An appeals courtroom in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh Metropolis on Friday upheld harsh jail phrases handed down final yr to 4 activists convicted of planning protests on Vietnam’s Nationwide Day on Sept. 2, 2018.
Arrested in September 2018, the 4 have been a part of a gaggle of eight named by police as members of the Hien Phap (Structure) Group, a community of activists shaped on June 16, 2017 to name for the rights to freedom of speech and meeting promised below Article 25 of Vietnam’s Structure.
All eight have been convicted of “disturbing safety” below Article 118 of Vietnam’s 2015 Penal Code, and have been sentenced on July 31, 2020 to jail phrases starting from two years and 6 months to eight years in a trial from which relations have been barred.
In a one-day listening to on Friday, judges upheld the sentences given by the decrease courtroom to Nguyen Thi Ngoc Hanh, sentenced to eight years in jail; Ngo Van Dung and Le Quy Loc, sentenced to 5 years in jail every; and Ho Dinh Cuong, sentenced to 4 years and 6 months.
All 4 have been then returned to jail to serve their full phrases, together with two to a few years on probation following their launch.
“The 4 members of the Structure Group once more declared their innocence in courtroom right now, saying that they had solely engaged in protests based on their rights,” protection legal professional Nguyen Van Mieng informed RFA by telephone following the trial.
They mentioned their group had known as for protests solely to oppose a brand new regulation granting concessions of land in Vietnam to Chinese language companies, “and to not disrupt social order and safety or act towards the pursuits of the state,” Mieng mentioned.
The courtroom rejected the group’s arguments, although, saying that their objective had been to disturb social order and safety, leaving them open to conviction below Article 118 of Vietnam’s Penal Code.
Members of the family watch by way of TV
Huynh Thi Kim Nga, the spouse of defendant Ngo Van Dung, informed RFA on Friday that she and different relations had been allowed to observe the day’s courtroom proceedings by way of tv monitor in a separate room.
“Issues have been made simpler for us than that they had been on the final trial, and we later discovered that the rationale for this was that the U.S. Consul Normal in Ho Chi Minh Metropolis was current within the courtroom,” she mentioned.
“My husband mentioned in courtroom this morning that whether or not he was lastly sentenced to 5, 10, and even 100 years in jail, he nonetheless affirmed his innocence of the cost of inflicting hurt to the nation, and that every little thing he did was permitted below Article 25 of Vietnam’s Structure,” she mentioned.
The Hien Phap Group had beforehand performed a significant function in calling for widespread protests that rocked Vietnamese cities in June 2018 in opposition to a proposed cybersecurity regulation and the regulation granting concessions of land to Chinese language companies, and lots of of its members at the moment are serving lengthy phrases in jail.
Vietnam’s already low tolerance of dissent deteriorated sharply final yr with a spate of arrests of unbiased journalists, publishers, and Fb personalities as authorities continued to stifle critics within the run-up to the ruling Communist Social gathering congress in January.
In line with the rights group Defend the Defenders, Hanoi is presently detaining at the very least 238 prisoners of conscience.
Reported by RFA’s Vietnamese Service. Translated by Huy Le. Written in English by Richard Finney.