Declan,
Happy new year. Hope all is well by you.
I'm forwarding a clip about another online Vietnamese journalist sent to jail in VN.
Please remove my e-address if you decide to post this bit of news. Thanks.
Best wishes. Tuyet
--- A former Vietnamese journalist who used the internet to criticise the government has been jailed for seven years, court officials said. Nguyen Vu Binh, was found guilty on espionage charges in a trial that lasted less than three hours. He was arrested in 2002, after he wrote articles criticising a border agreement between China and Viet Nam. Human rights groups have condemned the trial, which foreign journalists and diplomats were barred from attending. In court, Mr. Binh admitted he had contacts with foreign organisations but denying doing anything wrong, a court official told The Associated Press news agency. Mr Binh worked for nearly a decade on the Communist Party's official journal before resigning in 2001. He went on to write several articles published on the internet which called for political reform in Vietnam. The China-Viet Nam land pact he criticised was called Some Thoughts on the China-Viet Nam Border Agreement. The agreement, signed in December 1999 more than 20 years after China and Vietnam fought a bloody border war, has been roundly criticised by many Vietnamese intellectuals. Despite Viet Nam's constitutional guarantees of a free press, in reality dissidents take considerable risks if they speak out.
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3358533.stm - bbc _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
