Vietnamese authorities have arrested a figure of national independent journalism for “abusing democratic freedoms” with the aim of harming the state through articles published on the social network Facebook, police announced on Saturday.
Journalist Huy Duc is incarcerated as part of an investigation into writings that “violate the interests of the state, the legitimate rights and interests of organizations and individuals,” the Ministry of Public Security said.
Aged 62, Huy Duc has collaborated with influential titles in the Vietnamese press. He was fired from a newspaper in 2009 for criticizing the Soviet Union, Vietnam’s ally before its disappearance.
Shortly before his arrest, the journalist had targeted the new president To Lam as well as the general secretary of the Vietnamese Communist Party Nguyen Phu Trong and other figures in national political life.
Vietnam, whose political system is based on a single party, the Communist Party, strictly controls freedom of expression. The country is in 174th place out of 180 in the press freedom ranking compiled by the NGO Reporters Without Borders (RSF), and is one of the states that resorts to the imprisonment of journalists the most according to the organization. .
RSF called for his release. According to a press release from its director for Asia-Pacific, Cédric Alviani, “the articles of independent journalist Huy Duc are an invaluable Source of information allowing Vietnamese to access information (otherwise) censored by the Hanoi regime” .
Human rights defenders say that the Vietnamese government has increased repressive measures against civil society in recent years. Thousands of people, including senior government officials and business executives, have been detained in what Hanoi describes as an anti-corruption campaign.
“No country can develop sustainably by relying on fear,” Huy Duc wrote in May on Facebook.
