In a hearing in Hanoi, the court upheld the sentence of seven years in prison and three years of house arrest imposed on Cu Huy Ha Vu, 53, right, on 4 April for trying to topple the one-party communist government in Vietnam under article 88 of the Penal Code.
The conviction violated his right to free expression, Human Rights Watch says.
Verdict “known in advance”
Dr. Vu’s trial before the Hanoi People’s Court lasted less than six hours. Tran Quoc Thuan, one of four defense attorneys, said Vu’s team had initially been allowed to speak during the day-long trial, but that nearly two-thirds of their arguments had been “cut short” by court officials.
The court refused the defense team’s request for access to the documents on which the prosecution’s case was based. Judge Nguyen Huu Chinh expelled a defense lawyer from court for continuing to request the documents. When the judge rejected requests by the remaining defense lawyers for the documents, they walked out of the trial in protest.
“There was no evidence of violations – he did not commit any violations of the law. Regrettably, every lawyer was reminded – actually was threatened – by the Chairman of the Court, with something like a warning that we could be expelled from the court” Thuan said.
Vu ha
s been detained since November after twice attempting to sue Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung for abuse of power.
Priest sent back to prison
International human rights organizations (read here and here) urge Vietnam to immediately and unconditionally release the Roman Catholic priest Father Nguyen Van Ly, aged 64, left, who was sent back to prison on 25 July to serve a sentence for political dissent.
According to Amnesty International, Police arrested him in the central diocese of Hue before an ambulance transported him to prison. Authorities claim he was returned to prison for distributing anti-government leaflets during his parole to treat serious health problems.
He had been serving an eight-year prison term for “conducting propaganda against the state” when a stroke and a brain tumour led to his temporary release in March 2010.
Father Ly was sentenced to eight years in prison and five years of house arrest in 2007. The publisher of the secret dissident journal To Do Ngon Luan (Freedom and Democracy), he co-founded the online pro-democracy movement Bloc 8406 and has helped to set up other banned political groups in Viet Nam.
Nguyen Van Ly trial in 2007
Father Ly had been serving his jail term in Ba Sao prison, near Ha Noi in northern Viet Nam, when he suffered a stroke in November 2009. He did not receive a proper diagnosis or adequate medical treatment and was only transferred to a prison hospital in Ha Noi some two weeks later. Despite being partially paralyzed, he was returned to his prison cell on 11 December 2009.
On 15 March 2010, he was granted a one-year “temporary suspension” of his sentence to seek medical treatment for a brain tumour.
Since the 1970s, Father Ly has spent some 17 years in prison – amid harsh conditions and often in solitary confinement – for calling on Vietnamese authorities to respect freedom of expression and other human rights.
In September 2010, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention called for the immediate and unconditional release of Ly, who it said had been arbitrarily and illegally detained and denied access to legal counsel by the Vietnamese authorities.
Background
Vietnam has at least 486 political and religious prisoners. Dr. Vu and Father Nguyen Van Ly are among approximately 40 peaceful activists, writers, bloggers, and members of independent religious groups who have been sentenced to prison since January 2009. Another 38 peaceful dissidents arrested in 2010, and 2011, are in detention centers awaiting trial.
Peaceful dissent and the promotion of democracy are criminalized in Viet Nam, and these prisoners of conscience are being held in deplorable conditions, Amnesty International says.
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