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