police conducted searching for his house, confiscating a laptop, cell phones, a camera as well as VND9 million ($380) and $400, according to his family.

The state-controlled media reported that Mr. Thach has been continuously posting and sharing numerous articles on Facebook with content to distort the regime’s policies with the aim to trigger social disorders amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

He was arrested for the first time in 2009 and sentenced to three years in jail and three years of probation on a charge of “conducting anti-state propaganda” under Article 88 of the Penal Code, Article 117 under the current Penal Code, for claiming Vietnam’s Hoang Sa (Paracels) and Truong Sa (Spratlys), the two archipelagos also claimed by China, and demanding human rights improvement in the communist nation. Particularly, Thach, together with activists Vu Van Hung and Nguyen Xuan Nghia hang out a banner which states “Hoang Sa and Truong Sa belong to Vietnam” at Mai Dich Bridge in the capital city of Hanoi. His fellows were also jailed with lengthy sentences.

Thach was an officer of the communist army participating in the Vietnam War. After leaving the communist army in 1975, Thach wrote a memoir named “Obsessive mass grave” to describe how communist soldiers assaulted innocent civil people while invading South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. In 1976, he self-immolated to protest unfair policies of authorities in Nghe An province and Dien Chau district. Due to the act, his face was deformed.

Vietnam’s communist regime has intensified its crackdown on local dissent from late 2015 when the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam began to prepare for its 12th National Congress. More than 100 activists were arrested and charged with controversial allegations in the National Security provisions of the Penal Code 1999 or the Criminal Code 2015, many of them were sentenced to lengthy imprisonments of between five and 20 years.

BFD is the group that suffered the most from the ongoing persecution campaign of the communist regime. Its nine key members were sentenced to between seven and 15 years in prison, and only two of them, human rights attorney Nguyen Van Dai and Le Thu Ha were freed but forced to live in exile in Germany. Thach’s latest arrest is related to BFD. In 2017, when Vietnam’s police arrested six key members of the group, he was summoned to a police station and interrogated for days about his activities in the organization.

After Thach’s arrest, Vietnam’s communist regime has detained a number of activists and bloggers and charged them with controversial crimes in the National Security provisions of the Criminal Code. The detainees included Vice President of the unregistered professional group Independent Journalists Association of Vietnam (IJAVN) Nguyen Tuong Thuy and its young editor Le Huu Minh Tuan, well-known blogger Pham Chi Thanh (aka Pham Thanh), and prominent human rights defender and political blogger Pham Doan Trang, who was taken into custody on the day Vietnam and the US conducted the 24th Annual Human Rights Dialogue. All of them were charged with “conducting anti-state propaganda” for their posts critical to the communist regime.

Mr. Thach is likely not the last activist being convicted and sentenced this year. Vietnam’s communist regime has a plan to try two Facebookers Huynh Anh Khoa and Nguyen Dang Thuong on the charge of “abusing democratic freedom” under Article 331 of the country’s Criminal Code. Mr. Khoa and Mr. Thuong were arrested by security forces in Ho Chi Minh City on June 13 this year in relation to a group on Facebook in which its members held discussions about Vietnam’s socio-economic issues. The two guys are admins of a Facebook group named Bàn luận Kinh tế-Chính trị (Economic-Political Discussion) with 46,000 followers. However, the group was closed immediately after the arrests of its two admins.

According to well-known blogger Le Nguyen Huong Tra who is lives in Germany, Khoa and Thuong are admins of a Facebook group named Bàn luận Kinh tế-Chính trị (Economic-Political Discussion) with 46,000 followers. However, the group was closed immediately after the arrests of its two admins. Their trial was planned on December 7 but suspended due to health issue of one of the two defendants.

As the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam prepares its 13th National Congress scheduled for January 2021, the regime continues its crackdown on local dissent and tightens control on social media, especially Facebook, the largest social network in Vietnam with around 60 million accounts.

So far this year, Vietnam has convicted 17 activists of subversion, “conducting anti-state propaganda” and “abusing democratic freedom” or “causing public disorders,” sentencing them to a total 90 years and three months in prison and 29 years of probation.

The regime is holding 31 other activists in pre-trial detention, most of them have been kept incommunicado since their arrest. Among them are prominent human rights defender and political blogger Pham Doan Trang, President of the professional group Independent Journalist Association of Vietnam (IJAVN) Pham Chi Dung and his deputy Nguyen Tuong Thuy.

Vietnam is the biggest prison for prisoners of conscience in Southeast Asia. Amnesty International said the number of prisoners of conscience in Vietnam is 170 while according to Defend the Defenders’ latest statistic, the number is 262 as of December 15.

On December 21, the People’s Court of District 8 in Ho Chi Minh City found three local Facebookers named Nguyen Dang Thuong, Huynh Anh Khoa, and Tran Trong Khai guilty of “abusing democratic freedom” under Article 331 of the Criminal Code for administrating an open Facebook group discussing Vietnam’s socio-economic issues.

The jugde concluded that the trio have posted a number of statuses in the group with the content distorting the communist regime and defaming late President Ho Chi Minh and incumbent leaders General Secretary cum State President Nguyen Phu Trong and Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan of the country’s highest legislative body National Assembly. The court decided to sentence Mr. Thuong to 18 months in prison, Mr. Khoa- 15 months and Mr. Khai- one year.

The three Facebookers were without legal assistance during their pre-trial detention and the hearing. It is likely that they were forced by the police to give up legal consultation provided by the lawyers who were hired by their families, said Mrs. Pham Bao Ngoc, the wife of Mr. Khoa.

Mrs. Ngoc also told Defend the Defenders that she and other relatives of the three Facebookers were not permitted to enter the court areas. After fierce argument, police allowed them to enter but stay in the corridor of the courtroom which was filled with policemen and local officials. During the break and after the end of the trial, police prevented the relatives from having physical contacts with the trio, using Covid-19 as an excuse, Ngoc complained.

Along with imprisoning the trio, the judge also decided to confiscate their three computers and two cell phones with which they used to post “anti-state” articles.

Mr. Khoa and Mr. Thuong were arrested by security forces in HCM City on June 13 this year in relation to a group on Facebook in which its members held discussions about Vietnam’s socio-economic issues. It was unclear about the detention of Mr. Khai.

Khoa and Thuong are said to be admins of a Facebook group named Bàn luận Kinh tế-Chính trị (Economic-Political Discussion) with 46,000 followers. However, the group was closed immediately after the arrests of its two admins.

As the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam prepares its 13th National Congress scheduled for January 2021, the regime continues its crackdown on local dissent and tightens control on social media, especially Facebook, the largest social network in Vietnam with around 60 million accounts.

In 2020, Vietnam arrested 27 independent journalists and Facebookers for their online activities and charged them with “abusing democratic freedom,” “conducting anti-state propaganda” and subversion. The communist regime has sentenced ten activists to between nine months and 12 years in prison. In addition, the regime has imposed administrative fines up to VND15 million ($680) on hundreds of Facebookers nationwide for their online posts unfavorable for the regime after requesting them to delete their posts.

In Vietnam, the ruling communist party strictly controls the official media and social networks including Facebook become the main platform for local residents to express their opinions. However, the online crackdown has become more and more fierce.

On December 14, the Paris-based group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) issued a report saying Vietnam is among the first countries in the world holding the largest number of journalists and Facebooker, together with China, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria. Particularly, Vietnam holds seven journalists and 21 Facebookers behind the bar, and is listed at the 175th place among 180 countries in the RSF’s 2020 World Press Freedom Index.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has also listed Vietnam among the global biggest prisons for journalists with 15 journalists being imprisoned.

Vietnam is also the biggest jail for prisoners of conscience in Southeast Asia. According to Defend the Defenders’ latest statistics, Vietnam is holding 252 prisoners of conscience as of December 21, 2020.

On December 22, authorities in the Mekong Delta city of Can Tho arrested female activist Le Thi Binh and charged her with “abusing democratic freedom” under Article 331 of the Criminal Code. They accuse her of posting anti-state statuses on her Facebook page.

According to her family, police and plainclothes agents kidnapped her when she went out. They took her back to her private residence where they conducted a house search without presence of her family.

The state-controlled media reported that the local police confiscated a large amount of evidence with the anti-state content without unvealing the details of what they robbed. Her family told Defend the Defenders that it received no documentation from the local authorities about her arrest, including the arrest order approved by the local Procuracy.

Ms. Binh, born in 1976, is a younger sister of former prisoner of conscience Le Minh The, who was arrested in October 2018 on the same allegation. Both are members of the unregistered group Hiến Pháp (Constitution) which aims to raise citizens’ rights by disseminating the country’s Constitution 2013. He was later sentenced to two years in prison, and completed his imprisonment in July this year.

Like her older brother and other members of Hiến Pháp group, Binh actively participated in the mass demonstration of tens of thousands of Vietnamese in Ho Chi Minh City and other locality on June 10, 2018 to protest the two bills on Special Economic Zones and Cyber Security.

After that, she has been under close surveillance of the Can Tho’s security forces, especially after the arrests of her brother and other members of Hiến Pháp in September-October, 2018. One of eight detained members of the group has warned about her arrest as police interrogators often asked them about Ms. Binh during their questioning.

However, Binh continues to post and share numerous articles about the country’s issues such as systemic corruption, widespread human rights abuse, and China’s violations of the country’s sovereignty in the East Sea (South China Sea).

She is likely to be held incommunicado during the pre-trial detention, the common practice applied by the communist regime in political cases. She faces imprisonment up to seven years in prison if she is convicted.

With Binh’s detention, the number of prisoners of conscience rose to 253, according to Defend the Defenders’ latest statistics.

Jailed Vietnamese activist Hoang Duc Binh is being refused family visits by prison authorities angered by his insistence on his innocence and refusal to wear prison uniform, Binh’s brother told RFA’s Vietnamese Service on Wednesday.

Binh’s brother Hoang Nguyen went on Tuesday to visit Binh at the An Diem Prison in in central Vietnam’s Quang Nam province, where he is serving a 14-year sentence on charges connected with environmental protests four years ago, Nguyen said.

“Yesterday, I went to see my brother at the An Diem detention camp, but the prison guards would not let me in to see him, saying that he was refusing to wear his prison uniform,” Nguyen said, adding that he had been turned away for the same reason in October after last being able to see Binh in June.

Nguyen said authorities’ refusal to allow the visit was recorded in the prison’s visitors log by an officer named Huynh Quang Dai, who noted that Binh was refusing to wear a prison uniform in violation of “Article 6, Circular 14 promulgated on Feb. 10, 2020 by the Minister of Public Security.”

A longtime labor and environmental activist, Binh was arrested on May 15, 2017, by police officers who dragged him from his car more than a year after protests over the government’s response to a waste spill in Vietnam the year before by a Taiwan-owned Formosa Plastics Group steel plant.

The spill killed an estimated 115 tons of fish and left fishermen jobless in four coastal provinces. Binh was later handed a 14-year prison term in February 2018 for “abusing democratic freedoms” and “obstructing officials in the performance of their duties” under Articles 257 and 258 of Vietnam’s Penal Code.

In July 2018, he was transferred without notice given to his family from his prison in his home province Nghe An to the An Diem Prison in Quang Nam province some 300 miles away. Citing ill health behind bars, he has since petitioned to be moved back to a detention facility closer to home.

Binh, a blogger on environmental issues, had also served as vice president of the Independent Viet Labor Movement and is a member of a soccer group that protests China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea.

Vietnam has increasingly rounded up independent journalists, bloggers, and other dissident voices in recent months as authorities already intolerant of dissent seek to stifle critics in the run-up to the ruling Communist Party congress in January.

Vietnam’s communist regime has arrested another Facebooker and accused him of “conducting anti-state propaganda” under Article 117 of the country’s Criminal Code for his posts on the social network.

According to state-controlled media, police in the central province of Nghe An on November 6 arrested Mr. Nguyen Van Lam for his posts on his Facebook page named “Lâm Thời” with the content considered harmful for the regime.

Newspapers said that the province’s police have launched an investigation after receiving information from the province’s Department of Information and Communication which warned that the content of Facebooker Lâm Thời’s posts are defaming the regime and the local authorities as well as their officials and distort the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV)’s policies.

The police said they found 35 statuses of Facebooker Lâm Thời violating Vietnam’s laws. Of those, 3 are his live streams, 18 were produced by himself while 13 were shared from anti-government pages.

Mr. Lam, 50, will be held incommunicado for at least four months during the investigation period, and face imprisonment of between seven and 12 years in prison, or even up to 20 years, if is convicted.

Looking in his Facebook, Defend the Defenders found his posts cover a wide range of topics, from systemic corruption and widespread environmental pollutions to human rights abuse and China’s violations of Vietnam’s sovereignty in the East Sea (South China Sea). Lam was summoned to a police station in early December last year where he was requested to stop anti-regime posting, according to some newspapers.

He is among 29 activists and Facebookers who have been arrested so far this year for their peaceful activities as the ruling party is intensifying its crackdown on the local dissent prior to the party’s 13th National Congress slated for January next year. Among them, 14 were charged with “conducting anti-state propaganda” and seven were alleged of “abusing democratic freedom” under Article 331 of the Criminal Code.

Vietnam’s communist regime often uses articles in the National Security provisions of the Criminal Code to silence the local political dissidents and social activists who bravely exercise their basic rights including the right to freedom of expression which are enshrined in the country’s 2013 Constitution and the international treaties in which Vietnam is a signatory party.

Vietnam is among the largest prisons of prisoners of conscience in Southeast Asia. According to Defend the Defenders’ latest statistics, Vietnam’s communist regime is holding 260 prisoners of conscience in hard living conditions.

Vietnam is placed at 175th out of 180 countries in the 2020 World Press Freedom Index of the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF), imprisoning dozens of journalists and bloggers, including prominent activists Pham Doan Trang and Pham Chi Dung.

Prosecutors in Vietnam have indicted three leaders of an independent journalist advocacy group for their writings critical of the one-party communist government, laying charges that could land the men in jail for two decades, RFA has learned.

Three leaders of the Independent Journalists Association of Vietnam (IJAVN) -- president Pham Chi Dung, vice president Nguyen Tuong Thuy, and editor Le Huu Minh Tuan – were charged Tuesday by the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Procuracy with making, storing and spreading information for the purpose of opposing the state.

If convicted of the charges in Article 117 of the Vietnamese Criminal Code, they could face between 10 and 20 years in prison.

Pham was arrested first in Nov. 2019, Nguyen this year in May, and Le in June. Another IJAVN member, independent journalist Pham Chi Thanh, was arrested in May 2020.

Defense attorney Nguyen Van Mieng told RFA Tuesday he met with Pham at the Ho Chi Minh City police detention camp and received the indictment from a procuracy representative named Dao Cong Lu.

“Mr. Dao Cong Lu asked Pham Chi Dung to sign to confirm that he received the indictment, but Pham wrote on it ‘I did not violate Vietnamese law,’ and then signed,” said Nguyen the defense lawyer.

“I also read the indictment… I told Pham Chi Dung that he was prosecuted under Article 117 and could be in jail from 10 to 20 years if he is found guilty. Mr. Pham told me that he did not sign any testimonies except for some, which he wrote that he did not violate Vietnamese law,” the lawyer said.

The lawyer then met with Nguyen Tuong Thuy, who was prior to his arrest a contributor to RFA’s Vietnamese Service.

“Mr. Nguyen Tuong Thuy said he would appeal this indictment because he says it has many mistakes,” said the attorney.

“He said the reason is because when they reviewed the stories posted on the Vietnam Times website, they forced him to sign that they were his. From these stories, they accused him of violating Article 117,” the lawyer said.

According to the lawyer, Nguyen said that there was confusion between him and another author because his name is similar to another author’s pen name. Five stories written by “Tuong Thuy” were not his own, he said.

Le Huu Minh Tuan, meanwhile, met with his lawyer Dang Dinh Manh. RFA contacted Dang by phone, but he said he was unable to talk.

According to the indictment, the procuracy accuses the IJAVN leaders of aiding and “abetting discontented individuals and eroding the people’s faith in the ruling party and state, causing confusion in public opinion, and sowing disunity among the party and state members.”

The document says they need to be treated strictly in order to educate and deter others.

The IJAVN was among more than 190 organizations that signed a May 5 letter to U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres to take action to secure the release of jailed journalists worldwide amid the health risks posed to prison populations by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Vietnam, whose ruling Communist Party controls all media and tolerates no dissent, ranks 175th of 180 countries on RSF’s 2020 World Press Freedom Index. Many observers say the party is detaining so many writers and bloggers because it appears nervous about a major party congress in January.

Authorities in Vietnam’s southern province of Dong Nai have arrested local resident Nguyen Quang Khai on the allegation of “Deliberate disclosure of classified information; appropriation, trading, destruction of classified documents” under Article 337 of the Criminal Code with potential imprisonment of between two and ten years.

According to the notice sent to his family dated October 21, the Security Investigation Agency of the Dong Nai province’s Police Department detained Mr. Khai in an urgent case for the act of copying and disseminating state secrets on his Facebook account Khai Nguyen.

Mr. Khai’s family said that the Dong Nai police detained him to a police station in the morning of October 20 for interrogation and kept him overnight. The next day, police came to his private residence and handed over a notice of arrest to his family. Currently, the 51-year-old freelance worker is held in a temporary detention facility under the authority of the province’s Police Department.

Mr. Khai’s wife has a small food outlet and he helps her run the facility. He often shares and comments on the statuses of other Facebookers, mostly focusing on the corruption of state officials at different levels. He has also participated in charity events to support vulnerable people in their locality.

It is unclear what information he has shared can be classified as state secret information.

Dozens of Vietnamese Facebookers have been arrested or convicted with lengthy imprisonment for their online posts since the communist regime passed the Cyber Security in early 2018, according to Defend the Defenders’ observation.

Vietnam’s security forces have detained prominent human rights defender and democracy campaigner Pham Doan Trang as the communist government has tightened control to clear all political opposition while the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) is preparing for its 13th National Congress scheduled for early 2021.

Ms. Trang was arrested in the late night of October 6, few hours after the 24th Annual Human Rights Dialogue between the US and Vietnam held in Hanoi, when she was in a rent apartment in Ho Chi Minh City, the southern economic hub she has lived in the past three years while being chased by the Vietnamese security forces. According to her landlord, during the arrest, police officers showed the arrest warrant on which she was charged with “conducting anti-state propaganda” under Article 117 of the Criminal Code with a maximum punishment of 20 years in prison if she is convicted.

The state-controlled media has yet covered the arrest. It is expected that the Ministry of Public Security will announce the information about her detention soon as she is among high-risk human rights defenders in the Southeast Asian nation.

Ms. Trang, 42, is a former journalist for the official streamlined newswire VietnamNet. She left the outlet and went to study in the US and involved in activism, becoming one of the leading figures working for human rights and multi-party democracy in Vietnam.

She is a prominent and outspoken journalist, activist, and blogger whose writing covers a wide range of topics including LGBT rights, women’s rights, environmental issues, the territorial conflict between Vietnam and China, police brutality, suppression of activists, and law and human rights. Her book, Chính trị Bình dân (Politics for the Common People), a kind of primer for budding activists, was published in samizdat form in September 2017. She has produced a number of political books such as Phản kháng phi bạo lực (Non-violent Resistance), Politics of Police State, and Cẩm nang nuôi tù (Handbook for Prisoners’ Families). She is one of the authors of Việ Nam & Tranh chấp Biển Đông (Vietnam and the Conflict on the East Sea), published by Tri Thuc Publishing House in Vietnam.

On September 25, she and Vietnamese American Willian Nguyen publicized the 3rd edition of Dong Tam Report, the comprehensive report about the bloody attack of Vietnam’s security forces in Dong Tam commune, Hanoi on January 9 this year and the first-instance hearing to try 29 land petitioners who were charged with “murders” of three police officers and “resisting on-duty state officials” during the raid. It is worth noting that three out of the five co-authors of the first and the second editions of Dong Tam Report, former prisoner of conscience Can Thi Theu and her two sons Trinh Ba Phuong and Trinh Ba Tu were arrested on June 24, also charged with “conducting anti-state propaganda.”

Trang is also a street activist who is committed to peaceful protest. She has joined demonstrations outside police stations and at airports when fellow activists were detained, participated in nationalist protests about China’s violations of Vietnam’s sovereignty in the East Sea (South China Sea), and pro-environmental marches. She has been beaten and detained many times in the past five years.

Trang is the editor for the website Vietnam Right Now, which aims to distribute “objective, accurate, and timely information on the current social and political conditions in Vietnam today.” She is also a co-founder and an editor of the Vietnam Legal Initiative, a US-based NGO working to promote human rights, civil rights, and democracy in Vietnam.

Her writing and activism have addressed a broad human rights agenda, from the rights to freedom of expression, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, and other rights, including the right to remain silent. As a journalist and blogger, she also focuses on the role of media in social and political life and remains especially concerned with freedom of information on the internet and freedom of the press.

In 2018, Trang was awarded the Homo Homini Award by the Czech-based human rights organization People In Need which considers her “one of the leading figures of the contemporary Vietnamese dissent. She uses plain words to fight the lack of freedom, corruption, and the despotism of the communist regime.”

Last year, the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) presented her with Award For Work to Improve Journalistic Freedom. In March this year, the Liberal Publishing House under her leadership was honored with Prix Voltaire by the International Publishers’ Association.

Responding to her arrest, Phil Robertson, deputy chief of Southeast Asia Office of Human Rights Watch stated “Vietnam’s scorched earth response to political dissent is on display for all to see with the arrest of prominent blogger and author Pham Doan Trang. Despite suffering years of systemic government harassment, including severe physical attacks, she has remained faithful to her principles of peaceful advocacy for human rights and democracy. Her thoughtful approach to reforms, and demands for people’s real participation in their governance, are messages the Vietnam government should listen to and respect, not repress. Human Rights Watch strongly condemns Vietnam’s arrest of Pham Doan Trang. Every day she spends behind bars is a grave injustice that violates Vietnam’s international human rights commitments and brings dishonor to the government. Governments around the world and the UN must prioritize her case, speak out loudly and consistently on her behalf, and demand her immediate and unconditional release.”

The ruling Communist Party of Vietnam’s Central Committee is conducting the 13th Plenum in Hanoi on October 5-10 to prepare for the party 13th National Congress slated in early January. Months ahead of the congress which takes for every five years, Vietnam’s security forces have tightened social security and intensified crackdown on political dissidents, social activists, and human rights defenders.

So far this year, Vietnam has arrested 25 activists and 29 Dong Tam land petitioners, raising the number of prisoners of conscience to 258, according to the latest statistics of Defend the Defenders.

On September 17, Hanoi security forces detained prominent dissident Nguyen Quang A for several hours in a bid to prevent him from meeting with US Ambassador in Vietnam Daniel Kritenbrink.

Dr. A, who is the head of the unregistered group Vietnam Civil Society, said the American Ambassador invited him to a coffee meeting in his private residence in Hanoi at 3.30 pm on Thursday. He planned to leave his house early to go to a bank before heading to the meeting. However, when he tried to go at 2 pm, he recognized a group of ten policemen staying near his house in Gia Lam district.

Realizing that the policemen were waiting for him, Dr. A intended to go back to his house to inform the diplomat about the police blockade, however, the policemen detained him and took him to a car, and the vehicle headed to the Ngoc Thuy ward police station, where he was held many times before.

Dr. A strongly protested the police’s move, saying his detention is illegal. He knows that their purpose is to block him from meeting with the US Ambassador but the police officers asked him about his posts on Facebook.

A told them that this detention is the 18th in recent years, and he will not answer any question from them. At 5.30 pm, the police released him.

Along with blocking Dr. A from going abroad, Vietnam’s security forces have detained him many times in a bid to prevent him from meeting with foreign diplomats from the EU and the US as well as other Western countries.

Authorities in Vietnam have arrested a Facebook user for sharing his grievances about how the local government has handled a dispute over his family’s land, RFA has learned.

Le Van Hai, from Binh Dinh province in the country’s South Central Coast region was charged with “abusing freedom and democratic rights to infringe upon the interests of the state” under Article 33 of Vietnam’s 2015 Penal Code.

Local media outlet Youth Online reported the arrest Friday and it was confirmed by police in Binh Dinh.

According to the report, Le was detained over a period of two months, and police conducted a search of his residence in the coastal city of Qui Nhon.

The police investigation into Le’s case states that he often used his Facebook account to share or post many stories that slandered or offended the prestige of Vietnamese government leaders, including communist party members and provincial officials.

Le had also sent many complaints to Binh Dinh authorities asking for compensation payments because his family’s house and land had been confiscated to build a wastewater treatment plant in Qui Nhon.

When authorities denied the request, he shared his frustration on Facebook.

While all land in Vietnam is ultimately held by the state, land confiscations have become a flashpoint as residents accuse the government of pushing small landholders aside in favor of lucrative real estate projects, and of paying too little in compensation to farming families displaced by development.

Le’s case came to light after a court in Hanoi sentenced two vilagers to death, and gave several others long sentences, in the trial of 29 villagers over a deadly land-rights clash in January at the Dong Tam commune near Vietnam’s capital.

Three police officers were killed in the Jan. 9 clash when they were attacked by petrol bombs and fell into a concrete shaft while running between two houses. The village elder and father of the two condemned convicts also died in the raid.

Vietnam, with a population of 92 million people, of which 55 million are estimated to be users of Facebook, has been consistently rated “not free” in the areas of internet and press freedom by Freedom House, a U.S.-based watchdog group.

Dissent is not tolerated in the communist nation, and authorities routinely use a set of vague provisions in the penal code to detain dozens of writers and bloggers.

Vietnam�s security forces continue the persecution against the unregistered professional group Independent Journalists Association of Vietnam (IJAVN) after arresting its key members, conducting summoning some other members for interrogation in recent days.

Mr. Hoang Van Hung from Hanoi said he was summoned by the Security Investigation Agency of the Hanoi Police Department to its office on September 1 for questioning about his membership to the organization and his activities as well as writing for its website vietnamthoibao.org.

During the interrogation, Mr. Hung admitted that he is a member of IJAVN and has some articles posted on its website, however, he did not remember details of his writing. He refused to give other details, including the passwords of his accounts on Gmail and other online applications.

Several days later, Mr. Nguyen Thien Nhan, a member of the IJAVN�s Board Management was also summoned to the Security Investigation Agency of Ho Chi Minh City�s Police Department for questioning on September 8. During the interrogation which lasted from 8 am to 5 pm, police officers gave numerous questions about the IJAVN and his involvement in the organization. However, he did not give details as the investigators requested him to keep the content of the interrogation unpublicized.

Nhan said before going to the questioning meeting, he gave his phones and laptop to his trusted friend so the interrogators had no access to them. Police told him that he has to undergo other interrogations in the future.

The IJAVN was established in 2014 with the aim to work for freedom of the press in the one-party regime. Numerous articles of its members have criticized the regime on various issues, including human rights abuse, systemic corruption, widespread environmental pollution due to the regime�s unstable economic development, the government weak response to China�s violations to the country�s sovereignty in the East Sea (South China Sea), bad economic policies, etc.

The communist government probably is affected by such articles so it is striving to silence the IJAVN. Along with using technology to attack IJAVN�s website, Vietnam�s security forces have been implementing series of measures to persecute its members, from preventing them to gather or meet with foreign diplomats to arresting a number of its key members.

In early November last year, HCM City Police Department arrested its President Dr. Pham Chi Dung, who was honored with the Information Hero award of the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF), and charged with �conducting anti-state propaganda� under Article 117 of the Criminal Code with imprisonment of between seven to 12 years or even up to 20 years. Next year, on May 23, the police arrested acting President Nguyen Tuong Thuy after detaining blogger Pham Chi Thanh (penname Pham Thanh) two days earlier. The two independent writers at their 70-year age were charged with the same allegation. The persecution against the organization continues with the arrest of another member named Le Huu Minh Tuan on June 12, and police threaten to detain more members of the organization in a bid to expand the case.

Vietnam, placed at 175th out of 180 countries in the Press Freedom Index of RSF in 2020, has arrested 18 bloggers so far this year, 12 of them were charged with �conducting anti-state propaganda� and four others were alleged of �abusing democratic freedom� for criticizing the communist government.

Well-known human rights activist Huynh Thuc Vy has reported that authorities in Vietnam�s Central Highlands province of Dak Lak have requested a local Catholic school not to accept her 4-year-old daughter as a reprisal for her political activities.

On September 1, Vy took her kid to the school to start the academic year. The kid had been enrolled here since the beginning of this year. However, a nun at the school told the young mother that the school cannot accept the kid because �Many people had told me about you, now I can no longer accept Tue Nha in our school.�

The nun added �� the school and I will be negatively affected if we admit your daughter� without specifying who from the local authorities have made the threats.

However, in an interview given to an independent journalist, the nun from the Huong Duong kindergarten in Vinh Duc diocese has rejected all Vy�s accusations, saying she is just concerned about Vy�s current status of being closely chased by the local police.

Vy, who was sentenced to 33 months of prison for �insulting Vietnam�s communist flag� in 2018 but her imprisonment was suspended due to her maternity for their second child, said several years ago, a local policeman threatened them not to permit their first kid to attend local schools. The couple is preparing for that but still want to send their daughter in order to help it make friends with other kids.

Her husband Le Duy has said that the couple was preparing for that so they will teach their kid at home with an American program different from the program offered by the communist regime which is mostly propaganda for the ruling communist party.

Vy is born in a dissident family. Her father Huynh Ngoc Tuan was a former prisoner of conscience, spending ten years in prison after being convicted of �conducting anti-state propaganda� for criticizing the communist regime. She was a co-founder of the unregistered group Vietnam Women for Human Rights and held its presidency for many years in the past.

Due to her human rights activities and political engagement, Vy, who was honored with the Human Rights Watch (HRW)�s Hellman-Hammett award in 2012 for her writing, has been under persecution by the communist regime for years. She was kidnapped and beaten as well as being chased by authorities in Ho Chi Minh City and her native province of Quang Nam. In Lam Dong, she has been regularly summoned for questioning. Authorities have also striving to halt their economic activities.

A number of international human rights groups such as the New York-based Human Rights Watch, the London-based Amnesty International, and the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) have called on Vietnam to stop its persecution against Mrs. Vy, who is considered one of the talented young activists in the Southeast Asian nation.

Vy is among 275 prisoners of conscience to Defend the Defenders� list.

In Vietnam, the communists are striving to keep the country under a one-party regime and make all tricks and measures to silence the local dissent, including long-term imprisonment, de facto under house arrest, summoning to police stations for interrogation and economic blockade as well as harassing their relatives.

The father of a Vietnamese prisoner awaiting trial for his role in a deadly clash over land rights outside Hanoi has been turned away at the city�s police headquarters after he inquired about the condition of his son, who has been on hunger strike for over 20 days, he told RFA.

Trinh Ba Khiem, father of detained activist Trinh Ba Tu, told RFA�s Vietnamese Service on Friday that he and a group of residents from the city�s Duong Noi district visited the Public Security Ministry�s inspection office in Hanoi on Aug 26.

�The police received me along with three Duong Noi residents. I asked the ministry�s officers to allow me to call my son to ask about his health,� said Trinh Ba Khiem.

�If my son is on a hunger strike, I will tell him to stop, but a police officer, Colonel Le Son, said he could not comply with my request,� he said.

Trinh Ba Tu was arrested June 24 in Hoa Binh province, while his mother Can Thi Theu and older brother Trinh Ba Phuong were arrested on the same day in Hanoi. The elder Trinh brother and his mother are detained at the Cham Mat detention center in Hoa Binh, while the older Trinh is being held at the Hanoi No. 1 detention center.

The three are charged having been outspoken in social media postings about the Dong Tam clash, the violent Jan. 9 police raid that involved 3,000 officers intervening in a long-running dispute over a military airport construction site about 25 miles south of the capital.

During the clash, Dong Tam village elder Le Dinh Kinh, 84, was shot and killed by police, while three officers lost their lives.

The Trinh brothers and their mother are known to have openly offered information to foreign embassies and other international figures to try to raise awareness of the incident.

Commissary records at the Hoa Binh detention camp show that both the younger Trinh and his mother stopped buying food on Aug. 6, the Trinh family patriarch said.

RFA reported that he had Wednesday visited Cham Mat to check on his son, but he was turned away then as well. He said that the Hanoi police on Friday passed the buck back to Hoa Binh.

�After I left the office, Colonel Son told the three others that we should send a form to the Hoa Binh province police office to have an indirect meeting with Trinh Ba Tu, meaning I would be able to see my son through a glass window, but we wouldn�t be allowed to talk to each other,� he said, adding that the group plans to file a petition with Hoa Binh police on Monday.

Defense lawyer Dang Dinh Manh Thursday sent a letter to Hoa Binh�s investigation center and to the detention center in an attempt to confirm that Trinh Ba Tu was on a hunger strike.

�Are there any unusual reasons that have caused Trinh Ba Tu to choose to react with a hunger strike?� Dang wrote in the letter.

Other lawyers petitioned the two agencies to �urgently consider the issue and take the appropriate actions to avoid dangerous consequences that could occur.�

While all land in Vietnam is ultimately held by the state, land confiscations have become a flashpoint as residents accuse the government of pushing small landholders aside in favor of lucrative real estate projects, and of paying too little in compensation.

Several international organizations have voiced concern about the Dong Tam case, calling on the Vietnamese government to be independent and transparent in their investigation.

A group of 29 detained for their involvement in the clash are set to face trial Sept. 7 on charges of murder or opposing police on duty.

The wife of a Vietnamese activist is refusing to comply with a police summons to discuss the case of her husband, Trinh Ba Phuong, one of three detained members of the Trinh family who are awaiting trial over a deadly land rights clash outside Hanoi, her father-in-law told RFA Monday.

Trinh Ba Phuong�s wife, Do Thi Thu, gave birth to their child around the time of his June 24 arrest along with his brother, Trinh Ba Tu, and mother, Can Thi Theu, for spreading information critical of a police raid early this year to quash a long-running dispute over a military airport construction site at Dong Tam.

Police arrived at Do�s house in Hanoi�s Duong Noi district on Sunday to deliver the summons.

�The communist police yesterday summoned my daughter-in-law again, but she said she would not to go to police station. She refused to receive the summons, no matter what the communists want her to do,� Do�s father in law Trinh Ba Khiem told RFA�s Vietnamese Service.

�I think they want to investigate Trinh Ba Phuong�s case. My daughter-in-law just gave birth two months ago around when her husband was arrested, that�s why she decided not to go to police station,� he said.

Do�s interaction with the police Sunday was livestreamed on her Facebook account. The video showed police officers in plainclothes delivering the summons, which Do refused to sign for. She also told them she would not appear at the local police station on Sept. 3 as requested.

The three detained members of the Trinh family had been outspoken in social media postings about the Jan. 9 Dong Tam clash, in which 3,000 police stormed barricaded protesters� homes at a construction site about 25 miles south of the capital, killing a village elder. Three police officers died in the battle.

The Trinhs openly offered information to foreign embassies and other international figures to try to raise awareness of the incident.

Bureaucratic runaround

Trinh Ba Khiem also told RFA Monday that he encountered yet another stumbling block in his attempt to visit his other detained son, Trinh Ba Tu, after the family was told he had begun a hunger strike in early August.

RFA previously reported that the Trinh family patriarch had attempted to meet his younger son at the Cham Mat detention center in Hoa Binh province where he and his mother are being held.

Joined by an entourage of residents from Hanoi�s Duong Noi district, Trinh was last week turned away by camp police who threatened that they would be beaten by gangsters.

The group later visited the Ministry of Public Security in Hanoi, who told them to submit a letter to the police in Hoa Binh province to request an �indirect meeting� with his son, where they would be able to see each other through a glass window but would not be able to talk.

Trinh Ba Khiem told RFA Monday that the letter alone was not enough.

�This morning around 10 a.m. I and several residents of Duong Noi district arrived at the Hoa Binh province police department. Two residents and I met with an officer named Dinh Le Hoa, who requested an official testimony from the police at the local commune station confirming that [I] and Trinh Ba Tu are in a father-son relationship,� he said.

�I went back home and then to the commune police, but they did not confirm [our relationship] so my letter was not sent to the detention camp and I could not meet with my son,� he added.

The reason for Trinh Ba Tu�s hunger strike remains unclear. RFA first learned of the strike last week from Trinh Ba Tu�s sister Trinh Thi Thao, who said that an unknown person had told her that her brother had stopped eating.

RFA attempted to confirm the hunger strike with the detention camp, but officers there said they were not at liberty to provide information. The detention camp�s commissary records show that Trinh and his mother stopped buying food on Aug. 6.

In an earlier flare up of the Dong Tam dispute that goes back to 1980, farmers detained 38 police officers and local officials during a weeklong standoff in April 2017. Three months later, the Hanoi Inspectorate rejected the farmer�s claims that 47 hectares (116 acres) of their farmland was seized for the military-run Viettel Group�Vietnam�s largest mobile phone operator�without adequate compensation.

While all land in Vietnam is ultimately held by the state, land confiscations have become a flashpoint as residents accuse the government of pushing small landholders aside in favor of lucrative real estate projects, and of paying too little in compensation.

International organizations have voiced concern about the Dong Tam case, calling on the Vietnamese government to hold an independent and transparent investigation.

Vietnam’s communist regime continues its crackdown on the local dissent prior to the 13th National Congress of the ruling party, arresting freelance journalist Tran Thi Tuyet Dieu and on allegation of “conducting anti-state propaganda” under Article 117 of the Criminal Code.

According to the state-controlled media, the police in the central province of Phu Yen carried out the arrest on August 21. They also conducted a search of the house of Ms. Dieu’s parents in Tay Hoa district where she lives with them. She will be held incommunicado for at least four months during the investigation period, the common practice Vietnam’s security forces have been applying in most of political cases.

Ms. Dieu graduated journalism from the University of Social Sciences and Humanities (Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City). Later, she worked for Phu Yen newspaper, the official voice of the province’s Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV)’s Committee. However, she left the newspaper and focused on criticizing the communist regime’s socio-economic issues such as systemic corruption, widespread environmental pollution, human rights violations, and weak response to China’s violations of the country’s sovereignty in the East Sea (South China Sea).

Phu Yen province’s police have accused her of using Facebook accounts “Tuyết Diệu Babel” and “Trần Thị Tuyết Diệu Journalist” as well as Youtube channel named Tuyết Diệu Trần to disseminate hundreds of articles and videoclips to defame communist leaders, including late President Ho Chi Minh, and distort the party’s policies.

In recent years, she has been harassed many times by the police forces. Once she was kidnapped by police in the central province of Nghe An who tortured her.

Ms. Dieu has been the 12th Facebooker being arrested and charged with “conducting anti-state propaganda” so far this year. She is facing imprisonment of between seven and 12 years or even up to 20 years if she is convicted.

Her arrest was made one week after the US, the EU and the UK urged Hanoi to ensure its actions are consistent with the human rights provisions of Vietnam’s Constitution and its international obligations and commitments and allow all individuals in Vietnam to express their views freely, without fear of retaliation. The call was made after Vietnam convicted eight members of the unregistered group Constitution of “disruption of security” for their participation in peaceful demonstrations and sentenced them to more than 40 years in prison.

Vietnam is holding at least 275 prisoners of conscience, according to Defend the Defenders’ statistics. As many as 50 of them were arrested this year, and 55 of them are held in pre-trial detention.

Since the beginning of this year, Vietnam has convicted 15 activists and sentenced them to 66 years and three months and 26 years of probation.

Vietnam�s communist regime has convicted eight members of the unregistered group Hi?n Ph�p (Constitution) of �disruption of security� under Article 118 of the country�s Criminal Code after nearly 23 months after kidnapping them and keeping them incommunicado for many months after that. Their conviction is the regime�s reprisal for their exercising the rights to freedom of expression and assembly.

On July 31, after just one day reviewing, the People�s Court of Ho Chi Minh City found them guilty and gave Ms. Nguyen Thi Ngoc Hanh- eight years in prison, Mrs. Hoang Thi Thu Vang- seven, Ms. Doan Thi Hong- two and half years, Mr. Ngo Van Dung, Mr. Do The Hoa and Mr. Le Quy Loc- five years each, Mr. Ho Dinh Cuong- four and half years, and Mr. Tran Thanh Phuong- three and half years in prison.

In addition, Mr. Dung, Mr. Cuong, Mr. Phuong, and Ms. Hong were given two years of probation after serving their imprisonment. Four others were with a three-year probation.

Authorities in HCM City deployed hundreds of police officers, plainclothes agents, militia, and thugs to block all routes leading to the courtroom to prevent relatives and friends of the defendants from entering the courtroom to observe the so-called open trial. They forced the activists� relatives and supporters to go away and attacked the sons of Mr. Dung. As a result, any relative of the activists was permitted to observe the trial inside but stayed far away from the courtroom.

Defend the Defenders has learned that only a diplomatic representative from the German Embassy in Vietnam was permitted to attend the trial while the requests from the diplomatic missions of the US and other countries were denied.

Hi?n Ph�p was established in 2017 with the aim to enhance civil rights among Vietnamese by disseminating the country�s Constitution approved by the communist-controlled parliament in 2013. The eight convicted members, together with others of the group were active during the mass demonstration in HCM City on June 10, 2018 in which tens of thousands of people from all social classes rallied on streets to protest two bills on Special Economic Zones and Cyber Security. The first is considered to favor Chinese investors to purchase land in Vietnam amid increasing concerns of Beijing�s intensifying aggressiveness in the East Sea (South China Sea). The second which was approved by the communist-controlled parliament and became effective from January 1, 2019, is considered an effective tool to silence online government critics.

They planned to hold the second peaceful demonstration in early September of the same year on the occasion of Vietnam�s Independence Day (September 2) to protest the socio-economic policies of the communist regime. However, they were abducted by security forces in Ho Chi Minh City a few days before the action date.

Their fate and whereabouts remained unknown for months as the police held them incommunicado without informing their families, and even after the families had been informed of the detention they have remained incommunicado for nearly a year.

The first two of the defendants, Ms. Hanh and Mrs. Vang were charged with Clause 1 of Article 118 with imprisonment of between seven and 15 years in prison while the remaining six are accused under Clause 2 of the same article with imprisonment between two and seven years.

A few months ago, Ms. Hong, who was detained when her daughter was about two years old, informed her family that she was held in very severe conditions. Since being arrested, she has been under physical and mental torture constantly, according to the information she gave her older sister.

In mid-April this year, Mr. Dung and Mr. Loc were brutally beaten by police officers while being held in Phan Dang Luu temporary detention center under the authority of HCM City Police Department. Due to the severe injuries, both were taken to a hospital for urgent treatment for ten days.

Despite doing nothing harmful for the country, Hi?n Ph�p group has been targetted by Vietnam�s communist regime. Two members of the group Pham Minh The and Huynh Truong Ca were convicted of �abusing democratic freedom� and �anti-state propaganda� with respective imprisonment of two years and five and half years in 2018-2019. Mr. The was released on July 10 this year, three months before his imprisonment term was set to end.

Three other members of the group fled to Thailand to seek political asylum to avoid being punished by the Vietnamese regime.

All imprisoned members of the group were considered prisoners of conscience by Defend the Defenders.

So far this year, Vietnam has convicted 15 activists to total 66.5 years in prison and 26 years of probation, according to Defend the Defenders� statistics. In addition, the regime has also arrested 49 activists and charged them with controversial allegations in the national security provisions of the Criminal Code for their peaceful exercising their basic rights enshrined in the country�s Constitution and the international human rights treaties Vietnam has signed.

On July 7, the People�s Court of Lam Dong province convicted local Facebooker Nguyen Quoc Duc Vuong of �Making, storing, spreading information, materials, items for the purpose of opposing the State of Socialist Republic of Vietnam� under Article 117 of the country�s Criminal Code, Defend the Defenders has learned.

During the short first-instance hearing lasting only a few hours, the court sentenced him to eight years in prison and three years of probation for using his Facebook account V??ng Nguy?n to conduct 98 video live streams and posted 366 status updates, amounting to content that distorts the regime and defames the communist leadership.

Nguyen Quoc Doanh, an older brother of Vuong, said the local authorities sent uniformed policemen and plainclothes agents to the areas near his family several days prior to the trial date in order to block the family�s members to attend the hearing. So Vuong�s family has learned about the court�s decision from his lawyer�s SMS.

In recent time, prior to the trial, authorities in the Central Highlands province of Lam Dong said there are increasing activities of reactionary forces in the locality while the ruling party is preparing for its local and National Congress slated for January next year, so they would punish Mr. Vuong hardly to silence others. And the outcome of the trial has proved it.

Mr. Vuong, born in 1991, was arrested on September 23, 2019. He was kept incommunicado during the investigation period and was permitted to meet his lawyer Nguyen Van Mieng nearly a month before the trial to prepare for his defense.

Vuong is a human rights activist. He participated in the mass demonstration in Ho Chi Minh City on June 10, 2018 in which tens of thousands of people from different social groups rallied on streets to protest two bills on Special Economic Zones and Cyber Security. He was detained and fined VND750,000 ($32) before being released.

So far this year, the communist regime has sentenced seven activists to total 26 years in prison and six years of probation. Two other Facebookers Nguyen Van Nghiem and Phan Cong Hai were sentenced to six and five years, respectively, also under the allegation of �conducting anti-state propaganda� under Article 117 of the Criminal Code. Two other Facebookers named Chung Hoang Chuong and Ma Phung Ngoc Phu were convicted of �abusing democratic freedom� under Article 331 and sentenced to 18 months and nine months in jail, respectively.

As many as 12 other activists, including prominent journalists Pham Chi Dung and Nguyen Tuong Thuy, the president and the vice president of the unregistered Independent Journalists Association of Vietnam, are held and investigated on the same accusation.

Vietnamese police detained and assaulted family members of a jailed democracy activist and Christian pastor before and during U.S. Ambassador Daniel Kritenbrink�s recent visit to their district in Thanh Hoa province, the political prisoner�s wife said Wednesday.

The house arrest and beating appears to be part of an intensifying crackdown on human rights activists and dissidents six months before the Communist Party of Vietnam�s next five-yearly party congress.

Ahead of the ambassador�s visit, local police visited the Quang Xuong district home of Pastor Nguyen Trung Ton, who is currently serving a 12-year prison sentence for his involvement with the Brotherhood for Democracy dissident group.

�On June 26, officers from the Quang Yen commune police department came to my house, ordering all the family members not to go out of the home for the next few days,� Nguyen�s wife Nguyen Thi Lanh told RFA�s Vietnamese Service.

They locked the gate surrounding the house Monday night, as Kritenbrink was arriving in Quang Xuong the next day.

According to a report by Thanh Hoa Radio and Television, the ambassador was leading U.S. delegation to the northern coastal province to attend an opening ceremony for a local project supported by the embassy�s Fund for Cultural Preservation.

Nguyen Thi Lanh said that on Tuesday morning, she used pliers to break the locks so she could sell goods in the market. Police arrested her there and took her to the Quang Yen police station.

At 4:00 p.m. that day her son Nguyen Trung Trong Nghia left the home to meet his mother at the station.

She said that when her son was on his way there he was attacked by two people, believed to be plainclothes police officers.

�My son was ambushed. They blindfolded and bludgeoned my son�s head with an electric baton, causing him injury,� said Nguyen Thi Lanh.

�A police officer took my son to a health clinic for treatment then brought him back to the Quang Yen police office for booking,� she said.

�This morning, my son returned to the health clinic for more treatment. His face was swollen, and he has broken teeth,� she added.

An official at the Quang Yen police station told the family that the reason for the house arrest was because Ambassador Kritenbrink was visiting their district. The ambassador left Quang Xuong at 5:00 p.m. Tuesday, after which the police left their position at the family�s house.

RFA attempted to contact the Quang Xuong district police office for comment, but nobody answered the phone.

Pastor Nguyen Trung Ton was arrested in July 2017 on charges of �attempting to overthrow the people�s government� and was sentenced to 12 years in prison and three years of probation in April 2018.

Vietnamese authorities have in the past taken interest in the family of political prisoners with Christian affiliations meeting with U.S. diplomats.

In 2016, local police subjected Tran Thi Hong, wife of imprisoned Mennonite pastor Nguyen Cong Chinh to an intense interrogation two months after she met with U.S. diplomats to discuss religious freedom.

Estimates of the number of prisoners of conscience now held in Vietnam�s jails vary widely. New York-based Human Rights Watch said that authorities held 138 political prisoners as of October 2019, while Defend the Defenders has suggested that at least 240 are in detention, with 36 convicted last year alone.

On June 24, Vietnam�s security forces violently detained Hanoi-based four activists for their voicing to support land petitioners in Dong Tam commune, Hoai Duc district who were brutally suppressed by the communist regime in January this year.

According to a short video clip made by human rights defender Trinh Ba Phuong, a large number of uniformed and plainclothes policemen gathered near his private residence in the early hours of Wednesday. At around 5.30 am, police cut Internet connection in the area and used pliers to cut his house�s lock to break in and arrest him in the front of his wife who gave the birth of their second child four days ago.

Phuong�s mother, former prisoner of conscience Can Thi Theu and his younger brother Trinh Ba Tu were also detained by the police. Theu, who was imprisoned twice a total 35 months for objecting land grabbing, was arrested while staying in her daughter�s house in the northern province of Hoa Binh while Tu was detained in their agricultural field in the province.

Land petitioner and human rights defender Nguyen Thi Tam was the fourth victim of Vietnam�s persecution today. She was kidnaped by security forces while going to a local wet market. She was taken away while the police came to her private residence in Duong Noi village for house searching.

According to their families, the detainees as well as some of their relatives were beaten by police officers during their detention and house search, during which police confiscated a computer set and four cell phones from Mrs. Tam�s house and cell phones from Mrs. Theu and her sons. Police also informed that they also found some books printed by the unsanctioned publisher Liberal Publishing House led by prominent human rights defender and political blogger Pham Doan Trang in Mrs. Theu�s family houses.

All of them from Duong Noi village, Ha Dong district, Hanoi where the city�s authorities seized their agricultural land without paying adequate compensation. Theu and her husband Trinh Ba Khiem as well as Phuong, Tu, and Tam were active fighters for their land although they failed.

Later, the state-controlled media reported that all of them were charged with �conducting anti-state propaganda� under Article 117 of the Criminal Code with the imprisonment of between seven and 12 years in prison but maybe up to 20 years in jail. While Mr. Phuong and Mrs. Tam are held in the Temporary detention center No. 1 (Hoa Lo) under the authority of the Hanoi Police Department, Mrs. Theu and her son Mr. Tu are kept in the temporary detention center under the authority of Hoa Binh province�s Police Department. All of them will be held incommunicado during the investigation period which will last four months at least and may be extended to more than two years.

The detentions are likely related to the brutal massacre on January 9 when the Ministry of Public Security deployed thousands of riot policemen to Dong Tam commune to attack Hoanh villagers. Police killed 84-year-old communist member Le Dinh Kinh, the spiritual leader of the local land petitioners, and arrested nearly 30 people, including his two sons and two grandchildren.

Police said during the attack, three police officers were killed and blamed the local petitioners for their death although there are no solid shreds of evidence for their deaths and even no traces of their bodies.

In its investigation report released recently, the Hanoi Police Department proposed 25 detainees be prosecuted of murders and four others of �resisting on-duty state officials.�

Since the land dispute in Dong Tam commune started in 2017, the four activists have provided strong support for the local petitioners. Right after the massacre in early January this year, Phuong and Tam kept updating their posts about the case on their Facebook accounts. Phuong also met with US diplomat in Hanoi to report the case.

Two days after detaining the four activists, authorities in Hanoi publicized the indictments against 29 Dong Tam land petitioners, paving the way for the city�s People�s Court to hold the first-trial against them. Hard sentences are expected for them. Some sources that they have a plan to impose the death penalty for four of the defendants and lengthy sentences for the remaining.

Tam is a well-known strong woman in Duong Noi. She often criticized Hanoi police for persecuting her. In recent weeks, she made a number of online surveys about the communist regime�s policies and its senior officials.

It is worth noting that Facebooker Chung Hoang Chuong has convicted of �abusing democratic freedom� and sentenced to 18 months in prison for disseminating information about the police�s massacre in Dong Tam.

Along with recent detentions across the country, the arrests on Wednesday prove that the communist regime will apply all measures to crack down on the local dissent in a bid to ensure a �stable environment� for preparation of the 13th National Congress of the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam. It is likely that the police generals want to show their power after dozens of police and army generals have been imprisoned for fired for economic wrongdoings.

On June 23, the People�s Court of Vietnam�s northern province of Hoa Binh convicted local resident Nguyen Van Nghiem of �Making, storing, spreading information, materials, items for the purpose of opposing the State of Socialist Republic of Vietnam� under Article 117 of the country�s Criminal Code.

At the end of the first-instance hearing which lasted a few hours, the court sentenced the 57-year-old barber to six years in prison, Defend the Defenders has learned.

In an open trial, only the defendant�s wife was permitted to enter the courtroom while his friends and supporters were barred from observing the trial inside.

The defendant had no legal assistance although his wife had signed a contract with Hanoi-based attorney Ha Huy Son. It is likely Nghiem got pressured from the police to deny legal counseling.

Nghiem was arrested on November 5 last year over his posts on Facebook regarding issues such as human rights violations, systemic corruption, widespread environmental pollution and China�s violations of the country�s sovereignty in the East Sea (South China Sea) and the weak response of Vietnam�s communist regime. He also conducted many live streams on his Facebook account Nghiem Nguyen on which criticized the communist regime and its leaders for their failure to deal with these problems.

So far this year, Vietnam has tried activists, four of them were convicted between nine months and six years for their posts on Facebook. In addition, hundreds of Facebookers have been fined up to VND15 million ($680) for their Facebook posts which were considered fake or untrue by the communist authorities, especially about the Covid-19 pandemic.

Vietnam�s communist regime is holding at least 280 prisoners of conscience, according to the latest statistics of Defend the Defenders. More arrests are expected by the end of this year as the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam is preparing its 13th National Congress slated in January 2021.

Vietnam�s communist regime has arrested the third journalist named Le Huu Minh Tuan in an effort to demolish the unregistered group Independent Journalists Association of Vietnam (IJAVN), Defend the Defenders has learned.

Local activists reported that on June 12, the security forces of Ho Chi Minh City�s Police Department arrested Mr. Tuan, who is a member of IJAVN, and has a number of articles under penname Le Tuan. It is unclear what the charge he is facing, but his arrest is likely related to the previous detentions of IJAVN�s President Ph?m Chi Dung and Vice President Nguyen Tuong Thuy, who were accused of �conducting anti-state propaganda� under Article 117 of the Criminal Code with imprisonment of between seven and 12 years if are convicted.

Tuan was said to be taken to Chi Hoa temporary detention center under the authority of HCM City�s Police Department, where Mr. Dung and Mr. Thuy are held incommunicado since their arrest in November 2019 and May 23 this year, respectively.

Mr. Tuan, 31, joined IJAVN in 2014. He graduated from Da Nang University, majoring in history. He is currently working on a second degree at Hanoi Law University.

In the months after the arrest of Mr. Dung, Tuan was repeatedly summoned by security forces for interrogation about the association. Tuan�s friends advised him to go into hiding to avoid being harassed or detained, however, he refused, saying he didn�t want his studies interrupted. He also acquiesced to these questionings because he believed he hadn�t done anything wrong.

In order to keep the country under a one-party regime, the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam is striving not to allow the formation of opposition groups and civil society organizations. After arresting a dozen of key members of the unsanctioned group Brotherhood for Democracy, Vietnam�s security forces are targeting IJAVN which has more than 50 independent journalists and dissidents who have produced thousands of unbiased articles regarding hot issues of the country such as human rights violations, systemic corruption, widespread environmental pollution, China�s violations of the country�s sovereignty in the East Sea (South China Sea) and the weak response of the communist regime in Hanoi, failures of socio-economic policies of the ruling Communist Party, etc.

Under the communist regime�s provision, IJAVN is a thorny group that should not exist. Since its establishment in 2014, it and its members have been under constant persecution of security forces who strive not to allow its members to gather or meet with foreign diplomats. In November last year, the security forces started their campaign to crack down on the association by arresting its President Dung and a half year later, they detained Acting President Thuy.

A number of its members are under threat and may be arrested at any moment as the security forces want to eradicate the association ahead of the upcoming 13th National Congress scheduled in January 2021.

Vietnam is among the world�s biggest enemies of the press. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Hanoi held 12 journalists under the bar for their journalism activities as of 2019�s end while the Reporters Without Border (RSF) has placed Vietnam at the bottom of its annual free press indexes in recent years.

So far this year, Vietnam has arrested at least 12 activists, nine of them for their writings. Vietnam is also among the biggest prisons of prisoners of conscience in Southeast Asia, with more than 250 activists being kept behind bars.

Vietnamese police on Saturday (May 22) detained the acting president of the unsanctioned Independent Journalists Association of Vietnam (IJAVN) six months after the arrest of its president, a rights group and his family said.

Nguyen Tuong Thuy (pic), 68, was arrested on Saturday morning at his house in Hanoi on the charge of "conducting anti-state propaganda," Defend the Defenders, a non-profit NGO working for the promotion of human rights and democracy as well as assisting local activists at risk in Vietnam, reported.

Thuy, a retired veteran and an active blogger, is renowned for commenting on the government's policies and criticizing them for social injustice and corruption.

His family said a group of security officers blocked his private residence in Hanoi, confiscating the mobile phones of all members of the family, and started to search their house. Police seized his computers and other personal items and took him away.

"The recent arrests, including those of Mr Pham Thanh and Mr Nguyen Tuong Thuy, are part of the ongoing crackdown on local dissent prior to the party's 13th National Congress slated in January 2021," Vu Quoc Ngu, director of Defend the Defenders, said.

On Thursday, police arrested Pham Thanh, a former journalist for the Voice of Vietnam, on the same charge as Thuy.

Thanh, 68, has written several books and essays criticizing Vietnam's communist government and leaders, including a book self-published in 2019 harshly criticizing Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong.

Vietnam, a single party state, broadly bans dissent in its penal code.

The 88 Project, a US-based rights monitoring group, lists more than 200 political prisoners in Vietnam.

The country denies holding political prisoners.

Police officers from the Ministry of Public Security detained young activist Nguyen Anh Tuan on Friday when he was in a cafeteria in Hanoi.

Police took him to a police station and questioned about his legal writing about the land dispute in Dong Tam commune, Hoai Duc district, Hanoi and the brutal assault by thousands of riot policemen in Hoanh village on January 9 in which police barbarically killed 84-year-old Le Dinh Kinh and arrested around 30 local residents.

Mr. Tuan was released in the late afternoon of the same day.

Mr. Tuan, born in 1990 from the central city of Danang, is a talented young man. He has just completed a master degree in Public Policy at the Vietnam-Japan University of Hanoi National University. He also attended many overseas-based training sessions about campaigning for democracy and human rights. He actively supported victims of the Formosa environmental disaster. He has been illegally detained many times, having a passport confiscated for many months before being returned thanks to pressure from the EU.

After the Dong Tam massacre, Tuan and many individuals as well as independent civil society groups have provided support and legal guidance to Dong Tam villagers, and helped them draft letters to foreign governments and international rights organizations.

Police in Vietnam�s capital Hanoi arrested a dissident writer and blogger on Thursday on charges of producing and distributing information opposing the government amid a deepening crackdown on freedom of expression in the one-party communist state.

Pham Chi Thanh, also called Pham Thanh, was taken into custody at 8:00 a.m. by a large group of police who burst through the door of his home, his wife Nguyen Thi Nghiem told RFA�s Vietnamese Service by phone.

�While my son was opening the door, many police came into the house, and I heard the noise and came downstairs,� Nguyen said.

�They asked me where my husband was, and I said he was on the fifth floor watering [bonsai] trees. Then they brought my husband downstairs, and the police said they had warrants to arrest him and to search the house.�

After the police read out their warrants, they seized two computers, a printer, and some documents, arrested Pham, and left the house at 10:00 a.m., Nguyen said, adding that she was so weakened and overwhelmed by anxiety during the arrest that she couldn�t hear clearly what Pham had been charged with.

Writing later on his Facebook page, another dissident writer said however that Pham had been arrested under Article 117 of Vietnam�s penal code for �producing, storing, and disseminating information and documents against the Vietnamese state.�

RFA has not been able yet to independently confirm the charge.

Critical books, essays

Born in 1952, Pham Thanh has written a number of books and essays critical of Vietnam�s communist government and leaders, including a book self-published in 2019 harshly criticizing Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong.

Dissent is not tolerated in Vietnam, and authorities routinely use a set of vague provisions in the penal code to detain dozens of writers, bloggers, and activists calling for greater freedoms in the one-party communist state.

Estimates of the number of prisoners of conscience now held in Vietnam�s jails vary widely.

New York-based Human Rights Watch has said that authorities held 138 political prisoners as of October 2019, while Defend the Defenders has suggested that at least 240 are in detention, with 36 convicted last year alone.

On May 8, the People�s Court of Soc Son district in Vietnam�s capital city of Hanoi convicted two anti-corruption activists named Dang Thi Hue and Bui Manh Tien on allegation of �causing public disorders� under Article 318 of the country�s Criminal Code.

Specifically, they were sentenced to 15 months in prison each. Due to her 24-month probation sentence earlier, Ms. Hue has to serve her 42-month imprisonment in the coming years.

They were arrested in mid-October last year when they were trying to block the Bac Thang Long-Noi Bai BOT (build-operating-transfer) toll booth to protest its illegal fee collection. Their acts were simply civil but considered as criminal since the BOT toll booths belong to companies backed by senior state officials.

In May last year, Ms. Hue was beaten by plainclothes policemen of Soc Son district. Due to the assault, she suffered a birth miscarriage.

Hue is among dozens of activists speaking up against fee collecting of wrongly-placed BOT toll booths in many places in Vietnam, including the Bac Thang Long-Noi Bai BOT.

Many anti-BOT activists have been persecuted by plainclothes agents and thugs in recent months. Mr. Ha Van Nam and six others were convicted and sentenced to between 18 months and 36 months on the allegation of �disturbing public orders.�

So far this year, Vietnam�s communist regime has convicted four activists with a total of 11 years and three months of imprisonment and three years of probation. In addition, the regime has arrested seven activists, mostly on allegations in the national security provisions of the Criminal Code, raising the number of prisoners of conscience to 247 at least, according to Defend the Defenders� latest statistics.

Vietnamese authorities on Tuesday sentenced a young Facebook user to a five-year prison term on charges of spreading propaganda against the state for his online postings amid a deepening crackdown on freedom of expression in the one-party communist state.

Phan Cong Hai, 25, was convicted in the People�s Court of the central province of Nghe An under Article 117 of Vietnam�s 2015 Penal Code following a two-hour trial unattended by lawyers. He was the second Facebook user to be jailed in Vietnam this week and the latest in a heavy-handed campaign to censor what the 65 million users of the social platform can write or read.

Speaking to RFA�s Vietnamese Service following the trial, Phan�s father Phan Cong Binh said that he had seen his son only once following Phan�s Nov. 19 arrest after evading capture by police for almost six months.

�I was able to meet my son briefly on Dec. 24, 2019, but we couldn�t speak freely because the police were standing right next to us,� he said, adding that travel restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic have made it difficult to see Phan more frequently.

�Now, our family really doesn�t know what to do,� he said.

According to the indictment filed against him, Phan was identified by Nghe An police as the user of a Facebook account set up under the name Hung Manh which described efforts by Vietnamese youth to �offend the image� of the government and of Vietnamese Communist Party founder Ho Chi Minh.

The Facebook page came to the attention of the province�s Do Thanh High School in late 2018, and school authorities contacted police who issued a warrant for Phan�s arrest and began a nationwide search in May last year which ended when Phan returned to his native Ha Tinh province in November after taking refuge in Thailand.

Meanwhile, Vietnam�s Ninh Kieu District Court in Can Tho City on Monday handed another Facebook user an 18-month prison term for sharing a story on Facebook in January about a deadly government crackdown during a politically sensitive land dispute at the Dong Tam commune outside Hanoi.

Chung Hoang Chuong, better known by his nickname Lucky, was found guilty of �abusing democratic freedoms to infringe upon the interests of the State, lawful rights and interests of organizations and/or citizens� in violation of Article 331 of the Vietnamese Penal Code.

Facebook under fire

Facebook has come under fire from Vietnamese and international rights activists after the social media giant publicly admitted it has agreed to help communist authorities censor posts critical of the government.

On April 21, two Facebook employees told the Reuters news agency that the company�s servers in Vietnam were taken offline for about seven weeks earlier in the year until Facebook agreed to government demands to remove posts considered by authorities to have criticized the communist state.

In a statement condemning Facebook�s decision to comply with government demands, Amnesty International Human Rights Advisor William Nee warned that �governments around the world will see this as an open invitation to enlist Facebook in the service of state censorship.�

�The Vietnamese authorities� ruthless suppression of freedom of expression is nothing new, but Facebook�s shift in policy makes them complicit,� he added.

In an emailed statement to RFA on April 22, Facebook spokesperson Amy Sawitta Lefevre defended her company�s action, saying that though freedom of expression is a fundamental human right, Facebook risked being blocked by authorities in Vietnam if the company refused to comply.

�We have taken this action to ensure our services remain available and usable for millions of people in Vietnam, who rely on them every day,� Lefevre said.

Vietnamese activist Tran Bang said that Facebook�s decision to bow to government demands �will block the ears, mouths, and eyes of Vietnam�s people, just as if there was no Facebook here at all.�

�Tens of millions of Facebook users have posted news from many different sources, helping people access truthful information about politics, society, and the economy," he told RFA on April 27.

"By blocking and removing stories in accordance with the authorities� requirements, [Facebook] is complicit with the dictatorship in violating human rights and freedom of expression in Vietnam."

�This means that Facebook is no different from the communist police,� he said.

Refining repression

In a report this year, the media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said that �as Vietnam�s citizens become increasingly engaged online, the authorities have been refining their digital repressive methods.�

The NGO said Vietnam�s army has created �a 10,000-strong military cyber-warfare department called �Force 47,� which is tasked with defending the Party and targeting dissident bloggers.�

�Under a new cyber-crime law that took effect in 2019, foreign online platforms are required to store their Vietnamese user data on servers in Vietnam and surrender it to the authorities when required,� RSF added.

Facebook user Dinh Van Hai told RFA that Facebook had been forced to cooperate with authorities to avoid being blocked behind a firewall. �But for me, Facebook must continue to prioritize freedom of the news as its top goal,� he said.

Though smaller social media networks have recently been set up in Vietnam, these typically block content widely shared on Facebook and are not widely used, Ha Hoang Hop�a researcher at Singapore�s Institute of Southeast Asian Studies�told RFA in a text message sent on April 27.

�Vietnamese social networks have not attracted as many users as Facebook, and they can�t compete,� he said.

No room for dissent

Vietnam, whose ruling Communist Party controls all media and tolerates no dissent, ranks 175th of 180 countries on the 2020 RSF�s World Press Freedom Index.

�As Vietnam�s media all follow the Communist Party�s orders, the only sources of independently-reported information are bloggers and independent journalists, who are being subjected to ever-harsher harsh forms of persecution,� said RSF.

�To justify jailing them, the Party resorts increasingly to articles 79, 88 and 258 of the criminal code, under which �activities aimed at overthrowing the government,� �anti-state propaganda� and �abusing the rights to freedom and democracy to threaten the interests of the state� are punishable by long prison terms,� it said.

Vietnam has also been consistently rated �not free� in the areas of internet and press freedom by Freedom House, a U.S.-based watchdog group.

The People�s Court of Ninh Kieu district, Can Tho City on April 27 convicted local resident Chung Hoang Chuong of �abusing democratic freedom� under Article 331 of the country�s Criminal Code for his post on Facebook, Defend the Defenders has learned.

The court sentenced him to 18 months in prison in the trial the defendant has not been protected by his own lawyer while his wife was informed about the first-instance hearing just 20 minutes before it started.

Mr. Chuong, 43, was detained on January 11 this year. According to the indictment, Mr. Chuong has conducted online activities on his Facebook account Ch??ng May M?n where he wrote or shared numerous statuses regarding hot issues Vietnam, including human rights abuse, serious nationwide environmental pollution, systemic corruption and the government�s weak response to China�s violations of the country�s sovereignty in the East Sea (South China Sea). His latest statuses on his Facebook page were about the military attack in Dong Tam commune carried out by the Ministry of Public Security and the Hanoi Police Department in the early morning of January 9 in which police killed at least two civilians.

His wife reported on her Facebook page that during the trial, the procuracy representative said Chuong should not write about the Dong Tam assault, because it is the issue of Hanoi and the capital city�s authorities are responsible for settle it.

Mr. Chuong has been the second Facebooker being detained for their online activities amid increasing crackdown on the local dissent. After him, Vietnam�s security forces arrested three others on different allegations. Ms. Ma Phung Ngoc Phu was charged with the same allegation while Ms. Dinh Thi Thu Thuy and Dinh Van Phu were alleged with �conducting anti-state propaganda� under Article 117 while former prisoner of conscience Tran Duc Thach was charged with subversion.

Since the Cyber Security Law become effective in early 2019, Vietnam has arrested more than two dozens of Facebookers on allegations of �conducting anti-state propaganda� and �abusing democratic freedom� in the National Security provisions of the Criminal Code, and sentenced 17 of them to between one and 11 years in prison, according to Defend the Defenders� statistics.

Along with arresting Facebookers and charging them with controversial criminal offenses in the national security provisions of the Criminal Code, security forces in different localities have summoned hundreds of local Facebookers for interrogation about their Facebook posts.

Regarding Covid-19 alone, around 300 Facebookers have been fined between VND5 million ($220) and VND15 million for disseminating news on the pandemic which are considered fake news by the communist regime. They were forced to delete their posts and promised not to repeat �wrongdoings,� according to the state-controlled media.

Vietnams� regime has also pressured on Facebook, reducing its local traffic by switching off their serves in the country so the American firm has been agreed to censor political posts in a bid to protect its economic interests in the market with over 65 million accounts, according to the recent report of Reuters.

While the whole country is focusing on dealing with the COVID-19 outbreak, Vietnam�s communist regime does not forget to cement its political monopoly by intensifying its crackdown on local dissent, arresting the third activist within two weeks.

This time, its prey is former prisoner of conscience Tran Duc Thach, 68, from the central province of Nghe An, the home of late communist leader Ho Chi Minh. Thach is a founding member of the unregistered group Brotherhood for Democracy.

On April 23, security forces arrested Mr. Thach on allegation of conducting �Activities against the people�s government� under Article 109 of the country�s Criminal Code, with the highest punishment of 20 years in prison or even death penalty. Police conducted searching for his house, confiscating a laptop, cell phones, a camera as well as VND9 million ($380) and $400, according to his family.

According to the state-controlled media, Mr. Thach has been continuously posting and sharing numerous articles on Facebook with content to distort the regime�s policies with the aim to trigger social disorders amid the COVID-19 pandemic.�

He was arrested for the first time in 2009 and sentenced to three years in jail and three years of probation on a charge of �conducting anti-state propaganda� under Article 88 of the same Penal Code for claiming Vietnam�s Hoang Sa (Paracels) and Truong Sa (Spratlys), the two archipelagos also claimed by China, and demanding human rights improvement in the communist nation. Particularly, Thach, together with activists Vu Van Hung and Nguyen Xuan Nghia hang out a banner which states �Hoang Sa and Truong Sa belong to Vietnam� at Mai Dich Bridge in the capital city of Hanoi. His fellows were also jailed with lengthy sentences.

After leaving the army in 1975, Thach wrote a memoir named �Obsessive mass grave� to describe how communist soldiers assaulted innocent civil people while invading South Vietnam during the Vietnam War in which the communist soldiers with the support of China and the Soviet Unions as well as the communist bloc in Eastern Europe defeated South Vietnam backed by the US and its allies and unified the country in 1975. In 1976, he self-immolated to protest unfair policies of authorities in Nghe An province and Dien Chau district. Due to the act, his face was deformed.

The arrest of Thach was made three days after the communist regime rejected the appeal of human rights activist and environmental campaigner Nguyen Nang Tinh, upholding his sentence of 11 years in prison and five years of probation. Both Thach and Tinh are strongly protesting China�s invasions of Vietnam�s sovereignty in the East Sea.

Last week, China sent a diplomatic note to the UN Secretary-General to reaffirm its illegal claim of nearly entire East Sea, including the two archipelagos Paracels and Spratlys that Vietnam has controlled since the 18th century, and demand Vietnam to withdraw its crews and facilities in the resource-rich sea which is also very important for international trade.

Thach is the third activist being arrested within two weeks. On April 10, authorities in Can Tho arrested Ma Phung Ngoc Phu on allegation of �abusing democratic freedom� and eight days later, Dinh Thi Thu Thuy from Hau Giang province was detained and charged with �conducting anti-state propaganda,� both were arrested for their online posts which are considered harmful for the regime. The arrests were made after the call of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet to release prisoners of conscience in a bid to protect their health amid increasing COVID-19 pandemic.

On April 20, the Higher People�s Court in Hanoi upheld the sentence of 11 years in prison and five years of probation against human rights activist Nguyen Nang Tinh, who is also strongly protesting China�s expansionism in the East Sea.

Vietnam�s communist regime has intensified its crackdown on local dissent from late 2015 when the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam prepared for its 12th National Congress. More than 100 activists have been arrested and charged with controversial allegations in the National Security provisions of the Penal Code or the Criminal Code, many of them were sentenced to lengthy imprisonments of between five and 20 years.

BFD is the group that suffered the most from the ongoing persecution campaign of the communist regime. Its nine key members were sentenced to between seven and 15 years in prison, and only two of them, human rights attorney Nguyen Van Dai and his assistant Le Thu Ha were freed but forced to live in exile in Germany. It is unknown Thach�s latest arrest related to BFD. In 2017, when Vietnam�s police arrested six key members of the group, he was summoned to a police station and interrogated for days about his activities in it.

With the new arrests, Vietnam is holding at least 245 prisoners of conscience, according to Defend the Defenders�s statistics. More arrests are expected in the coming months as the ruling party is preparing for its 13th five-year congress slated in early 2021.

An appeals court in Vietnam on Monday upheld a lower court�s verdict in sentencing a Catholic music teacher to 11 years in jail for posting online criticisms of the one-party communist state and the government, the convicted man�s lawyer told RFA�s Vietnamese Service.

Nguyen Nang Tinh, 45, who teaches at a provincial arts and cultural college, was arrested in May 2019 after he was found writing and sharing what authorities deemed anti-state posts and videos on his Facebook account for seven years.

The posts included protests against Vietnam�s law on special economic zones that many citizens fear will favor Chinese investment in the country, and demonstrations against a Taiwanese company that dumped toxic waste into the ocean that caused an environmental disaster off the nation�s central coast in April 2016.

The Council of Judges of the People�s Court in north-central Vietnam�s Nghe An province upheld the 11-year sentence, plus five years of probation with restricted movement, that teacher Nguyen Nang Tinh was handed for the series of Facebook posts published between 2011 and 2018.

The presiding judge said the sentence served as a warning to those who wanted to capitalize on the rights to democracy and freedom by opposing the state, contradicting achievements in Vietnam�s progress with reform.

�At the appeals trial, Nguyen admitted to using Facebook accounts to share stories but affirmed that those stories were not aimed at opposing Vietnam�s government,� said defense attorney Dang Dinh Manh.

�I think this is an unfair sentence to give Nguyen, based on the defendant�s right to freedom of expression and on guarantees provided in the U.N.�s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that say everyone is entitled to express their own points of view,� he said.

Vietnam is a signatory to the multilateral treaty that commits its parties to respect the civil and political rights of individuals, including freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, electoral rights, and rights to due process and a fair trial.

Dang noted that in writing the online posts, Nguyen had exercised his right to free speech guaranteed under Vietnam�s constitution and had contributed to improving state policies.

Hunger strike to resume

The teacher had been on a hunger strike while in prison between March 13 and April 17, during which time he was not allowed to pray, read religious books, or meeting with Catholic priests, Dang said.

Thought the music teacher ended the hunger strike when he was informed about his appeals trial, he now will resume it because that process is over, the attorney said.

Dang said that he and another attorney, Nguyen Van Mieng, spent two days traveling by private car from Ho Chi Minh City to Nghe An to take part in the trial.

Nguyen�s wife, Nguyen Thi Tinh, could not attend her husband�s trial on account of lockdowns in Vietnam to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, which on Monday registered 268 confirmed cases but no fatalities.

On April 18, Vietnamese police arrested another social media user, Dinh Thi Thu Thuy, on charges of �smearing leaders,� state media reported.

The resident of Nga Bay in the southern province of Hau Giang has been charged under Section 117 of Vietnam�s Penal Code for making and spreading anti-state information and materials.

Dinh had created many Facebook accounts since 2018 to edit and share hundreds of posts and other materials opposing the state and smearing the Communist Party�s leaders, state media said.

Vietnam police reported in June 2018 that Dinh was also present at a demonstration outside Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica in Ho Chi Minh City to protest against proposed laws on the creation of special economic zones and on cybersecurity, the latter of which called for restrictions on the internet that would give the state greater surveillance and censorship powers.

Another Dong Tam arrest

Police also have arrested another resident of Hoanh village in the rural commune Dong Tam, where about 3,000 security forces conducted a violent early morning assault on residents during a land protest in early 2019 outside Vietnam�s capital Hanoi, an activist said.

On April 19, authorities picked up Nguyen Van Chung, son of Bui Thi Duc, a woman who is among 28 other villagers arrested during the bloody clash on Jan. 9, activist Trinh Ba Phuong told RFA on Monday.

The villagers apprehended following the incident have been charged with committing murder, illegally possessing weapons, and opposing officers on duty.

Nguyen was not arrested at his home in Dong Tam, but in Ho Chi Minh City, also called Saigon, where he was working as an assistant truck driver, Trinh said.

�Last night, he was arrested and cruelly beaten in Saigon,� Trinh said. �Those who witnessed the arrest questioned police about it, but they said that Nguyen was a dangerous person and had to be arrested.�

During a meeting with Hanoi authorities on the same day as the arrest, Vietnam�s Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc told officials to resolve the Dong Tam issue, consolidate the political system and develop new rural policies.

The Dong Tam clash was the latest flare-up in a long-running dispute over a military airport construction site about 25 miles south of Vietnam�s capital Hanoi.

A report drawn from witness accounts and released seven days after the Jan. 9 clash with security forces said that police had attacked first during the deadly incident that claimed the lives of the Dong Tam village chief and three police officers.

Though all land in Vietnam is ultimately held by the state, land confiscations have become a flashpoint with residents accusing the government of pushing small landholders aside in favor of lucrative real estate projects and of paying too little in compensation.