May 2, 2011
HANOI — An underground Vietnamese publisher has been arrested after receiving an overseas award honouring his courage and contribution to freedom of expression, an industry federation said.
Bui Chat, who received the International Publishers Association (IPA) Freedom to Publish Prize in Buenos Aires last week, was arrested on Saturday when he returned to Vietnam, according to the Geneva-based IPA.
“The award and prize certificate were confiscated,” the group said in a statement dated Sunday. “IPA condemns the arrest and calls for his immediate release.”
The association said Chat was being held for investigation, but it did not say what specific allegations he faced.
Foreign governments and rights groups have repeatedly expressed concern over the lack of freedom of expression in Vietnam, where all traditional media are controlled by the state. Bjorn Smith-Simonsen, who chairs IPA’s Freedom to Publish Committee, said the arrest appeared to be “directly linked” to Chat’s receipt of the prize, which honours the defence and promotion of freedom to publish.
IPA called Chat, the founder of Giay Vun Publishing House, “a courageous underground publisher” who issues the works of “pavement poets” and helped to create an independent publishing movement.
“Under extremely difficult conditions, the Giay Vun (“Scrap Paper”) Publishing House has initiated a new movement of free thinkers, free writers, free artists who refuse to conform to the state rules of creation,” Smith-Simonsen said.
“It has helped tear down the barriers of censorship.”
Dozens of peaceful political critics and activists have been sentenced to long prison terms since Vietnam began a crackdown on free expression about 18 months ago, Amnesty International has said.
Vietnam says it has achieved significant progress on human rights.
Past winners of the six-year-old IPA prize include Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who received a posthumous awarded after her murder in 2006.
