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On 26 May 2017, the Court of Appeals in Hanoi upheld a lower court\u2019s conviction of Tran Anh Kim and Le Thanh Tung for conducting \u201cactivities aimed at overthrowing the people\u2019s administration\u201d<\/em> under Article 79 of the Criminal Code and sentenced them to 13 and 12 years in prison and five and four years\u2019 house arrest respectively.<\/p>\n On 16 December 2016, a court in Thai Binh Province jailed Tran Anh Kim and Le Thanh Tung for attempting to form a pro-democracy organization that authorities claimed was planning a coup to overthrow the government.<\/p>\n Both Tran Anh Kim and Le Thanh Tung are former army soldiers and long-time human rights advocates who have been repeatedly targeted by the authorities for their pro-democracy activities.<\/p>\n In December 2011, Le Thanh Tung was arrested on charges of \u201cconducting propaganda against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam\u201d<\/em> under Article 88 of the Criminal Code. Tung was released in June 2015, five months ahead of the completion of his jail sentence. Tung has been arrested more than a dozen times for his human rights activism.<\/p>\n Prior to his latest incarceration, Tran Anh Kim was released from prison in September 2016 after serving a five-and-a-half-year prison term under Article 79 of the Criminal Code. Kim has been a persistent government critic and has been jailed several times for his activism.<\/p>\n \u201cThe case of Tran Anh Kim and Le Thanh Tung shows the government\u2019s callous determination to silence all forms of opposition and its total disinterest in upholding its international legal obligations. Stronger international pressure is urgently needed to end this human rights onslaught,\u201d<\/em><\/strong> said VCHR President Vo Van Ai.<\/p>\n Vietnamese authorities have repeatedly used legislation inconsistent with Vietnam\u2019s obligations under international law to suppress the right to freedom of opinion and expression and to detain government critics\u00a0(1). Vietnam holds about 130 political prisoners.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Press contacts: <\/p>\n ————————<\/p>\n (1) In addition to Articles 79 and 88, other clauses of the Criminal Code that are inconsistent with Vietnam\u2019s obligations under international law include: Article 80 (\u2018spying\u2019); Article 87 (\u2018undermining national solidarity, sowing divisions between religious and non-religious people\u2019); and Article 258 (\u2018abusing democratic freedoms to harm the interests of the state\u2019).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" PARIS, 29 May 2017 (FIDH & VCHR) – Vietnam must end the ongoing crackdown on dissidents, repeal its repressive laws, and immediately release all political prisoners, FIDH and its member organization Vietnam Committee on Human Rights (VCHR) said today. FIDH and VCHR\u2019s call followed the latest case of imprisonment of government critics to lengthy jail …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":434,"featured_media":35744,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[137,113,98,64],"tags":[371,372],"class_list":["post-35743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-latest-posts","category-news","category-press-release","category-vchr","tag-le-thanh-tung","tag-tran-anh-kim"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/434"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/strong>FIDH: Mr.\u00a0Audrey Couprie (French, English) – Tel: +33648059157 (Paris)
\nFIDH: Mr.\u00a0Andrea Giorgetta (English) – Tel: +66886117722 (Bangkok)
\nVCHR: Ms. Penelope Faulkner (Vietnamese, English, French) – Tel: +33611898681 (Paris)<\/p>\n