Vietnamese cyber-dissident to face trial on Friday
HANOI - An elderly Vietnamese cyber-dissident who has been openly critical of the ruling Communist Party is due to face trial on Friday charged with undermining the regime, a court official said.
Tran Khue, a former professor of Vietnamese and Chinese literature, is the latest in a series of writers and intellectuals to be prosecuted in an apparent bid by the authorities to silence Vietnam's tiny but vocal dissident community.
Khue, 68, is due to appear in court in Ho Chi Minh City on Friday for a trial expected to last less than one day, an official from the southern business capital's People's Court told AFP requesting anonymity.
Extremely sensitive to international criticism of its human rights record, the government rarely announces the trial dates of dissidents.
Khue was placed under house arrest in September 2001 following his involvement in attempts to form an association to campaign against widespread corruption within the Communist Party and the state apparatus.
He was formally detained, however, on December 29, 2002 in Ho Chi Minh City a day after his fellow cyber-dissident Pham Que Duong, a military historian, was arrested.
Khue was initially accused of espionage, but the charges were later amended to "abusing democratic rights to jeopardize interests of the State, legitimate rights and interests of social organisations and citizens".
The 73-year-old Duong, who is due to appear in court in Hanoi on July 14, faces the same charge, which carries a maximum sentence of seven years in jail.
The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders labelled their forthcoming trials a "mockery of justice".
"The verdicts have been fixed before the two intellectuals even go before the judges," the press watchdog said Tuesday.
The pair were among 21 signatories, many of them former Party members and military veterans, on a petition sent to Vietnam's parliament in August 2002 calling for democratic reforms and a fight against corruption.
Khue has been openly critical of the government policies, including posting on the Internet documents advocating political reform and protesting sensitive border agreements between Vietnam and its powerful northern neighbour China.
Fearful of the Internet as a medium for critics of the communist regime to mobilise public opinion against it, the government in May ordered a crackdown on "bad and poisonous information" being circulated online.
International human rights groups have long charged Vietnam with smothering all political dissent and routinely jailing democracy activists or critics of the one-party state.
In May, Nguyen Vu Binh, a 35-year-old former journalist, was sentenced to seven years in prison followed by three years of house arrest for espionage, prompting widespread condemnation, particularly from the US government.
Agence France Presse - July 07, 2004.
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