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Activist Nguyen Ngoc Anh, who has just been released after serving six years in prison, told Radio Free Asia he was proud of himself for taking a stand against injustice.
Anh, 44, was arrested on Aug. 30, 2018 on charges of “making, storing, disseminating, and propagating information and documents aimed at opposing the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.”
The charges relate to 74 videos with content covering issues such as China’s disputed territorial claims in the South China Sea and the pollution caused in the sea off Vietnam by discharges from the Taiwanese Formosa Plastics factory in April 2016.
Anh was sentenced to six years, with five years’ probation, on June 6, 2019.
He refused to plead guilty, saying he was only “raising the voice of patriotic people on environmental issues, national sovereignty in Hoang Sa and Truong Sa [the Paracel and Spratly islands], on education and protecting victims of injustice.”
On Friday, Anh was freed from Xuan Loc Prison in Dong Nai province and spoke to RFA Vietnamese shortly after reaching his home in Ben Tre province.
“I am very happy to have a wife and children who supported me. Who were always by my side in times of oppression. When they trample on me, my wife is always by my side, encouraging me,” he said.
“The second thing that I am proud of is that I had enough courage to dare to do what I think is right.”
Anh said his eyesight and hearing got worse while he was in prison, and his voice weakened, leaving him unable to speak loudly.
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While her husband was in prison, his wife, Nguyen Thi Chau, said she was harassed and persecuted by local authorities for posting news of her husband’s inhumane treatment on social media. The police summoned her, telling her not to put comments about Anh on Facebook.
Last March, Ben Tre province police fined Chau 7.5 million dong (US$300) for posting a photo of her husband standing in court with the caption “ignorant people punish innocent people.”
Anh began campaigning in 2013, posting articles and livestreaming on Facebook. He criticized the Vietnamese Government for not daring to name the Chinese ship that rammed Vietnamese fishing boats in the disputed South China Sea.
He participated in a protest in Ho Chi Minh City on June 10, 2018 against bills on Special Economic Zones and Cyber Security. Demonstrators said the first bill favored foreign over domestic businesses and the second infringed upon freedom of speech and self-expression.
He also called for protests in September 2018 and April the following year.
The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, one of several United Nations human rights mechanisms, described the Vietnamese government’s detention and trial of Anh as arbitrary “violating international human rights conventions that Hanoi has signed and ratified.”
Translated by RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Mike Firn and Taejun Kang.