Vietnamese web author jailed for anti-Communist essays
Le Chi Quang, a Vietnamese teacher, has been jailed for 4 years for publishing web articles critical of the government. Quang was one of several dissidents arrested earlier this year for publishing pro-democracy material on the internet.
Le Chi Quang, a 32-year-old computer instructor, was convicted of “offences against the State and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,” a court official told AFP following a hearing lasting several hours.Foreign press were barred from attending the hearing, during which Quang was accused of posting essays critical of the Communist regime on the Internet.
[...]
Quang was accused of breaching anti-government legislation after posting articles criticising land and sea border agreements forged between Vietnam and China in 1999 and 2000.
In a letter to Jiang Zemin ahead of a visit to Vietnam by the Chinese president, Quang accused the Vietnamese authorities of making territorial concessions to China.
As well as criticising the border agreements, Quang had also come out in favour of more democracy and incurred the wrath of the authorities for posting articles praising well-known dissidents Nguyen Thanh Giang and Vu Cao.
– AFP, Vietnamese ‘cyber-dissident’ jailed for four years.