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AFP
A jailed Vietnamese democracy advocate on Monday reached the 49
th day of a hunger strike aimed at reducing his 16-year sentence for subversion to five years, in line with revisions to the penal code passed after his 2010 conviction, family members say.
Arrested in May 2009 for writing online articles criticizing Vietnam’s one-party communist state, Tran Huynh Duy Thuc was convicted in 2010 on charges of plotting to overthrow the government under Article 79 of Vietnam’s 1999 Penal Code.
He is now calling for the charges against him to be changed to involvement in “preparations to commit a crime,” an offense calling only for a five-year term of imprisonment under Vietnam’s revised 2015 Penal Code, and Tran’s family and lawyers have tried several times to petition authorities for his sentence to be reduced din line with the new law.