AFP
A court in central Vietnam’s Nghe An province on Tuesday sentenced a dissident poet and blogger to 12 years in prison on a charge of subversion activities his lawyer said were merely an exercise of his client’s freedom of speech.
Tran Duc Thach, a co-founder of Vietnam’s online Brotherhood for Democracy, was arrested on April 23, 2020 and charged with “activities aimed at overthrowing the People’s Government” under Article 109 of Vietnam’s Criminal Code for Facebook postings exposing government corruption and human rights abuses.
The Brotherhood for Democracy is not recognized by the Vietnamese government, and many of its members have been imprisoned since its founding in 2013.