Vietnam

Nguyen Van Hai, a citizen journalist better known by the blog name of Dieu Cay, was released Tuesday. Reporters Without Borders, however, pointed out that 26 other citizen journalists are still held in Vietnam, the world’s third biggest prison for netizens. The Vietnamese authorities confirmed Wednesday afternoon that Dieu Cay, who had been held since April 19, 2008, was taken to Hanoi’s Noi...

Vietnamese blogger Truong Duy Nhat was sentenced to prison today for online posts critical of the country's Communist Party-led government, according to news reports. The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the ruling and urges Vietnamese authorities to stop persecuting independent bloggers. A court in the central city of Danang ruled that entries on Nhat's personal blog, Nhat Mot Goc Nhin...

A Vietnamese court today rejected the appeal of blogger and human rights lawyer Le Quoc Quan, who was sentenced in October to 30 months in prison on tax evasion charges, according to news reports. The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the ruling and calls for the blogger's immediate and unconditional release. The Hanoi People's Court of Appeals ruled in a half-day trial that Quan's appeal...

Bui Chat, the head of the independent publishing house Giay Vun (“Recycled Paper), was released on May 2 after being held for three days on his return from Argentina but was briefly detained again on May 3 for more questioning, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The authorities have also kept the “Freedom to Publish Prize” which he received from the...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned underground publisher and poet Bui Chat’s arrest at Tan Son Nhat airport on April 30. The founder of the Giay Vun publishing house, Chat had just returned from Buenos Aires, where he had received the “Freedom to Publish Prize” from the International Publishers Association (IPA). “The Vietnamese authorities gave no reason...

The police say journalist Le Hoang Hung’s wife, Tran Thuy Lieu, came to them on February 20 and confessed to causing his death by spraying him with a chemical as he slept and setting him on fire, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Lieu told the police she deliberately misled them by making it look as though an intruder was responsible. Her motives were...

Le Hoang Hung an investigative reporter for the newspaper Nguoi Lao Dong (Workers) died in hospital on January 29 from the injuries he received when an intruder sprayed him with chemicals and set fire to him while he was asleep in his home in Tan An, a town near Ho Chi Minh City in southern Vietnam, on January 20, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). “We...

Vietnam has issued a new decree regulating the activities of journalists and bloggers that includes provision for fines of up to 40 million dong (2,000 dollars) in a country in which the average salary is 126 dollars. “The government is demonstrating its determination to tighten its grip on news and information just as the ruling Communist Party is holding its congress,” Paris-based press freedom...

A new executive decree issued on January 6 in Vietnam that will give authorities greater powers to penalise journalists, editors, and bloggers who report on issues deemed as sensitive to national security, New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. The new media regulations were issued amid a mounting clampdown on dissent shortly before Wednesday's opening...

CPJ is concerned by Vietnamese authorities' recent crackdown against several bloggers and one print journalist. On Monday, police arrested Phan Thanh Hai, a blogger who writes under the name Anh Ba Saigon (Saigon Brother Three), after raiding his Ho Chi Minh City home, according to Agence France-Presse. Police seized his desktop and laptop computers, along with documents he had printed from the...