Calls mounted yesterday for the release of a prominent lawyer in Vietnam, with Human Rights Watch saying his arrest would have a “chilling effect” on the country’s legal profession.
The arrest of Le Cong Dinh at the weekend is “yet another setback” for the rule of law in Vietnam, said Brad Adams, Asia director for the US-based rights watchdog.
Dinh, 40, was arrested by security forces on Saturday for “collusion with foreign forces” to carry out acts of opposition against the government, state radio reported.
He is accused of violating Article 88 of Vietnam’s criminal code, which prohibits distributing information harmful to the government. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
“By arresting one of the country’s most prominent human rights lawyers, other lawyers will think twice before taking up politically sensitive cases,” Adams said yesterday. “This will have a chilling effect on Vietnam’s legal profession.”
Vietnamese lawyers, he added, should be able to carry out their work without fear of harassment, intimidation or arrest — an internationally recognized right reflected in agreements that Vietnam has signed.
Global press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said Dinh had written many pro-democracy articles and called for his immediate release.
“We fear that this arrest is aimed at punishing a respected man who promotes the cause of the rule of law in Vietnam,” the Paris-based group said in a statement late on Monday.
Meanwhile, the US embassy in Vietnam expressed deep concern yesterday about the arrest and issued a statement calling for Dinh’s immediate release.
“No individual should be arrested for expressing the right to free speech, and no lawyer should be punished because of the individuals they choose to counsel,” the statement said.
According to accounts in Communist Vietnam’s state-controlled media, authorities believe Dinh “colluded with domestic and foreign reactionaries” bent on “sabotaging” the state and overthrowing the government.
Dinh, one of Vietnam’s most high-profile attorneys, came to prominence several years ago when he defended Vietnamese catfish farmers in a trade dispute with US fishermen. He also represented two human rights attorneys, Nguyen Van Dai and Le Thi Cong Nhan, who were jailed by the government in 2007 for allegedly spreading anti-government propaganda.
In his defense of Dai and Nhan, he made a strikingly direct plea for free expression, highly unusual in a country where the government tightly controls public speech. Dinh has argued it is wrong to accuse those who promote free speech of undermining the state.
The Communist Party newspaper Nhan Dan said Dinh used the trial to “take advantage” of his work as a defense lawyer and “propagandize against the regime and distort Vietnam’s constitution and laws.”
Authorities also accused Dinh of exploiting a national debate over an expansion of bauxite mining in Vietnam’s Central Highlands to “incite people against the Communist Party and the government,” the official Vietnam News Agency reported.
Dinh opposed the expansion, which includes a processing plant being built by a Chinese company. The plans have stirred an unusual level of debate in Vietnam, where government policies are rarely challenged.
Opponents of the plans say they would cause grave environmental damage. They also say Vietnam should not allow a Chinese company into the Central Highlands because of its strategic location along the border with Cambodia.
Suspicions of China are deep in Vietnam, which has fought several wars against its northern neighbor, most recently in 1979.
Dinh studied law at Tulane University in New Orleans for two years on a Fulbright scholarship.
His arrest came just days after Vietnam hosted the 17th Congress of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, a UN affiliated group which supports the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
SPIRITUAL COUPLE: Martha Louise has said she can talk with angels, while her husband, Durek Verrett, claims that he communicates with a broad range of spirits Social media influencers, reality stars and TV personalities were among the guests as the Norwegian king’s eldest child, Princess Martha Louise, married a self-professed US shaman on Saturday in a wedding ceremony following three days of festivities. The 52-year-old Martha Louise and Durek Verrett, who claims to be a sixth-generation shaman from California, tied the knot in the picturesque small town of Geiranger, one of Norway’s major tourist attractions located on a fjord with stunning views. Following festivities that started on Thursday, the actual wedding ceremony took place in a large white tent set up on a lush lawn. Guests
Four days after last scanning in for work, a 60-year-old office worker in Arizona was found dead in a cubicle at her workplace, having never left the building during that time, authorities said. Denise Prudhomme, who worked at a Wells Fargo corporate office, was found dead in a third-floor cubicle on Aug. 20, Tempe police said. She had last scanned into the building on Aug. 16 at 7am, police said. There was no indication she scanned out of the building after that. Prudhomme worked in an underpopulated area of the building. Her cause of death had not been determined, but police said the preliminary
‘DISCONNECTED’: Politics is one factor driving news avoidance, a professor said, adding that people who do not trust the government are more likely to tune it out Hannah Wong cried when the Hong Kong government effectively forced the territory’s Apple Daily and Stand News out of business three years ago. Among the last news firms in the territory willing to criticize the government openly, many saw their end as a sign that the old Hong Kong was gone for good. Today, the 35-year-old makeup artist says she has gone from reading the news every day to reducing her intake drastically to protect herself from despair. Four years into a crackdown on dissent that has swept up democracy-leaning journalists, rights advocates and politicians in the territory, a lot of people
Thailand has netted more than 1.3 million kilograms of highly destructive blackchin tilapia fish, the government said yesterday, as it battles to stamp out the invasive species. Shoals of blackchin tilapia, which can produce up to 500 young at a time, have been found in 19 provinces, damaging ecosystems in rivers, swamps and canals by preying on small fish, shrimp and snail larvae. As well as the ecological impact, the government is worried about the effect on the kingdom’s crucial fish-farming industry. Fishing authorities caught 1,332,000kg of blackchin tilapia from February to Wednesday last week, said Nattacha Boonchaiinsawat, vice president of a parliamentary