Reporters Without Borders today welcomed the release from prison of journalist and dissident Tran Khai Thanh Thuy, after nine months and eight days in prison.
She was sentenced to nine months in prison by a court in Hanoi today for “disturbing public order” but was released because she had already spent more than nine months in custody awaiting trial.
“We are delighted by this release. Detention was endangering her health since she suffers from tuberculosis and diabetes,” the worldwide press freedom organisation said.
Tran Khai Thanh Thuy was arrested on 23 April 2007, for posting articles critical of the government on the Internet and in the dissident press. She was initially charged with “disseminating propaganda hostile to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam” under Article 88 of the criminal law. The court did not explain why the charges against her were changed.
Two days before her arrest, the authorities surprised her while she was in the act of posting articles deemed subversive. Police seized a memory stick on which some of her articles were stored.
The journalist received the Human Rights Watch’s Hellman-Hammett prize in January 2007 in recognition of “her courage in the face of political repression”. She is a member of Bloc 8406, a group of pro-democracy activists founded on 8 April 2006 and which the foreign ministry ruled to be illegal in October.
“Tran Khai Thanh Thuy only exercised her right to freedom of expression and her imprisonment without trial was totally unjustifiable”, Reporters Without Borders said. “We urge the Vietnamese justice system to re-examine the cases of seven cyber-dissidents who are currently behind bars,” the organisation added.
