July 18, 2011
Hanoi – One of Vietnam’s few activist lawyers said Monday that he could lose his licence for defending seven farmers jailed in May on charges of trying to overthrow the state.
Huynh Van Dong, 32, said the Vietnamese Bar Association had threatened to expel him.
He defended seven farmers on trial in the Mekong Delta province of Ben Tre who were jailed for two to eight years for involvement with the banned pro-democracy group Viet Tan and an unsanctioned Christian house church.
Ben Tre People’s Court called for Dong to be disbarred, saying he attempted to ’transform the trial into a public forum, degrade the credibility of the communist party and offend the government of Vietnam.’ It also said that during the trial, the lawyer slammed his hand down on the table, which showed a ’disrespectful attitude towards the Hearing Council.’
Dong denied the allegations. ’I haven’t done anything to break the law,’ he said by telephone. ’Security forces have harassed me in the past, but this harassment has intensified recently.’
The lawyer has had clients in several high-profile cases, including an appeal in January of Catholic parishioners accused of causing a public disorder after they protested the confiscation of church properties in Da Nang, a popular beach town on the central coast.