Vietnam has arrested a prominent blogger and dissident for “anti-state activities” hours after its government held annual talks on human rights with the US, sources and international human rights groups said yesterday.
Pham Doan Trang, a writer who has published widely on human rights and alleged police brutality, was arrested in Ho Chi Minh City, charged with “making, storing, disseminating or propagandizing information, materials and products that aim to oppose the state of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,” Human Rights Watch said.
Despite sweeping economic reform and increasing openness to social change, the Communist Party of Vietnam tolerates little criticism and has stepped up its crackdown on advocates ahead of a key party congress in January next year.
Trang’s arrest just before midnight on Tuesday came hours after an annual US-Vietnam human rights dialogue concluded.
The US embassy in Hanoi could not provide immediate comment on her detention. The arrest was not reported in Vietnam’s state media.
Trang was in 2014 among several advocates apprehended by the authorities on their way to a meeting with then-US president Barack Obama during his landmark visit to Vietnam.
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International condemned Trang’s arrest and demanded her immediate release.
A source with direct knowledge of the matter said that Trang had been anticipating issues with the authorities just days before she was detained.
She had also shared a letter titled “Just in case I am imprisoned” dated May last year, which outlined democratic goals she strove to achieve.
She also asked that she be allowed to have her guitar in jail.
“I had a long chat with her on Sunday and she seemed very nervous,” said the source, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the case.
“When she arrived for our meeting she came carrying her large guitar on her back, explaining she felt they wouldn’t detain her if she was carrying that,” the source said.
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
Two daughters of an Argentine mountaineer who died on an icy peak 40 years ago have retrieved his backpack from the spot — finding camera film inside that allowed them a glimpse of some of his final experiences. Guillermo Vieiro was 44 when he died in 1985 — as did his climbing partner — while descending Argentina’s Tupungato lava dome, one of the highest peaks in the Americas. Last year, his backpack was spotted on a slope by mountaineer Gabriela Cavallaro, who examined it and contacted Vieiro’s daughters Guadalupe, 40, and Azul, 44. Last month, the three set out with four other guides
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
DISASTROUS VISIT: The talks in Saudi Arabia come after an altercation at the White House that led to the Ukrainian president leaving without signing a minerals deal Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was due to arrive in Saudi Arabia yesterday, a day ahead of crucial talks between Ukrainian and US officials on ending the war with Russia. Highly anticipated negotiations today on resolving the three-year conflict would see US and Ukrainian officials meet for the first time since Zelenskiy’s disastrous White House visit last month. Zelenskiy yesterday said that he would meet Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the nation’s de facto leader, after which his team “will stay for a meeting on Tuesday with the American team.” At the talks in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah, US
RSS