Two months after her arrest, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is launching a campaign for the release of Vietnamese journalist Pham Doan Trang with a petition and a video in which Vietnamese diaspora colleagues voice strong support for this symbol of the fight for the freedom to inform in Vietnam.
- Title: #FreePhamDoanTrang – RSF launches campaign for Vietnamese journalist’s release
- Publish Date: December 7, 2020
- Publisher: Reporters Without Borders (RSF)
Excerpt:
Arrested at her Ho Chi Minh City home on the night of 6 October, the co-founder of the Luat Kuoa and TheVietnamese information websites is facing a possible 20-year jail sentence on a charge of “anti-government propaganda.”
In the #FreePhamDoanTrang campaign video released by RSF, Vietnamese journalists, bloggers and friends now based in France, Germany, Taiwan and the United States take advantage of their exile to say what their compatriots still in Vietnam cannot say without risking long prison sentences.
It‘s with the aim of avoiding a long prison sentence for Pham Doan Trang by putting pressure on the Vietnamese government that RSF is also launching its petition for the immediate and unconditional release of this courageous journalist, who was awarded the RSF Press Freedom Prize for Impact in 2019.
Determination, energy and sacrifices
The RSF video includes interviews with people who are close to Trang, such as her friend Nguyen Ngoc Anh, now based in France. “I am very attached to Pham Doan Trang,” she says. “Firstly because we’re friends and went to the same secondary school, and secondly because I respect her determination, her energy and the enormous sacrifices she has made in order to write articles, publish books, and share her knowledge with as many people as possible.”
Trinh Huu Long, a journalist who joined Trang in founding the Legal Initiatives for Vietnam NGO and the Luat Khoa et TheVietnamese news sites, says: “Doan Trang is perhaps one of the most influential journalists, most effective activists and one of the bravest individuals that we have had in Vietnam’s contemporary history, from 1975 to the present-day.”
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