Rights groups welcome release of Vietnam dissident
HANOI - Rights groups welcomed the early release of a cyber-dissident by the Vietnamese government but said others detained in similar cases should also be freed.
Paris-based watchdog Reporters without Borders (RSF) said in a statement it "welcomed the release of cyber-dissident Le Chi Quang," calling on the authorities "to show similar clemency toward the six other cyber-dissidents currently detained in Vietnam."
Quang, a 34-year-old computer instructor jailed for four years in November 2002 for posting essays critical of the communist regime on the Internet, was released Saturday.
Amnesty International also expressed "relief" after Hanoi's unusual decision, more than two years before the prisoner's scheduled release date.
"This young man, who suffers from chronic ill-health, should never have been arrested and imprisoned in the first place," Amnesty added.
The foreign ministry in Hanoi cited humanitarian reasons for the release and said Quang "expressed remorse and admitted his crimes and those of people who lured him into his activities against the Vietnamese state."
In 2002, Quang had also been sentenced to three years of house arrest. "It is obvious that he will have to serve this term," a justice source in Nam Ha told AFP on Tuesday.
Quang was arrested in February 2002 in a cyber cafe and was accused of breaking the law after posting articles criticising land and sea border agreements forged between Vietnam and China in 1999 and 2000.
In a letter to Jiang Zemin ahead of a visit to Vietnam by the then Chinese president, Quang accused the Vietnamese authorities of making territorial concessions to China.
His arrest was part of an ongoing crackdown against intellectuals and dissidents who use the web to circulate news or opinion banned from the tightly-controlled state press.
Two years later, Vietnam's Communist Party still fears more than ever the net's destabilizing impact.
Last month, the government ordered a crackdown on "bad and poisonous information" being circulated over the Internet just months after tough new rules regulating the use of the web came into force.
"Quang's release is an encouraging first step, but we still expect Vietnam to stop censoring the Internet and stop imprisoning Internet users just for expressing their views online," RSF said.
"It should not be forgotten that Vietnam has one of the most monitored and filtered Internets in the world."
The comment was echoed by Amnesty: "How many cyber-dissidents will have to be arrested and locked up and how many families destroyed?" the London-based group said.
At least six dissidents are currently in jail in Vietnam after using the Internet to voice dissenting opinions.
Only around 3.2 percent of Vietnam's 80 million people surf the web, mainly through cyber-cafes.
Agence France Presse - June 15, 2004.
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