Posts Tagged ‘Vietnam’
August 23rd, 2011
Eight anti-China demonstrators in Hanoi who ignored government orders to end a series of protests
remain in custody for investigation into causing public disorder. They were among the
47 detained at the rally on Sunday — the tenth of its kind in the
Vietnamese capital — in which protesters objected to China’s supposed invasion of South China Sea waters, where the two nations have a longstanding sovereignty dispute.
August 22nd, 2011
Hackers
launched a sustained attack against pro-democracy website
Viet Tan on 13 August in a denial-of-service (DDoS) operation. Of the 77,000 IP addresses employed, 73 per cent originated from
Vietnam. The Hanoi government’s firewall on www.viettan.org was lifted so that the network relying on computers from the country could take down the site. Viet Tan has been constantly blocked by Vietnamese censors, with web users in the country requiring proxies or other circumvention tools to access the site.
August 10th, 2011
A
Vietnamese court today
sentenced French-Vietnamese activist Pham Minh Hoang to three years in prison on subversion charges for “carrying out activities aimed at overthrowing the people’s administration.” Authorities say he posted several anti-government articles online, and had ties to Viet Tan, a pro-democracy group that is banned in Vietnam. He also faces three years of house arrest following the end of his prison term.
August 5th, 2011
Catholic blogger Paulus Le Son was
arrested in Hanoi yesterday during a major police operation targeting around 10 Catholics. Reports suggest Son’s arrest, his second this year, is linked to his attempts to cover court proceedings against cyber-dissident
Cu Huy Ha Vu, who is currently appealing against his seven-year jail term for disseminating anti-government propaganda, having advocated a multi-party system.
Vietnam was ranked 165th out of 178 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ 2010
press freedom index.
April 21st, 2011
Vietnamese authorities have dropped charges against a female blogger who was detained for :infringing on the interests of the state”. She was arrested for
defamation after describing a senior official’s son as a womanizer. Le Nguyen Huong Tra, who blogged under the pseudonym Co Gai Do Long
, was arrested last October and released on bail this January. Authorities have
declared her actions to be “less serious” than first thought.
April 6th, 2011
A lawyer has been
sentenced to seven years in prison and a further three years’ house arrest. Cu Huy Ha Vu’s trial lasted for one day, during it one of his
lawyers was ejected and another three walking out in protest. The court convicted him of defaming
Vietnam and producing propaganda against the state. Vu has called for an end to the country’s one-party system and has twice tried to sue the Vietnamese prime minister. He is the son of a famous Vietnamese poet who was a revolutionary leader in the Ho Chi Minh government.
March 8th, 2011
Two prominent pro-democracy cyber activists were last week
detained for calling for Middle East style demonstrations in Vietnam.
Nguyen Dan Que who is 69, and Nguyen Van Ly who suffers from brain tumour, were detained after criticising the government and asking for peaceful protests. They have been released but are being closely monitored by the authorities who will decide later this month on how to deal with them. Presently, there are 16 cyber activists in detention in Vietnam.
February 28th, 2011
A new decree that places serious restrictions on the media became
effective on 25 February. The new decree forces media outlets to reveal their sources, with a fine of $1,000 for not revealing them. It also includes a fine of $2,000 for publishing any unauthorised information. The decree further allows for the government to censor any news due to national security reasons.
