A Vietnamese court sentenced a journalist to seven years in prison on Tuesday for writing on issues such as corruption, land rights, and the environment, according to his sister, making him the latest government critic to be jailed.
Nguyen Vu Binh, a political activist who spent nearly five years in prison in the early 2000s, was accused of spreading anti-government propaganda.
Communist Vietnam has no free media and strictly controls all forms of dissent. According to the press freedom campaign group Reporters Without Borders (RSF), it is the third largest jailer of journalists in the world.
“He was given seven years in jail,” his sister Nguyen Thi Phong told AFP following the trial in Hanoi.
“At the trial, he told the court he was innocent. He said he did not call on anyone to act against the state. He said he was exercising his right to freedom of speech.”
Analysts say authorities in Vietnam have escalated a crackdown on dissent in recent years.
“Nguyen Vu Binh has tirelessly campaigned for human rights and democracy in Vietnam,” Patricia Gossman, associate Asia director at Human Rights Watch (HRW), said ahead of the verdict.
“His peaceful expression of political dissent is not a crime,” Gossman added.
Binh, 55, was detained in late February on the same day as Nguyen Chi Tuyen, a prominent YouTuber and campaigner who spoke out against pollution and land rights.
Tuyen was sentenced to five years in prison last month after being found guilty of “making, storing, and disseminating information, documents, and materials against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam”.
Binh had spent a decade as a journalist for the official Communist Party of Vietnam publication.
He quit in late 2000 and attempted to establish an independent political party.
He was imprisoned from late 2003 to June 2007 for espionage.
Binh began blogging for Radio Free Asia shortly after his release, covering topics such as corruption, land rights, the environment, and Vietnam’s relations with China and the US.
Binh earned the coveted Hellman/Hammett prize for victims of political persecution in 2002 and 2007.
According to Human Rights Watch, Vietnamese authorities convicted and punished at least seven human rights activists in August and September on similar charges.
According to The 88 Project, a human rights organisation concentrating on Vietnam, there are now 175 activists in jail in the country.
The country is ranked 174th out of 180 in RSF’s world press freedom index.
In recent years, the government has also launched a broader anti-corruption campaign, leading to the dismissal or imprisonment of countless officials and business figures.