Vietnamese court sentences blogger to 12 years for anti-state propaganda

A court in Hanoi sentenced a blogger who went missing from Thailand last year and resurfaced in Vietnamese police custody to 12 years in prison and three years probation for anti-state propaganda, a person familiar with the situation told Radio Free Asia.

Duong Van Thai, 42, was found guilty of “making, storing, disseminating or propagating information, documents, and items aimed at opposing the Socialist Republic of Vietnam” under Article 117 of Vietnam’s penal code.

Thai’s family wasn’t allowed to attend the trial at the Hanoi People’s Court, a person with knowledge of the issue told RFA, a news service affiliated with BenarNews, but Thai was represented in court by two lawyers, Le Dinh Viet and Le Van Luan.

The trial was held behind closed doors because it involved many state officials who are alleged to have provided information to Thai, according to the person who didn’t want to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Thai fled to Thailand in 2019 because he feared political persecution for his posts and videos on Facebook and YouTube that criticized his government and leaders of the Communist Party. He had been granted refugee status by the United Nations refugee agency’s office in Bangkok.

Thailand does not recognize the U.N. status because it has not ratified a 1951 convention that outlines the legal protection, rights and assistance a refugee is entitled to receive. However, Thai was interviewed to resettle in a third country just before his disappearance on April 13, 2023, near his rented home in central Thailand’s Pathum Thani province.

Closed-circuit video from his neighborhood captured what many believe to be Thai’s panicked shrieks from just off-camera.

“The abduction of Duong Van Thai shows the Vietnamese government’s true face as a rogue authoritarian regime prepared to violate all international norms in order to crack down on its critics abroad,” said Phil Robertson, director of Bangkok-based consultancy Asia Human Rights and Labor Advocates.

“He is a refugee, not a criminal, and the Vietnamese government defied every aspect of international human rights law, including laws to protect refugees from refoulement, by kidnapping him from Thailand. The Vietnamese government also flagrantly violated Thai sovereignty by launching such a covert plot on Thai soil.”

Vietnam has neither confirmed nor denied that Thai was abducted and taken back to Vietnam, but shortly after his disappearance, authorities announced that they had apprehended him when he attempted to sneak into the country illegally.

Thai’s case has drawn similarities to that of RFA blogger Truong Duy Nhat, who applied for political asylum in Thailand but disappeared in 2019. He later resurfaced in Vietnam and was sentenced to 10 years in prison for “abusing position and power while on duty.”

Campaign group PEN America called on the Vietnamese government to release Thai immediately.

“Thai’s work exposing corruption is not a crime – it’s a critical exercise of free expression, essential to accountable governance,” it wrote on X.

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Charges against Thai were announced in mid-2023.

“Duong Van Thai is a victim of Hanoi’s policy mindset that ‘might makes right’ and they can do whatever they want to Vietnamese people, wherever they are in the world and no matter what their status or citizenship,” said Robertson, who called on the international community to investigate and sanction those behind what he described as “transnational repression.”

“There are no words to adequately describe the Vietnamese government’s despicable and illegal act to abduct Duong Van Thai, and now Hanoi is further compounding that violation by sentencing him to a long prison sentence.”