The last of three bloggers recently arrested in Vietnam and accused of national security violations said yesterday she has been released but ordered to give up her online writing.
Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, 31, said from the southern coastal city of Nha Trang that she was released from prison on Saturday, after about 10 days in custody.
“Yeah, I’m free,” Quynh said. “I’m OK.”
Two other bloggers, arrested a few days before Quynh, were released earlier.
Quynh said police told her that she must abandon her blog.
“I will do that,” she said.
Quynh had written about the sensitive topic of Vietnam-China relations, including a controversial bauxite mining project and two disputed South China Sea archipelagos, the Paracels and Spratlys, her mother said earlier.
The bauxite project in Vietnam’s Central Highlands triggered a rare public outcry, partly over security concerns.
The Paracels and Spratlys are controversial because Vietnam and China, both ideologically communist, are engaged in a boundary dispute over the islands.
Quynh said the main reason she and the two other bloggers were arrested was because of T-shirts calling for the cancelation of the bauxite project and declaring Vietnamese sovereignty over the archipelagos.
Quynh had worn one of the T-shirts in July, according to her mother, while a foreign diplomat who asked not to be named had said Quynh and the two other bloggers were planning to produce more of the shirts.
The US-based Committee to Protect Journalists had called for the bloggers’ release while Human Rights Watch said the arrests were “yet another effort by the Vietnamese government to silence government critics.”
The foreign ministry has accused unnamed organizations and individuals of intentionally exaggerating and distorting the issue.
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
Through a basement door in southeastern Turkey lies a sprawling underground city — perhaps the country’s largest — which one historian believes dates back to the ninth century BC. Archeologists stumbled upon the city-under-a-city “almost by chance” after an excavation of house cellars in Midyat, near the Syrian border, led to the discovery of a vast labyrinth of caves in 2020. Workers have already cleared more than 50 subterranean rooms, all connected by 120m of tunnel carved out of the rock. However, that is only a fraction of the site’s estimated 900,000m2 area, which would make it the largest underground city in Turkey’s
Soaring high across a gorge in the rugged Himalayas, a newly finished bridge would soon help India entrench control of disputed Kashmir and meet a rising strategic threat from China. The Chenab Rail Bridge, the highest of its kind in the world, has been hailed as a feat of engineering linking the restive Kashmir valley to the vast Indian plains by train for the first time. However, its completion has sparked concern among some in a territory with a long history of opposing Indian rule, already home to a permanent garrison of more than 500,000 soldiers. India’s military brass say the strategic benefits
‘RADICAL LEFT LUNATIC’: Trump earlier criticized Kamala Harris, his new opponent, calling her ‘the ultra-liberal driving force behind every single Biden catastrophe’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called on voters to defend the country’s democracy as he explained his decision to drop his bid for re-election and throw his support behind US Vice President Kamala Harris. As “the defense of democracy is more important than any title,” Biden said that he was stepping aside to deliver an implicit repudiation of former US president Donald Trump in his first public address since his announcement on Sunday that he would not be the Democratic candidate. He did not name Trump, whom he has called an existential threat to democracy. “Nothing, nothing can come in the