A court in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, sentenced lawyer Tran Dinh Trien to three years in prison on Friday for posts on the social network Facebook critical of the judiciary, after a two-day trial.
Trien, who has been suspended from the bar association since his arrest in June, was charged under a section of the penal code often used to silence dissent, according to human rights groups.
Article 331 of the penal code punishes those who “abused democratic freedoms to harm the interests of the state” with up to seven years in prison.
At least 24 people have been convicted under that section in 2024, the human rights organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) said.
The judges explained that the three posts in question, shared between April and May, included “unverified content” that “affected the reputation of the courts and the chief justice personally.”
Trien, 65, who was the number two member of the Vietnam Bar Association between 2013 and 2018, founded the law firm “Vi Dan” (“For the People”) and has defended activists in sensitive cases such as land confiscation.
On Facebook, Trien accused the chief justice of preventing families of defendants from attending trials and journalists and lawyers from recording videos in court, HRW said.
Trien’s conviction could have a “chilling effect on the general public,” Project 88, a group that advocates for freedom of expression in Vietnam, warned before the trial began.
Vietnam is one of the most repressive countries in the world when it comes to press freedom and freedom of expression, and it is holding 200 political activists in prison, according to Project 88.
In late October, a Vietnamese court sentenced activist and blogger Duong Thai Van to 12 years in prison, and he is expected to be forcibly repatriated from Thailand in 2023, journalists’ rights groups reported.
“The harsh sentence imposed on Duong Van Thai is grotesque and outrageous, especially amid allegations that he was abducted in Thailand and forcibly sent to Vietnam for an unfair trial,” said Shawn Crispin, spokesperson for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) for Southeast Asia.
The trial against the activist, accused of “preparing, disseminating or propagating information, documents and objects intended to oppose the State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,” took place on Wednesday in a single day, behind closed doors, in a Hanoi court, the CPJ said in a statement.
The crime is often used by Vietnamese authorities to crack down on political dissent.
Duong Van Thai fled to Thailand in 2018 out of fear of reprisals for his social media posts criticizing the Vietnamese regime and had been recognized as a refugee by the United Nations since 2020.
