Police in Vietnam fine YouTuber for filming pagodas

Nguyen Binh Dan must pay 7.5 million dong (U.S.$300) for ‘religion-dividing’ content.

Police in Vietnam fined a YouTuber 7.5 million dong (US$300) for filming activities at a local pagoda.

According to a police announcement, residents in the southern province of Dong Thap reported suspicious filming activities at a pagoda in Cao Lanh city’s Ward 4 on July 5.

The police then summoned Nguyen Binh Dan, born in 1984, to the police station and issued him the fine for “abusing social media to share and post numerous false information, insulting the prestige of organizations/damaging the reputation of organization.”

During the meeting with police, Dan said that he regularly recorded videos of local pagodas and uploaded them to his personal YouTube channel, which has more than 11,000 subscribers.

The police said Dan’s videos contained false and religion-dividing content which generated offensive and negative comments. The announcement did not specify any details about the videos or the name of Dan’s YouTube channel.

Translated by Anna Vu. Edited by Eugene Whong.