Multi-awarded journalist and human rights defender Pham Doan Trang gets a harsh conviction for writing “anti-state propaganda.” Her lawyer said that she refused to “confess” for crimes that she believes she did not commit.
Pham Doan Trang is known for her peaceful means to advocate her causes.
- Title: Vietnamese journalist Pham Doan Trang sentenced to nine years in prison
- Publish Date: December 15, 2021
- Publisher: Le Monde News
Excerpt:
Note: Original texts in French.
Rewarded abroad by several prizes crowning her fight for freedom of expression, the writer and blogger was accused of “anti-state propaganda” and statements “prejudicial” to social stability.
Nine years in prison for “crimes” of writing and “anti-state propaganda” : this is the harsh sentence to which the famous Vietnamese journalist and blogger Pham Doan Trang was sentenced on Tuesday, December 14. Aged 43, the young woman was accused by the Hanoi regime of “defaming the government of Vietnam and inventing false news” .
The fact of having granted interviews in the past to the BBC and to Radio Free Asia, a media financed by the United States Congress, probably aggravated his case: whereas a sentence of seven to eight years had been requested against her, the judges imposed an even heavier sentence on the journalist, on the pretext that her statements were “prejudicial” to the stability of Vietnamese society.
The blogger refused to plead guilty
Arrested in October 2020 after being placed under house arrest for many months in her Hanoi residence, the blogger refused to plead guilty and will no doubt appeal. Her lawyer, Ngo Anh Tuan, wrote on her Facebook page on Monday that Trang told her on October 19, during her first meeting with one of her defenders since her incarceration, that she had always refused to “confess” to her. during the dozen interrogations that were inflicted on him.
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