Vietnam 'Spy' gets 12 years for Internet dissent
HANOI - Communist Vietnam has jailed a 47-year-old man for
12 years, accusing him of helping an overseas dissident group collect
complaints against the government via the Internet and branding him a spy.
The sentence, the latest in Hanoi's crackdown
on cyberspace dissent, triggered a protest by
human rights group Amnesty International
which expressed "profound shock" at the news.
The state-run Vietnam News Agency said late
on Friday that the People's Court of Hanoi
sentenced Nguyen Khac Toan on a charge of
espionage.
Toan, a resident of the capital city, "received
direct orders" from members of an exile
"Vietnamese reactionary organization" based in France to gather letters of
complaints and protests from those unhappy with Hanoi.
The group was not identified.
Amnesty said Toan had been a soldier and a mathematics teacher before
going into business. "The branding of Nguyen Khac Toan as a 'spy' not only
stifles freedom of expression through the use of loosely worded national
security legislation but also criminalizes activities which are regarded as
perfectly legal under international law and in most countries of the world,"
Amnesty said.
Last month, Hanoi jailed Le Chi Quang, who published criticisms of
Vietnam's border pact with China on the Internet, for four years.
Reuters - December 21, 2002.
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