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Vietnam court jails critical blogger for 12 years: Lawyer

Duong Van Thai regularly posted YouTube livestreams accusing Vietnam's authoritarian government of corruption

Vietnam court jails critical blogger for 12 years: Lawyer

Vietnamese policemen stand guard outside a courtroom in Hanoi, Vietnam. Picture taken January 9, 2018.

Reuters

A court in communist Vietnam on Wednesday sentenced a blogger who criticised the government to 12 years in jail on charges of publishing anti-state information, his lawyer said, after a secret trial.

Duong Van Thai regularly posted YouTube livestreams that criticised Vietnam's authoritarian government, accusing it of corruption.

He resurfaced in Vietnamese custody last year after disappearing from Thailand where he had fled and been granted refugee status. Rights groups accused the Vietnamese authorities of kidnapping him.

"The trial has just ended. Thai was given 12 years in jail and three years probation," his lawyer Le Luan told AFP.

The Hanoi court, which sat in secret, convicted Thai under article 117 of the criminal code, which outlaws "making, storing, disseminating or propagating information... aimed at opposing the state of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam".

State media said last year that he ran a Facebook group which published "distorted information" about the private lives of Vietnamese leaders.

All media in one-party Vietnam is state-run and independent bloggers are banned.

The country ranks 174th out of 180 countries in the Reporters Without Borders campaign group's World Press Freedom Index.

State media reported that Thai was detained for "illegally entering" the country through an unofficial border crossing close to Laos on April 14 last year.

But his friends and rights campaigners said Thai would never have returned voluntarily to Vietnam, which he fled in 2019 to avoid the authorities.

Another blogger was jailed for 10 years in 2020 after disappearing from Thailand and re-emerging in Vietnamese custody in unexplained circumstances.

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