By
imprisoning a highly influential blogger whose only weapon was his photo camera
and laptop, the Vietnamese Government dealt a very harsh blow at freedom of
expression.
The morning
of September 24, 2012 must have been unforgettable for Binh Nhi, a 29-year-old
who had just passed thousands of kilometers in a secret journey by train from
Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City. Slightly overweight at his age, he was caught by the
police, carried like a pig by four policemen to the station and was heavily
beaten there while in custody. Not because he got involved in any criminal act,
whatsoever. The only wrongdoing he committed was that he tried to approach the
People’s Court of Ho Chi Minh City, where the trial against a very famous
blogger was taking place that morning. Hundreds of policemen, both in uniform
and plain clothes, were ubiquitous in the area to stop people from approaching
the court. Ironically, the proceeding was said to be “public trial.”
Binh Nhi was
not alone in being carted off to the station and beaten. Dozens of people,
mostly bloggers and Facebookers who claimed themselves “freelance journalists”,
including a priest, were stopped by the police on their way to the court and
then taken away for interrogation. Many were harassed and beaten, including a
young girl going by the name An Do Nguyen on Facebook, who was brutally punched
and kicked until she nearly fainted and must be taken to hospital. Her T-shirt
was even stripped from her body, because it carried the words, “Free Dieu Cay,
freedom for the patriot.” (An Do Nguyen is the FB name of Nguyen Hoang Vi, a
blogger who has been victim to police harassments and assaults in the recent
years.)
Dieu Cay is
the pen name of the blogger who was standing trial then. While he was in court
that morning, his ex-wife and their son were kept outside, prevented from
attending their own family member’s trial, despite their desperate and angry
objection, and the son was stripped of his “Free Dieu Cay” T-shirt as well. A
young policeman even shouted at them, “[You want] Freedom? Your freedom is my
penis!”
After a trial
that lasted for only three hours - too short it may seem for such an allegedly
serious crime - Dieu Cay was sentenced 12 years in prison, while Ta Phong Tan,
a woman blogger received 10 years, and Phan Thanh Hai, aka blogger AnhbaSG, 4
years. Analysts said AnhbaSG was given the slightest sentence for having
admitted before the court that he was wrong, he felt remorse and would cut off
all relationships with “anti-state elements.” This verdict for AnhbaSG was
something his family and friends all knew ahead of the trial.
All of the
three bloggers were convicted under Article 88 of the Penal Code of Vietnam, a
vague provision making “anti-state propaganda” a crime.
Dieu Cay's son, Nguyen Tri Dung, and his ex-wife Duong Thi Tan
outside the September 24 trial court.
Dung was stripped of his Free Dieu Cay T-shirt.
Photo courtesy: Dan Lam Bao
The charisma of a pen
“Dieu Cay”,
which means “Peasant’s Pipe”, is a very Vietnamese nickname that a Vietnamese
blogger can think of. And it’s the nickname of Nguyen Van Hai, a man who is
really like a peasant in the sense that he is easy-going, amiable, and
warm-hearted - at least his friends think so.
Born on
September 23, 1952 in the northern city of Hai Phong, Dieu Cay spent his youth
in the Vietnam People’s Army in southwestern border battlefield in late 1970s.
Dynamic as he was, Dieu Cay soon found ways of living after the war when he
moved to the south and started up his own business, while the majority of
northern Vietnamese people would in those days cling to the bureaucratic state
apparatus and fade away in the public sector of a highly state-controlled
economy. He used to run coffee-houses, sell cameras and other photo equipment,
and rent out apartments. With such businesses, he led quite a well-off and
sociable life. He had friends in various groups of the society: artistic circles,
academic circles, students, as well as people from low classes. Most Dieu Cay’s
friends said they were attracted by his charm, and that he is charismatic.
In 2005
Yahoo! 360° came to Vietnam after officially launched on June 24th in the US.
This was the first time the 22 million Internet subscribers in Vietnam, mostly
youths, experienced a totally new form of reading, writing, and in general, a
forum where they could express their ideas relatively freely. The period from
2006 to 2008 was the boom years of Yahoo! 360°, the dawn of a whole new world
of Internet media. While politics remained a sensitive area to most Vietnamese
bloggers, since 2007 Vietnam began to witness growing concern about political
issues, especially since tensions escalated between territorial claimants in
the South China Sea, notably Vietnam and China.
Dieu Cay, in
his fifties, adapted very quickly to the new media, and he proved to be an
Internet-savvy man. In mid-2007, he developed his own Yahoo! 360° blog, to
which he posted writings and photos of the life of people in contemporary
Vietnam. For example, he told the story of how he got into trouble when the
local People’s Committee alleged that his restaurant was using a foreign name;
in fact, Mitau (the name of the restaurant) was just a central Vietnam’s
dialect to mean “you and me”. His writings, with a sense of humor and bitter
satire, reflected different aspects of a crippling rule of law, winning him
high reputation as the first-ever famous political blogger in Vietnam.
One example
was what happened to Dieu Cay himself from late 2006 to mid-2007. Around
November 2006, he was involved in a dispute with one neighbour, an official of
the local cell of the Communist Party, who appropriated part of one of Dieu
Cay’s apartments. Dieu Cay posted the photos of his apartment to blog and
distributed the text copies of the case among neighbours and friends, which
attracted attention of the local people who all had antipathy against that
communist cadre. He also reported the case to local police, but the police,
having taken bribery from the communist neighbour, put a fine on Dieu Cay for
“inciting social disorder” rather than returning the property to him. He
objected and took a lawsuit to a local administrative court. The court of June
28, 2007 ended up with Dieu Cay losing the lawsuit, but the photos, the voices
recorded, and all the happenings inside the court were posted to his blog,
describing a spurious, laughter-provoking “rule of law” and earning him huge
attention from the public.
On September
19, 2007, Dieu Cay and a few friends established the Free Journalists Network
in Vietnam, FJNV. The idea of FJNV dated back from 2004 when a Communist Party
member, also Dieu Cay’s friend, planned to set up an association of freelance
journalists, but his application to form such an association scarcely received any
feedback from authorities. Freedom of association, as are other freedom rights
in Vietnam, is recognized in the Constitution but never realized in reality as
it is hindered by many obstructive laws and regulations. So Dieu Cay
precipitated the plan by founding FJNV “without permission”, and he developed
its blog which he would use as a weapon similar to his personal one in the
struggle for justice and freedom of Vietnamese citizens. With a laptop and a
camera, he travelled to many places in Vietnam, talking to the disadvantaged of
the society, including lost farmers and sweatshop workers, then writing stories
about their life. He even exposed signals of corruption in the construction of
Can Tho bridge that led to its collapse on September 26, 2007 in one of the
most serious disasters in Vietnam’s construction history.
In December
2007, first protests by bloggers broke out in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City,
opposing China’s ratification of a plan to set up “Sansha City” to administer
the disrupted Spratly and Paracel islands in South China Sea. Dieu Cay was a
prominent figure when he attracted dozens of students who recognized the famous
blogger and gathered around to listen to him. He was brutally detained by the
police later on the way home.
Dieu Cay at a protest in HCMC in December 2007.
The woman in white on his left is Ta Phong Tan.
Photo courtesy: Dan Lam Bao
Although he was released at the end of the day,
Dieu Cay would from that time on be put under tight police surveillance. He was
harassed very often, his business sabotaged by strangers in different ways,
say, guests going to his café would find it impossible to find a parking place
- the police would come and ask them not to put their vehicles there. They also
intimidated any potential tenants of Dieu Cay so that he could not rent out
houses, and they forced Dieu Cay to submit contracts dated even 10 years
before.
More seriously, Dieu Cay was regularly summoned to the police station
for interrogation. Many interrogations lasted from 8am to 10pm with a lot of
annoying queries about his activities and FJNV’s, his friends said. Above all,
Dieu Cay was almost confined to his home as he was followed very closely. He
even got hit in an accident that appeared to be deliberately caused by
strangers. The mental tortures went on, but Dieu Cay made no appease. Things
got worse and in around March, he left his home in Ho Chi Minh City to go on a
travel, as his friends were told.
Subsequently
there was a whole campaign of the police chasing Dieu Cay. On April 19, 2008,
he was “urgently arrested”, as police put it, in an Internet café in the southern
city of Da Lat. No one was there to witness, so there was no clue of what the
arrest warrant was actually based on. “Dieu Cay's arrest on 19 April came just
a few days before the Ho Chi Minh City leg of the Olympic torch relay for which
the government insisted on 'absolute security' and sanctions against any
'trouble-makers.' We do not think it was a coincidence and we call for him to
be released pending trial,” Reporters without Borders said on May 15, 2008.
Inappropriate legal procedures
Although the
arrest was urgently taken, the house search was only conducted a few days
later. All of Dieu Cay’s friends and family thought the search was just aimed
at finding evidence his “anti-state activities,” but it was in vain, so the
police turned to accusing Dieu Cay of “tax fraud.” Even in this case, however,
they failed to follow a due justice process. Being handcuffed and secretly
taken back to Ho Chi Minh City, put in custody without access to any lawyer or
legal support, Dieu Cay was definitely declined all of his legal rights. The
lawyer that Dieu Cay’s family hired later, Le Cong Dinh, who himself would be
arrested just one year after and charged with attempting to overthrow the
state, complained that he was not permitted to meet Dieu Cay during police investigation
and not even notified of the trial date.
Dinh revealed that only a few days
after arresting Dieu Cay did the police begin to seize papers, so it was
unreasonable when the People's Procuracy (of Ho Chi Minh City) initiated the
prosecution against Dieu Cay’s “tax fraud” “based on some documents,” as it had
said before the house search. Prior to the arrest, moreover, Dieu Cay had not
received any notice from the local tax department related to his alleged “tax
evasion.” All of the questions he was asked during hours of investigations
focused on his blogging activities, especially on FJNV.
Another
lawyer who offered to defend Dieu Cay for free, Le Tran Luat, confronted police
harassment and was also summoned for interrogation. The police questioned Le
Tran Luat on his relationship with Dieu Cay, the motive behind the offer to
defend free-of-charge, and his knowledge about the “outlawed FJNV.”
On top of
that, Le Cong Dinh found out that Dieu Cay, in fact, did not commit tax
evasion. Rather, it was the police who requested the local tax department not
to receive any overdue tax from both the landlord and the tenant without police
permission. The request was made as far back as February 25, 2008. In other
words, a trap had been set up for Dieu Cay long before his arrest.
"The right to know"
On September
10, 2008, Dieu Cay was sentenced 2.5 years in prison by the Ho Chi Minh City
People’s Court. Ironically, on October 18, 2010, blogger AnhbaSG, also an FJNV
member, was arrested, just one day before Dieu Cay completed his prison term.
Subsequently Dieu Cay remained in detention under the new charge of “spreading
propaganda against the state.” A couple of question may be raised: How could
Dieu Cay “spread propaganda against the state” during his 2.5 years of
imprisonment? Would there be another charge waiting for him when he completes
this second prison term? Would he survive after a dozen more years languishing
in prison where he has been being totally isolated from the outside world? Not
any concept of time, information, reading materials, privacy, social contacts
(even with family), or hygiene foods at all – that’s the life in a typical
Vietnamese prison.
Dieu Cay’s
family also fell victim to government harassment. The police kept close eyes on
his ex-wife, and she could not enjoy any free time with friends and
acquaintances. Dieu Cay’s first son, Nguyen Tri Dung, was even confined in his
home on the day of his final examinations, so that he failed to attend them to
receive the degree.
A warning to bloggers?
In the months
before the 2012 trial of Dieu Cay, an online petition was organized with
thousands of people signing an open letter to President Truong Tan Sang,
demanding “freedom for Dieu Cay”. Many bloggers produced black T-shirts with
the slogan “Free Dieu Cay, freedom for the patriot”. The atmosphere was so
tense that the police-dominated People's Procuracy had tried to keep the trial
date secret.
The September
24 court won special attention in blogosphere and social networks (mostly
Facebook) in Vietnam. Dozens of bloggers from other places traveled to Ho Chi
Minh City and went to the People’s Court, trying to attend the supposedly
public trial that morning despite police blockade. The police jammed cell phone
signals, many people were intimidated, harassed, and beaten, their mobile
phones and cameras seized. A whole campaign was conducted in state-owned media
attacking Dieu Cay ad hominem, as well as other “anti-state” bloggers in
general. Online commentators said that by giving Dieu Cay such a harsh sentence
– famous and charismatic though he is– the authorities want to send a message
that they will be very tough on those critical of the state, especially if
those people prove to be uncontrollably influential and uncompromising. (AFP
quoted an anonymous source as saying Dieu Cay and Ta Phong Tan “rejected
totally” the charges against them.)
In the end, the appeal court of December 28 confirmed the sentence against the three
bloggers.
The serious
punishment, however, did not create the fear that the authorities expected from
their citizens. Instead, anger spread virally over Vietnamese-language
Internet. Even the “pro-state” faction (something similar to the Chinese
“fifty-cent band” of Internet commentators) had to admit that the trial was so
unfair to bloggers who just voiced their opinion in a peaceful way, using only
a web-connected laptop. A great many people linked Dieu Cay’s case with a
recent case of police abusing power, in which a police causing the death of one
citizen not wearing motorbike helmet was sentenced only four years in prison.
Many lamented that in Vietnam, “justice is just a travesty,” “blogging is now a
dangerous job,” “if you hate someone, you’d better kill him rather than write
bad things about him, because raising opinions here is more severely punished
than murder.”
What lies
ahead of Vietnam’s blogging community, after all? While the government,
obsessed by an “Arab Spring” scenario, gives no sign of appeasement, and
bloggers’ dissatisfaction keeps growing, a certain answer seems impossible.
However, while the majority of people assume that democratization is an
inevitable process with the expansion of globalization, it is unlikely that the
Vietnamese Communist Party and their security apparatus have the same belief in
the bright future of communism. The fight will go on.
