The trial of Pham Thi Doan Trang, a well-known journalist, author, and human rights activist, was marred by significant flaws from her arrest through sentencing, including violations of her right to be free from arbitrary detention, her right to legal assistance, her right to cross-examine witnesses and contest the evidence against her, and her right to an independent and impartial tribunal.
The charges themselves—conducting “anti-state propaganda” by writing, storing, and disseminating material “against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam”–and her nine-year sentence violate her substantive right to freedom of expression and the principle of legality.
With respect to procedure, Ms. Trang was detained without access to a lawyer for over a year in the leadup to her trial, ostensibly to allow the investigation to proceed, but the evidence consisted largely of publicly-available materials (some dating back several years) and much of it had apparently been compiled even before her arrest in 2020. Indeed, a careful review of the indictment, which was filed about ten months after her arrest, suggests that the long delay in bringing Ms. Trang’s case to trial was not justified by the complexity of the charges against her.
Then, at trial, although Ms. Trang’s legal team requested that witnesses be summoned for questioning, the Court rejected this request and decided its verdict and Ms. Trang’s sentence in a matter of hours at the end of one day. The Court relied without explanation on the “opinion assessment conclusion of the competent authority” that the materials at issue constituted “distorted information, defaming the People’s Government, spreading psychological warfare, spreading fake news to cause dismay among the people, and sabotage the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,” effectively outsourcing the key question to be decided to a different government body.
Taken together, the entire process, from her prolonged pretrial detention to the charges on their face to her rapid conviction and excessive sentence in a judgment devoid of a clear explanation of why she was guilty, suggests that this was an abuse of process and Ms. Trang was being punished for exercising her rights to political opinion and expression.
For full report: https://cfj.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/ENG-Pham-Doan-Trang-Fairness-Report-April-2022.pdf
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April 16, 2022
Socialist Republic of Vietnam versus Pham Thi Doan Trang: Unfair conviction of Vietnamese leading HRD
by Defend the Defenders • [Human Rights]
TrialWatch, April 2022
The trial of Pham Thi Doan Trang, a well-known journalist, author, and human rights activist, was marred by significant flaws from her arrest through sentencing, including violations of her right to be free from arbitrary detention, her right to legal assistance, her right to cross-examine witnesses and contest the evidence against her, and her right to an independent and impartial tribunal.
The charges themselves—conducting “anti-state propaganda” by writing, storing, and disseminating material “against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam”–and her nine-year sentence violate her substantive right to freedom of expression and the principle of legality.
With respect to procedure, Ms. Trang was detained without access to a lawyer for over a year in the leadup to her trial, ostensibly to allow the investigation to proceed, but the evidence consisted largely of publicly-available materials (some dating back several years) and much of it had apparently been compiled even before her arrest in 2020. Indeed, a careful review of the indictment, which was filed about ten months after her arrest, suggests that the long delay in bringing Ms. Trang’s case to trial was not justified by the complexity of the charges against her.
Then, at trial, although Ms. Trang’s legal team requested that witnesses be summoned for questioning, the Court rejected this request and decided its verdict and Ms. Trang’s sentence in a matter of hours at the end of one day. The Court relied without explanation on the “opinion assessment conclusion of the competent authority” that the materials at issue constituted “distorted information, defaming the People’s Government, spreading psychological warfare, spreading fake news to cause dismay among the people, and sabotage the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,” effectively outsourcing the key question to be decided to a different government body.
Taken together, the entire process, from her prolonged pretrial detention to the charges on their face to her rapid conviction and excessive sentence in a judgment devoid of a clear explanation of why she was guilty, suggests that this was an abuse of process and Ms. Trang was being punished for exercising her rights to political opinion and expression.
For full report: https://cfj.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/ENG-Pham-Doan-Trang-Fairness-Report-April-2022.pdf