Defend the Defenders | March 14, 2021
On March 10, security forces in the northern province of Ninh Binh arrested a local Facebooker Tran Quoc Khanh on allegation of “conducting anti-state propaganda” under Article 117 of the country’s Criminal Code for his posting regarding problematic issues of the nation. The 61-year-old activist will be held incommunicado for at least four months, according to the police’s notice to his family. He faces imprisonment up to 12 years if he is convicted.
His arrest came a few days after he announced his plan to run for the country’s highest legislative body National Assembly as an independent candidate in the general election scheduled in May.
Mr. Khanh, who often conducted livestreams on his Facebook page Trần Quốc Khánh and in Tiếng Nói Công Dân(People’s Voice) page, is the third Facebooker being arrested so far this year. One month ago, authorities in the central province of Quang Tri arrested state-run newspaper journalist Phan Bui Bao Thy and his partner Le Anh Dung on allegation of “abusing democratic freedom” for their online posts denouncing senior officials in corruption in local projects.
After two days of working out of scheduled three days, in the evening of March 9, the Higher People’s Court in Hanoi announced its final decision regarding appeal of six Dong Tam land petitioners who were accused of murder or “resisting on-duty state officials” during the bloody raid of around 3,000 riot policemen to the commune on January 9 last year. The court upheld the severe sentences given by the People’s Court of Hanoi in the first-instance hearing in mid-September 2020 despite defense lawyers showing strong evidence for the investigation’s wrongdoings and the six land petitioners’ claims of their innocence. According to lawyers’ report, the appeal hearing failed to meet the international standards for a fair trial, like the first-instance hearing.
On March 9, prisoner of conscience Doan Thi Hong, a member of the unregistered group Hiến Pháp (Constitution) being arrested in September 2018 and sentenced to 30 months in prison on the allegation of “disruption of security,” completed her sentence. She returned home on the same day to reunite with her daughter who was less than two years old when she was detained.
Meanwhile, families of prisoners of conscience Nguyen Van Duc Do and Tran Thanh Phuong reported that they have been disciplined by authorities while serving their sentences in An Phuoc Prison camp and Xuan Loc Prison camp, respectively. Mr. Do, who was convicted of subversion and sentenced to 11 years in prison, has been placed in a solitary cell for months without sunlight and with unsafe food. Meanwhile, Mr. Phuong, who is a member of the Hiến Pháp group and was sentenced to three and half years in prison on the allegation of “disruption of security,” has not been permitted to meet his wife and receive additional food from her during her prison visit on March 13.
===== March 8 =====
Lawyers Obstructed on First Day of Dong Tam Appeals Trial in Vietnam
RFA: Lawyers representing Vietnamese land-rights activists appealing sentences for their roles in a deadly clash with police last year at the Dong Tam commune were repeatedly obstructed in court in Hanoi on Monday, the first day of their hearing, sources told RFA.
Violations of due process by three-judge panel hearing the case included barring one lawyer from conferring with his client and stopping lines of questioning into sensitive aspects of the case, lawyers told RFA’s Vietnamese Service.
One attorney in the case, Ngo Anh Tuan, was prevented from transferring his trial notes from one computer to another so that he could post an account of the day’s proceedings on his Facebook page, he said.
“I typed up my notes in a transparent manner,” Ngo said. “However, when I was getting the notes from the USB in order to put post something on Facebook at noon, they wouldn’t allow me to do so,” he said.
“We changed our strategy this afternoon, and are now writing our trial notes on paper. We used many tens of pages of paper to do this,” he said.
Lawyer Dang Dinh Manh was also refused permission by trial judges to meet with one of his clients in violation of Article 256 of Vietnam’s Criminal Code, Ngo said.
“The judges said that the lawyers had already had a lot of time to speak with their clients before the trial, so the panel and the presiding judge brusquely refused Dan Dinh Manh’s request to meet with his client during the trial,” he said.
Six defendants have now filed appeals of their sentences in the Dong Tam case, in which village elder Le Dinh Kinh, 84, was killed on Jan. 9, 2020 in an early-morning raid on the village by 3,000 security officers intervening in a long-running dispute over a military construction site about 25 miles south of the capital, Hanoi.
Le’s sons, Le Dinh Chuc and Le Dinh Cong, were both sentenced to death on Sept. 14 for murder in connection with the deaths of three police officers who were killed in the clash when they were attacked with petrol bombs and fell into a concrete shaft while running between two houses.
They were among a group of 29 villagers tried for their roles in the incident. Other punishments handed out by the court included a life sentence and other sentences ranging from six years to 15 months of probation.
Le Dinh Cong, one of the two defendants sentenced to death at trial last year, has now changed his appeal from asking for a reduction in his sentence to asserting his complete innocence in the case, saying he had thrown petrol bombs only to frighten police and not to kill them, state media said.
Family members kept away
Family members hoping to attend Monday’s trial were meanwhile kept away from the court building by police who corraled them into a street corner to wait for news of the day’s proceedings, relatives said.
“Things here have been very tense,” said Nguyen Thi Duyen, the wife of Le Dinh Uy, who did not appeal his six-year prison term, and niece of slain village elder Le Dinh Kinh.
“They would not let us in, even when the lawyers tried to intervene for us,” she said.
“Just as in the first trial [in September 2020], they have cornered everyone and isolated them. They haven’t threatened us, but they have blocked our movements. I brought some food with me and ate it right here,” she added.
In a statement Monday, Human Rights Watch Deputy Asia Director Phil Robertson voiced serious concerns over the prospects of a fair trial for the six Dong Tam villagers appealing their sentences.
“Vietnam’s courts are far from independent, and predetermined outcomes dictated by the ruling communist party are still trademarks of the country’s so-called ‘justice system,’” Robertson said.
“There are still many unanswered questions about what happened during the Dong Tam raid that authorities have never been willing to clarify.”
“We are also deeply troubled by the information brought out in the defense lawyers’ report, stating that police used torture on some defendants to force them to confess, raising fundamental concerns about the fairness of the entire trial,” Robertson said.
While all land in Vietnam is ultimately held by the state, land confiscations have become a flashpoint as residents accuse the government of pushing small landholders aside in favor of lucrative real estate projects, and of paying too little in compensation to farming families displaced by development.
===== March 9 =====
Vietnam Court Upholds Sentences for Six Dong Tam Defendants
RFA: In the appeal hearing of Dong Tam land petitioners, the Higher People’s Court in Hanoi upheld the sentences of six land-rights activists involved in a deadly clash with police last year at the Dong Tam commune outside the capital Hanoi, local media reported.
In the January 9, 2020 early-morning raid on the village by 3,000 security officers intervening in a long-running dispute over a military construction site about 25 miles south of the capital, Hanoi, village elder Le Dinh Kinh, 84, and three officers were killed.
During the appellate trial the procuracy recommended that sentences conferred by the lower court in September be upheld, including two death sentences for Le Dinh Cong and Le Dinh Chuc, sons of Le Dinh Kinh.
The procuracy explained that the six had committed extremely dangerous acts that endangered other people’s lives.
RFA reported Monday, the first day of the appellate trial, that lawyers for the six defendants were repeatedly obstructed during the trial.
Violations of due process by the three-judge panel hearing the case included barring one lawyer from conferring with his client and stopping lines of questioning into sensitive aspects of the case, lawyers told RFA’s Vietnamese Service.
Le Dinh Cong, one of the two defendants sentenced to death at trial last year, during Monday’s session, changed his appeal from asking for a reduction in his sentence to asserting his complete innocence in the case, saying he had thrown petrol bombs only to frighten police and not to kill them, state media said.
He said there were no meetings aimed at opposing the police between Jan. 6 to Jan. 8, 2020. He also denied any involvement in the deaths of the three officers who are said to have died after being burnt during the attack.
During the trial, lawyer Le Hoa also confirmed that Cong was originally planning to plead innocent but due to his confinement at a detention center, he was unable to file his innocent plea and had no choice but to write a petition to ask for penalty mitigation.
Another defendant, Bui Thi Noi, the adopted daughter of Le Dinh Kinh, asked five times during Monday’s session if the Vietnamese Communist Party kills itself when it kills Vietnamese people. She received no response.
In the lower court, Noi was sentenced 6 years in prison on charges of resisting an officer on duty, one year higher than the verdict proposed by the procuracy. The stiffer sentence is believed to have been due to her demeanor during that trial.
“Why didn’t you enforce the existing laws? Why didn’t you arrest my father in a decent and transparent way instead of luring him to the paddy rice field and breaking his leg?” she said in the lower court.
Her lawyer Dang Dinh Manh told RFA Monday that Noi “seems to have had a hard life.”
“Although her schooling was not sufficient to help her write an appeal petition and she had to ask her prison inmate to help out, she’s always been an unpredictable factor in her trial,” said Manh.
Referring to her outbursts, Manh said that it could be easy to mistake Noi for the presiding judge due to her tone and demeanor.
“Among the six defendants, the escorts were most tired of her. But perhaps, she also made them laugh the most,” he said.
The six defendants were among a group of 29 villagers tried for their roles in the Dong Tam incident. Other punishments handed out by the court included a life sentence and other sentences ranging from six years to 15 months of probation.
In a statement Monday, Human Rights Watch Deputy Asia Director Phil Robertson voiced serious concerns over the prospects of a fair trial for the six Dong Tam villagers appealing their sentences.
“Vietnam’s courts are far from independent, and predetermined outcomes dictated by the ruling communist party are still trademarks of the country’s so-called ‘justice system,’” Robertson said.
“There are still many unanswered questions about what happened during the Dong Tam raid that authorities have never been willing to clarify.”
“We are also deeply troubled by the information brought out in the defense lawyers’ report, stating that police used torture on some defendants to force them to confess, raising fundamental concerns about the fairness of the entire trial,” Robertson said.
While all land in Vietnam is ultimately held by the state, land confiscations have become a flashpoint as residents accuse the government of pushing small landholders aside in favor of lucrative real estate projects, and of paying too little in compensation to farming families displaced by development.
===== March 10 =====
Vietnamese Facebooker Arrested for Criticizing Regime, Charged with “Conducting Anti-state Propaganda”
Defend the Defenders: Authorities in Vietnam’s northern province of Ninh Binh have arrested local Facebooker Tran Quoc Khanh and charged him with “conducting anti-state propaganda” under Article 117 of the country’s Criminal Code for his online posts criticizing the communist regime on various issues.
According to the state-controlled media, Mr. Khanh, 61, was detained by the Ninh Binh police on March 10 and taken him to a provincial detention center. He will be held incommunicado for at least four months and not allowed to meet his defense lawyer and relatives in the pre-trial detention. He will face imprisonment of between seven and 12 years even 20 years in prison if is convicted, according to the current law.
Mr. Khanh has posted his own writings, carrying out many livestreams and sharing numerous articles on his Facebook account Trần Quốc Khánh with the content related on serious human rights violations, systemic corruption among state officials, the Vietnamese communist regime’s weak response to China’s violations of the country’s sovereignty in the East Sea (South China Sea) and widespread environmental pollution. The state-controlled media reported that he was arrested due to his posts which defaming the communist regime and distorting its policies.
Recently, Khanh has announced that he would run for a seat in the country’s highest legislative body National Assembly in the general election scheduled in May as an indipendent candidate.
He has been the third Facebooker being arrested for online posts so far this year. One month ago, the authorities of the central province of Quang Trị arrested state newspaper’s journalist Phan Bui Bao Thy and his partner Le Anh Dung and charged them with “abusing democratic freedom” under Article 331 of the Criminal Code for their online posts to denounce corruption of state officials in the local projects.
In January this year, Vietnam convicted three independent journalists Pham Chi Dung, Nguyen Tuong Thuy and Pham Minh Tuan, members of the Independent Journalist Association of Vietnam, and environmentalist Dinh Thi Thu Thuyto between seven years and 15 years in prison on the allegation of “conducting anti-state propaganda.”
Vietnam’s already low tolerance of dissent deteriorated sharply in recent years with a spate of arrests of hundreds of independent journalists, publishers, and Facebookers. With many conservative figures of the ruling Communist Partybeing re-elected to the country’s leadership in the next five years in the 13th National Congress which ended onFebruary 1, more arrests are expected in future.
In its annual report released on March 3, the Washington-based Freedom House listed Vietnam among countries having no freedom. Meanwhile, the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has ranked the Southeast Asian nation at the 175th place among 180 countries in its World Press Freedom Index 2021. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists says Vietnam is among the world biggest prisons for journalists with around 15 brave writers being imprisoned.
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March 15, 2021
Vietnam Human Rights Defenders’ Weekly Report for March 8-14, 2021: Third Facebooker Arrested, Charged with “Conducting Anti-state Propaganda”
by Nhan Quyen • DEFENDER’S WEEKLY
Defend the Defenders | March 14, 2021
On March 10, security forces in the northern province of Ninh Binh arrested a local Facebooker Tran Quoc Khanh on allegation of “conducting anti-state propaganda” under Article 117 of the country’s Criminal Code for his posting regarding problematic issues of the nation. The 61-year-old activist will be held incommunicado for at least four months, according to the police’s notice to his family. He faces imprisonment up to 12 years if he is convicted.
His arrest came a few days after he announced his plan to run for the country’s highest legislative body National Assembly as an independent candidate in the general election scheduled in May.
Mr. Khanh, who often conducted livestreams on his Facebook page Trần Quốc Khánh and in Tiếng Nói Công Dân(People’s Voice) page, is the third Facebooker being arrested so far this year. One month ago, authorities in the central province of Quang Tri arrested state-run newspaper journalist Phan Bui Bao Thy and his partner Le Anh Dung on allegation of “abusing democratic freedom” for their online posts denouncing senior officials in corruption in local projects.
After two days of working out of scheduled three days, in the evening of March 9, the Higher People’s Court in Hanoi announced its final decision regarding appeal of six Dong Tam land petitioners who were accused of murder or “resisting on-duty state officials” during the bloody raid of around 3,000 riot policemen to the commune on January 9 last year. The court upheld the severe sentences given by the People’s Court of Hanoi in the first-instance hearing in mid-September 2020 despite defense lawyers showing strong evidence for the investigation’s wrongdoings and the six land petitioners’ claims of their innocence. According to lawyers’ report, the appeal hearing failed to meet the international standards for a fair trial, like the first-instance hearing.
On March 9, prisoner of conscience Doan Thi Hong, a member of the unregistered group Hiến Pháp (Constitution) being arrested in September 2018 and sentenced to 30 months in prison on the allegation of “disruption of security,” completed her sentence. She returned home on the same day to reunite with her daughter who was less than two years old when she was detained.
Meanwhile, families of prisoners of conscience Nguyen Van Duc Do and Tran Thanh Phuong reported that they have been disciplined by authorities while serving their sentences in An Phuoc Prison camp and Xuan Loc Prison camp, respectively. Mr. Do, who was convicted of subversion and sentenced to 11 years in prison, has been placed in a solitary cell for months without sunlight and with unsafe food. Meanwhile, Mr. Phuong, who is a member of the Hiến Pháp group and was sentenced to three and half years in prison on the allegation of “disruption of security,” has not been permitted to meet his wife and receive additional food from her during her prison visit on March 13.
===== March 8 =====
Lawyers Obstructed on First Day of Dong Tam Appeals Trial in Vietnam
RFA: Lawyers representing Vietnamese land-rights activists appealing sentences for their roles in a deadly clash with police last year at the Dong Tam commune were repeatedly obstructed in court in Hanoi on Monday, the first day of their hearing, sources told RFA.
Violations of due process by three-judge panel hearing the case included barring one lawyer from conferring with his client and stopping lines of questioning into sensitive aspects of the case, lawyers told RFA’s Vietnamese Service.
One attorney in the case, Ngo Anh Tuan, was prevented from transferring his trial notes from one computer to another so that he could post an account of the day’s proceedings on his Facebook page, he said.
“I typed up my notes in a transparent manner,” Ngo said. “However, when I was getting the notes from the USB in order to put post something on Facebook at noon, they wouldn’t allow me to do so,” he said.
“We changed our strategy this afternoon, and are now writing our trial notes on paper. We used many tens of pages of paper to do this,” he said.
Lawyer Dang Dinh Manh was also refused permission by trial judges to meet with one of his clients in violation of Article 256 of Vietnam’s Criminal Code, Ngo said.
“The judges said that the lawyers had already had a lot of time to speak with their clients before the trial, so the panel and the presiding judge brusquely refused Dan Dinh Manh’s request to meet with his client during the trial,” he said.
Six defendants have now filed appeals of their sentences in the Dong Tam case, in which village elder Le Dinh Kinh, 84, was killed on Jan. 9, 2020 in an early-morning raid on the village by 3,000 security officers intervening in a long-running dispute over a military construction site about 25 miles south of the capital, Hanoi.
Le’s sons, Le Dinh Chuc and Le Dinh Cong, were both sentenced to death on Sept. 14 for murder in connection with the deaths of three police officers who were killed in the clash when they were attacked with petrol bombs and fell into a concrete shaft while running between two houses.
They were among a group of 29 villagers tried for their roles in the incident. Other punishments handed out by the court included a life sentence and other sentences ranging from six years to 15 months of probation.
Le Dinh Cong, one of the two defendants sentenced to death at trial last year, has now changed his appeal from asking for a reduction in his sentence to asserting his complete innocence in the case, saying he had thrown petrol bombs only to frighten police and not to kill them, state media said.
Family members kept away
Family members hoping to attend Monday’s trial were meanwhile kept away from the court building by police who corraled them into a street corner to wait for news of the day’s proceedings, relatives said.
“Things here have been very tense,” said Nguyen Thi Duyen, the wife of Le Dinh Uy, who did not appeal his six-year prison term, and niece of slain village elder Le Dinh Kinh.
“They would not let us in, even when the lawyers tried to intervene for us,” she said.
“Just as in the first trial [in September 2020], they have cornered everyone and isolated them. They haven’t threatened us, but they have blocked our movements. I brought some food with me and ate it right here,” she added.
In a statement Monday, Human Rights Watch Deputy Asia Director Phil Robertson voiced serious concerns over the prospects of a fair trial for the six Dong Tam villagers appealing their sentences.
“Vietnam’s courts are far from independent, and predetermined outcomes dictated by the ruling communist party are still trademarks of the country’s so-called ‘justice system,’” Robertson said.
“There are still many unanswered questions about what happened during the Dong Tam raid that authorities have never been willing to clarify.”
“We are also deeply troubled by the information brought out in the defense lawyers’ report, stating that police used torture on some defendants to force them to confess, raising fundamental concerns about the fairness of the entire trial,” Robertson said.
While all land in Vietnam is ultimately held by the state, land confiscations have become a flashpoint as residents accuse the government of pushing small landholders aside in favor of lucrative real estate projects, and of paying too little in compensation to farming families displaced by development.
===== March 9 =====
Vietnam Court Upholds Sentences for Six Dong Tam Defendants
RFA: In the appeal hearing of Dong Tam land petitioners, the Higher People’s Court in Hanoi upheld the sentences of six land-rights activists involved in a deadly clash with police last year at the Dong Tam commune outside the capital Hanoi, local media reported.
In the January 9, 2020 early-morning raid on the village by 3,000 security officers intervening in a long-running dispute over a military construction site about 25 miles south of the capital, Hanoi, village elder Le Dinh Kinh, 84, and three officers were killed.
During the appellate trial the procuracy recommended that sentences conferred by the lower court in September be upheld, including two death sentences for Le Dinh Cong and Le Dinh Chuc, sons of Le Dinh Kinh.
The procuracy explained that the six had committed extremely dangerous acts that endangered other people’s lives.
RFA reported Monday, the first day of the appellate trial, that lawyers for the six defendants were repeatedly obstructed during the trial.
Violations of due process by the three-judge panel hearing the case included barring one lawyer from conferring with his client and stopping lines of questioning into sensitive aspects of the case, lawyers told RFA’s Vietnamese Service.
Le Dinh Cong, one of the two defendants sentenced to death at trial last year, during Monday’s session, changed his appeal from asking for a reduction in his sentence to asserting his complete innocence in the case, saying he had thrown petrol bombs only to frighten police and not to kill them, state media said.
He said there were no meetings aimed at opposing the police between Jan. 6 to Jan. 8, 2020. He also denied any involvement in the deaths of the three officers who are said to have died after being burnt during the attack.
During the trial, lawyer Le Hoa also confirmed that Cong was originally planning to plead innocent but due to his confinement at a detention center, he was unable to file his innocent plea and had no choice but to write a petition to ask for penalty mitigation.
Another defendant, Bui Thi Noi, the adopted daughter of Le Dinh Kinh, asked five times during Monday’s session if the Vietnamese Communist Party kills itself when it kills Vietnamese people. She received no response.
In the lower court, Noi was sentenced 6 years in prison on charges of resisting an officer on duty, one year higher than the verdict proposed by the procuracy. The stiffer sentence is believed to have been due to her demeanor during that trial.
“Why didn’t you enforce the existing laws? Why didn’t you arrest my father in a decent and transparent way instead of luring him to the paddy rice field and breaking his leg?” she said in the lower court.
Her lawyer Dang Dinh Manh told RFA Monday that Noi “seems to have had a hard life.”
“Although her schooling was not sufficient to help her write an appeal petition and she had to ask her prison inmate to help out, she’s always been an unpredictable factor in her trial,” said Manh.
Referring to her outbursts, Manh said that it could be easy to mistake Noi for the presiding judge due to her tone and demeanor.
“Among the six defendants, the escorts were most tired of her. But perhaps, she also made them laugh the most,” he said.
The six defendants were among a group of 29 villagers tried for their roles in the Dong Tam incident. Other punishments handed out by the court included a life sentence and other sentences ranging from six years to 15 months of probation.
In a statement Monday, Human Rights Watch Deputy Asia Director Phil Robertson voiced serious concerns over the prospects of a fair trial for the six Dong Tam villagers appealing their sentences.
“Vietnam’s courts are far from independent, and predetermined outcomes dictated by the ruling communist party are still trademarks of the country’s so-called ‘justice system,’” Robertson said.
“There are still many unanswered questions about what happened during the Dong Tam raid that authorities have never been willing to clarify.”
“We are also deeply troubled by the information brought out in the defense lawyers’ report, stating that police used torture on some defendants to force them to confess, raising fundamental concerns about the fairness of the entire trial,” Robertson said.
While all land in Vietnam is ultimately held by the state, land confiscations have become a flashpoint as residents accuse the government of pushing small landholders aside in favor of lucrative real estate projects, and of paying too little in compensation to farming families displaced by development.
===== March 10 =====
Vietnamese Facebooker Arrested for Criticizing Regime, Charged with “Conducting Anti-state Propaganda”
Defend the Defenders: Authorities in Vietnam’s northern province of Ninh Binh have arrested local Facebooker Tran Quoc Khanh and charged him with “conducting anti-state propaganda” under Article 117 of the country’s Criminal Code for his online posts criticizing the communist regime on various issues.
According to the state-controlled media, Mr. Khanh, 61, was detained by the Ninh Binh police on March 10 and taken him to a provincial detention center. He will be held incommunicado for at least four months and not allowed to meet his defense lawyer and relatives in the pre-trial detention. He will face imprisonment of between seven and 12 years even 20 years in prison if is convicted, according to the current law.
Mr. Khanh has posted his own writings, carrying out many livestreams and sharing numerous articles on his Facebook account Trần Quốc Khánh with the content related on serious human rights violations, systemic corruption among state officials, the Vietnamese communist regime’s weak response to China’s violations of the country’s sovereignty in the East Sea (South China Sea) and widespread environmental pollution. The state-controlled media reported that he was arrested due to his posts which defaming the communist regime and distorting its policies.
Recently, Khanh has announced that he would run for a seat in the country’s highest legislative body National Assembly in the general election scheduled in May as an indipendent candidate.
He has been the third Facebooker being arrested for online posts so far this year. One month ago, the authorities of the central province of Quang Trị arrested state newspaper’s journalist Phan Bui Bao Thy and his partner Le Anh Dung and charged them with “abusing democratic freedom” under Article 331 of the Criminal Code for their online posts to denounce corruption of state officials in the local projects.
In January this year, Vietnam convicted three independent journalists Pham Chi Dung, Nguyen Tuong Thuy and Pham Minh Tuan, members of the Independent Journalist Association of Vietnam, and environmentalist Dinh Thi Thu Thuyto between seven years and 15 years in prison on the allegation of “conducting anti-state propaganda.”
Vietnam’s already low tolerance of dissent deteriorated sharply in recent years with a spate of arrests of hundreds of independent journalists, publishers, and Facebookers. With many conservative figures of the ruling Communist Partybeing re-elected to the country’s leadership in the next five years in the 13th National Congress which ended onFebruary 1, more arrests are expected in future.
In its annual report released on March 3, the Washington-based Freedom House listed Vietnam among countries having no freedom. Meanwhile, the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has ranked the Southeast Asian nation at the 175th place among 180 countries in its World Press Freedom Index 2021. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists says Vietnam is among the world biggest prisons for journalists with around 15 brave writers being imprisoned.
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