The independent journalist Huy Duc was sentenced by a court in Vietnam to two and a half years in prison for publishing on Facebook texts criticizing the government – the Vietnamese state media donated. According to the AFP agency, the indictment indicated that his texts had a “negative impact on order and security” in the country.
The Vietnamese Press Agency (VNA) announced that the 63-year-old Truong Huy San, who writes under the pseudonym Huy Duc, was convicted by the court in Hanoi for “abuse of democratic freedoms”, whose goal was to harm the state “by publishing 13 articles on Facebook” in 2015-2024. Shortly before the arrest in June 2024, Huy Duc attacked on the network of the President of Vietnam, the lama, as well as his predecessor Nguyen Phu Trong.
“These articles have a large number of interactions, comments and shares, which causes a negative impact on social order and security,” the indictment proclaimed according to state media, as quoted by the AFP agency.
According to the independent portal of The Vietnamese, during the investigation Huy Duc confessed to the authorship and publishing the content listed in the indictment, but he denied that he intended to oppose the ruling communist party of Vietnam or state authorities.
Huy DucAFP/East News
Huy Duc is one of the most influential Vietnamese political commentators
Huy Duc is a former lieutenant of the Vietnamese army. In 2009 he was released from the State Information Station for criticizing the now defunct Soviet Union, which was an ally of communist Vietnam. In 2012, as part of a scholarship, the journalist spent a year at Harvard University. During this stay, he published the book “The Winning Side”, describing his life in Vietnam after the end of the war with USA.
Having over 350,000 followers on Facebook, Huy Duc is one of the most influential Vietnamese political commentators on this platform.
In the opinion of the organization, reporters without borders (RSF) his texts constitute “an invaluable source of information, enabling the Vietnamese society access to uncensored by the regime in Hanoi.” Vietnam is a single -party state, where there is no free media and all manifestations of government criticism are strictly suppressed.
As the AFP agency points out, in December in Vietnam new provisions were adopted ordering social networking platforms such as Facebook and Tiktok verification of user identity and transfer of data to the authorities.
Source of the main photo: AFP/East News