Read a version of this story in Vietnamese
Police in southern Vietnam have arrested a 28-year-old man on charges of trying to overthrow the communist government, according to a police website.
Quach Gia Khang from Dong Nai province was charged on Tuesday with “conducting activities aimed at overthrowing the people’s administration” under Article 109 of the Criminal Code, police said.
Khang was a member of the France-based Assembly for Democracy and Pluralism, police said. They accused him of using Facebook, Viber and other social media to promote the group’s agenda.
Khang is the second member of the group to be arrested in six months.
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The assembly was founded by Nguyen Gia Kieng, a former official in the Republic of Vietnam – also known as South Vietnam – the losing side in the 1955-1975 Vietnam War.
The group advocates “fighting for democracy through non-violent means in the spirit of national reconciliation.”
Campaigning for a multi-party system is against the law in communist Vietnam.
Police said Khang had been “actively drafting and distributing many articles for this organization” and “stubbornly expressing ideological and opposing attitudes.”
Speaking from France, group founder Nguyen Gia Kieng confirmed that Khang was a supporter.
“Khang is a very gentle person by nature. An intellectual who studies ideology, political regimes, the country’s future and geography,” Kieng said. “He has an iron will to serve the country.”
“Demanding pluralistic democracy and ending the communist party’s monopoly is the demand of all Vietnamese people,” he said. “There is no such thing as a plot to overthrow the government.”
To Lam’s ‘new era’
Nguyen Van Dai, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison for “activities aimed at overthrowing the government” and is now living in Germany, said Khang and the Assembly for Democracy and Pluralism were only exercising the rights to freedom of speech and association in the 2013 Vietnamese constitution.
The communist party’s general secretary “To Lam declared that he would bring the nation into a new era, so all human rights recorded in the constitution should be respected,” Dai said.
In September 2024, Ho Chi Minh City police arrested another member of the group, Tran Khac Duc. They charged him with “propaganda against the state” under Article 117 of the Criminal Code.
Association founder Kieng said authorities were committing a crime against the country’s future by persecuting Khang and Duc.
People convicted of activities deemed aimed at overthrowing the government can be sentenced to 12 years in prison to the death penalty, but Kieng said the two men would not be imprisoned for long “because the communist regime has reached the final stage of its demise.”
Translated by RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Mike Firn and Taejun Kang.