{"id":90430,"date":"2021-03-23T21:36:23","date_gmt":"2021-03-23T21:36:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=177736"},"modified":"2021-03-23T21:36:23","modified_gmt":"2021-03-23T21:36:23","slug":"vietnamese-doctor-charged-with-harming-peoples-trust-in-the-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/03\/23\/vietnamese-doctor-charged-with-harming-peoples-trust-in-the-party\/","title":{"rendered":"Vietnamese Doctor Charged With \u2018Harming People\u2019s Trust in the Party\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Police in north-central Vietnam\u2019s Nghe An province arrested the owner of a private clinic on Monday, accusing the physician of undermining people\u2019s trust in the Communist Party in a series of articles posted on social media, state media sources said.<\/p>\n

Nguyen Duy Huong, a 34-year-old medical doctor and owner of the Duy Nhi clinic in the Yen Thanh district\u2019s Vienh Tanh commune, was charged under Article 117 of the Criminal Code with \u201ccreating, storing, or disseminating information and documents against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.\u201d<\/p>\n

Security services said that articles posted since 2018 on Huong\u2019s Facebook page included a Feb. 20, 2021 story called \u201cWhy Should We Criticize Nguyen Phu Trong,\u201d which criticized the ruling Communist Party general secretary, now serving his third term in office, for turning the party into \u201ca swamp.\u201d<\/p>\n

Huong had written in the same article that he was willing to sacrifice even his family and job in order to change the Party and the country, according to a report in the Ministry of Public Security\u2019s official newspaper.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have devoted my life to this [cause],\u201d Huong wrote, quoted in the Ministry paper. \u201cReforms must be carried out so that our people can really be their own masters, the party can be cleaned up, and the country can move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Huong\u2019s writings had undermined the Vietnamese people\u2019s trust in their ruling party and the socialist regime and had harmed political and ideological unity in the country, and should therefore be \u201chandled strictly,\u201d the ministry paper said.<\/p>\n

Appeals trial scheduled<\/strong><\/p>\n

Separately, the appeals trial for political dissident Tran Duc Thach, who was sentenced by a Nghe An court to 12 years in prison on charges of subversion on Dec. 12, 2020, will be held on Wednesday, his defense attorney said.<\/p>\n

Thach had heard only the day before that the trial would be held, attorney Ha Huy Son told RFA on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI met with Thach this afternoon. His health is worse now than it was at the first trial, but he\u2019s in good spirits and will present his points of view at tomorrow\u2019s trial,\u201d Son said, adding, \u201cAlthough he only learned about the trial today, he\u2019s ready for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have some hope, but not much, because not many changes are made at appeals trials in cases related to national security except when there are new developments,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Thach, a co-founder of Vietnam\u2019s online Brotherhood for Democracy, was arrested on April 23, 2020 and charged with \u201cactivities aimed at overthrowing the People\u2019s Government\u201d under Article 109 of Vietnam\u2019s Criminal Code for Facebook postings exposing government corruption and human rights abuses.<\/p>\n

The Brotherhood for Democracy is not recognized by the Vietnamese government, and many of its members have been imprisoned since its founding in 2013.<\/p>\n

Activist for human rights<\/strong><\/p>\n

Born in 1952 in Nghe An, Thach served with North Vietnamese forces during the Vietnam War and was afterward an activist for human rights and democracy in Vietnam for many years.<\/p>\n

In his book A Haunting Collective Grave<\/em>, he tells the story of how North Vietnamese soldiers killed hundreds of innocents at Tan Lap commune in Dong Nai province\u2019s Xuan Loc district during the final campaign of the war that ended with communist forces\u2019 victory on April 30, 1975.<\/p>\n

Thach was earlier sentenced to three years in jail in October 2009 for \u201cconducting propaganda against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam\u201d along with fellow dissidents Vu Van Hung and Pham Van Troi.<\/p>\n

Vietnam, with a population of 92 million people, has been consistently rated \u201cnot free\u201d in the areas of internet and press freedom by Freedom House, a U.S.-based watchdog group.<\/p>\n

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranked Vietnam 175 out of 180 in its 2020 World Press Freedom Index. About 25 journalists and bloggers are being held in Vietnam\u2019s jails, \u201cwhere mistreatment is common,\u201d the Paris-based watchdog group said.<\/p>\n

Vietnam\u2019s already low tolerance of dissent deteriorated sharply last year with a spate of arrests of independent journalists, publishers, and Facebook personalities as authorities continued to stifle critics in the run-up to the ruling Communist Party congress in January.<\/p>\n

Reported by RFA\u2019s Vietnamese Service. Translated by Chau Vu. Written in English by Richard Finney.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Police in north-central Vietnam\u2019s Nghe An province arrested the owner of a private clinic on Monday, accusing the physician of undermining people\u2019s trust in the Communist Party in\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90430"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90430"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90431,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90430\/revisions\/90431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}