Despite the robust export-led economy, Vietnam is performing very dismally in safeguarding the people’s basic human rights including press freedom and land rights. Prominent journalist and human rights defender Pham Doan Trang is one of the many whom the CPV has imprisoned to deliberately cleanse Vietnam’s public space of citizens it perceives as troublemakers.
- Title: Vietnam’s path forward on COVID-19 and corruption
- Publish Date: January 25, 2022
- Publisher: East Asia Forum
Excerpt:
The regime continues to cleanse Vietnam’s public space of citizens it perceives as troublemakers. Journalist Pham Doan Trang, sentenced in December to nine years in prison, was one of many convicted in 2021 of ‘conducting propaganda against the state’. In parallel, harsh sentences meted out to farmers accused of mounting an insurrection put land rights activists on notice that resistance to expropriations is futile.
In December, after exposes that made headlines abroad, Facebook vowed to cease enabling regime efforts to suppress online criticism by Vietnamese bloggers. Hanoi has in the past brought foreign social media to heel simply by squeezing their local advertising revenues.
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