Vietnam has jailed a prominent opposition blogger for 15 months, accusing him of "abusing democratic freedoms" with his blog posts against the government.
Pham Viet Dao, 62, was arrested in June 2013 for posting several articles against Vietnam's leaders. The authorities charged Dao, a former official at the Ministry of Culture and member of the Vietnam Writers Association, with a crime of "abusing democratic freedoms to infringe on the interests of the State." Judge Ngo Tu Hoc found him guilty in a two-hour-trial celebrated in Hanoi on Wednesday, according to multiple news reports.
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"The defendant's acts are dangerous to the society, causing anxiety among the public and reducing people's trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and the state," said Hoc, according to the Associated Press.
Dao's ruling comes just two weeks after another opposition blogger and journalist, Truong Duy Nhat, was sentenced to two years in prison on the same charge.
Madeline Earp, a researcher who specializes in Asian countries at the human rights advocacy group Freedom House, noted that the use of Article 258 of the penal code, which criminalizes the abuse of "democratic freedoms to infringe on the interests of the State" is somewhat new.
"They're actually broadening the range of legal measures that have become available to them to shut down dissent," she told Mashable.
These convictions show Vietnam is concerned about its citizens using the Internet to break the government's monopoly on information.
"Despite all of these measures the Internet has continued to provide a really significant source of information for people in Vietnam," she said. "These bloggers are filling the information gap created by government censorship."
Other human rights and Internet freedom organizations condemned Dao's sentence as an abuse of power and a dangerous precedent against freedom of speech.
"Pham Viet Dao’s only crime has been to use the Internet to voice opinions shared by many Vietnamese, outside and inside government," Brad Adams, the Asia director of Human Rights Watch, said in a statement on Tuesday.
In Vietnam, 34 bloggers are currently behind bars, according to Reporter Without Borders. That's the highest number in Asia — only second to China.
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