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  • Pham Doan Trang in Taz: Nine years in prison for journalist

    Taz talks about press freedom in Vietnam as multi-awarded journalist and human rights defender Pham Doan Trang gets jail term.

    Excerpt:

    Prominent human rights activist and journalist Pham Doan Trang has been sentenced to nine years in prison by a court in Vietnam. The judiciary had accused the author, who has won European human rights awards, of “propaganda against the state”. The verdict was announced on Tuesday.

    Despite decades of openness to foreign investment, the communist country strictly censors the domestic media and is intolerant of those who think differently. Vietnam ranks 175th out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ press freedom rankings.

    The 43-year-old was arrested in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) in October 2020 and taken to the capital Hanoi. According to human rights groups, she was held in pre-trial detention for more than a year without access to a lawyer.

    She has written countless articles, blogs and books on politics, social justice and human rights. She is also the founder of the online magazine Luât Khoa and editor at the online magazine The Vietnamese.

    Convicted in Vietnam, awarded several times abroad

    On Monday, the human rights organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) called for all criminal charges against Trang to be dropped and for her immediate release. “The trial against her and the abusive treatment of her violate the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Vietnam ratified in 1982,” it said in a statement.

    The Czech human rights organization People in Need Trang had already awarded the “Homo Homini Prize” in 2017, and in 2019 it received the “Press Freedom Award” from Reporters Without Borders in Berlin for particularly effective journalism.

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  • Pham Doan Trang in Taz: Preis für vietnamesische Journalistin Pham Doan Trang in Berlin geehrt

    Pham Doan Trang, one of Vietnam’s famous dissident, received her Press Freedom Award from Reporters Without Borders via a recorded video message as the journalist is currently in hiding.  Vietnam is notorious for keeping a tight grip on press freedom and expression.

    Excerpt:

    Note:  Original texts in German.

    She can enjoy Vietnamese river landscapes. She likes to pick up the guitar and sing along. But the law graduate Pham Doan Trang sees her profession as journalism. On Thursday, Reporters Without Borders honored the 41-year-old Vietnamese with the prestigious Press Freedom Awards in the Sustainable Journalism category.

    For the award ceremony in the Kammerspiele in Berlin, she sent a video message, a greeting from a country without freedom of the press, as she says. She couldn’t travel there herself because Trang lives underground in Vietnam without a valid passport. If she went home, she would risk arrest. “But journalism is not a crime,” she warns in her video message.

    She began her journalistic career at the semi-public newspaper Vietnam Express . She has published nine books, including a bestseller: in 2008 her volume of portraits of gay and lesbian people was published. The subject of homosexuality was a taboo subject in Vietnam for a long time, and the volume of portraits helped to raise public opinion about it.

    Understandable language, wide reach

    In her journalistic work, Trang advocates for the civil rights of her fellow human beings and encourages them to claim such rights. She writes in an easy-to-understand language, allowing her to reach many readers on the internet.

    Her colleague Trinh Huu Long, who lives in Taiwan, accepted the award for Pham Doan Trang. “She is the main journalistic voice within Vietnam criticizing the government and has great empathy for oppressed people. Her mission is independent journalistic information,” says the man who helps her from Taiwan to find publishers for her books and articles. In Vietnam, the press is state-controlled.

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