Vietnam punishes criticism of government response to COVID-19 – Radio Free Asia

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Vietnamese authorities arrested a Facebook user for posting slight criticisms of government policies relating to COVID-19, while a university fired a lecturer after a student shared his comments blaming the response from Hanoi to the pandemic on the social media platform.

The Tien Giang People’s Procuratorate on Tuesday announced that it would prosecute 33-year-old Tran Hoang Huan for fabricating, storing and disseminating or spreading information or documents against the state under article 117 of the Criminal Code, according to article 117. state media.

Huan, a resident of My Tho town in the far south of Tien Giang Province, had used a Facebook account under the name Huan Tran to post material against the Vietnamese Communist Party and the state 186 times.

His Facebook account remains active and many of his recent posts oppose the use of Chinese-made COVID-19 vaccines, which many Vietnamese oppose due to their perceived low quality and long-standing animosity. date to China over history and territorial issues.

Huan previously called on the government to come to the aid of citizens by waiving electricity and water bills during the pandemic.

“The arrest and detention of Tran Hoang Huan marks a new chapter in the dark history of Vietnam’s crackdown on freedom of expression online,” Ming Yu Hah, deputy regional director of campaigns at Amnesty International, told RFA. .

“Huan had used his Facebook page to share information on COVID-19 vaccines, lockdowns and to call on the Vietnamese government to subsidize electricity and water costs as many Vietnamese face economic hardship due to of the pandemic. The Vietnamese authorities should listen to these appeals, not suppress them, ”she said.

Ming Yu Hah said the authorities used Article 117 to detain Huan on “vague charges” of confusing public opinion or defaming the government in order to prevent dissent.

“Huan’s name now joins an ever-growing list of Vietnamese activists detained simply for sharing peaceful criticism,” she said, and called for the release of Huan and other detainees.

“It is imperative that Vietnamese leaders begin to take a radically different approach to human rights, and freedom of expression in particular,” she said.

Speaker student reports

Vietnam has arrested and prosecuted eight people under section 117 since the start of this year. Human rights groups say the provision allows the government to silence dissent.

A university in the central coastal city of Danang fired a lecturer for his “false statements” on Vietnam’s COVID-19 measures.

Duy Tan University made the announcement on Monday after a student posted a video on Facebook of lecturer Tran Thi Tho, a member of the university’s English faculty, chatting with the student about helping the government for those affected by the pandemic.

Tho said in the video that the Vietnamese government is letting people struggle with very limited help as the pandemic rages across the country.

She highlighted how thousands of people are fleeing the country’s southern provinces and Ho Chi Minh City on motorcycles to return to their hometown thousands of kilometers away, just to escape the virus.

The student in the video accused Tho of disliking Vietnam and promoting negative stereotypes against Asians.

The university also reported the lecturer to the Police Department, which said they were investigating the case.

Pham Minh Hoang, a former professor at Ho Chi Minh City Polytechnic, told RFA that dissent should be allowed in universities.

“People who dare to express their criticism in a university are indispensable. Schools, especially universities, are forced to train students to people who have their own opinions, not to become machines that simply act on demand, ”Hoang said.

“If we continue this way, when everything has to be shaped and anyone who expresses their views differently from those of the government and the state faces dire consequences, it means the Vietnamese will never strive you’re welcome, ”Hoang said.

“Vile” shot

Nguyen Vi Yen, a Vietnamese student studying in Europe, wrote on Facebook that she felt Tho’s dismissal by Duy Tan University was “despicable”.

“Duy Tan does not deserve to be called a university, let alone its own name ‘Duy Tan’, which means reform,” she said.

Tho declined to comment on his case to RFA.

Education Minister Nguyen Kim Son told the public newspaper Tuoi Tre before the dismissal that “the management of the education system should encourage criticism on social issues in general and education policies in particular.”

Although the country struggles to effectively contain a fourth wave of the virus, Vietnam has done relatively well compared to other countries in the first three waves. Of more than 224,000 cases confirmed during the pandemic, more than 220,000 have been diagnosed since April 27, the start of the fourth wave.

As the Vietnamese media all obey the orders of the Communist Party, “the only independently reported sources of information are bloggers and independent journalists, who are subject to increasingly severe forms of persecution,” the agency said. press freedom monitoring Reporters Without Borders (RSF) in its 2021 Press Freedom Index.

Measures taken against them now include assaults by plainclothes police officers, RSF said in its report, which places Vietnam 175th out of 180 countries surveyed worldwide, a ranking unchanged from last year.

Vietnam’s already low tolerance for dissent deteriorated sharply last year with a spate of arrests of independent journalists, editors and Facebook figures as authorities continued to stifle criticism ahead of the ruling Communist Party Congress in January. Arrests continue in 2021.

Reported by the Vietnamese service of RFA. Translated by Viet Ha. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

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