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Hanoi, 30 Aug 2006 (dpa) – Newly freed Vietnamese internet dissident Pham Hong Son vowed hours after his release Wednesday that he would continue to call for free elections in communist-ruled Vietnam despite remaining under house arrest.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will speak and exchange opinions freely and openly,\u201d <\/i> Son, 37, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa by telephone Wednesday. \u201cI am a person who wants to see Vietnam have a free political system.\u201d <\/i><\/p>\n
Son was freed Wednesday in a general government amnesty after intense lobbying by the US and European diplomats. He will remain under house arrest for three years, but said he has no regrets about the pro-democracy internet postings that led to his imprisonment and denied he had broken any laws.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything I have done, I feel no regret,\u201d<\/i> Son said. \u201cI just regret that I didn\u2019t do more before my arrest.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
A physician and marketing director for a pharmaceutical company, Son became Vietnam\u2019s first \u201ccyber-dissidents\u201d when he was arrested in 2002 after corresponding with Vietnamese exiles abroad and also translating and posting on a Vietnamese-language website a US State Department essay titled \u201cWhat Is Democracy\u201d.<\/p>\n
He was convicted of espionage and sentenced to 13 years in prison, later reduced to five. Diplomats and human rights groups have been calling for his release, saying his conviction on his public advocacy for the Communist Party to allow free, multi-party elections.<\/p>\n
The US praised Son\u2019s release, along with other \u201cprisoners of concern,\u201d Ma Van Bay, a Protestant pastor and member of the Hmong ethnic minority, and Y Oal Nie, an ethnic Ede tribesman convicted of \u201cweakening national solidarity\u201d in the troubled Central Highlands region.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a very good thing for Vietnam,\u201d<\/i> an embassy spokeswoman said. \u201cThese releases will be widely welcomed as a move consistent with trends within Vietnamese society toward a spirit of greater openness and debate.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
A Vietnamese exile group in Paris, the Vietnam Committee on Human Rights, also welcomed the dissidents\u2019 release but claimed Vietnam still has more than 300 lower-profile political prisoners.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis piecemeal amnesty is merely a propaganda exercise,\u201d<\/i> the committee president Vo Van Ai said, noting Hanoi released Son as it prepares to host world leaders for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in November.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn reality, Vietnam is increasing controls and legislation against dissidents every day,\u201d<\/i> Ai said. \u201cHundreds of political and religious prisoners still languish in Vietnam\u2019s prisons and camps.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
Ai cited the cases of Thich Huyen Quyen, patriarch of the banned Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam, and his deputy, Thich Quang Do, whom he said are under virtual house arrest in their pagodas.<\/p>\n
Vietnam is also still imprisoning Nguyen Vu Binh, 37, a former writer for an official Communist Party publication sentenced in 2003 to seven years for espionage after found to have contacted \u201creactionary\u201d overseas organizations and submitting testimony to the US Congress on Vietnam\u2019s human rights situation.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, Vietnamese police re-arrested a recently released dissident, Truong Quoc Huy, 25, from an internet caf\u00e9 where he was chatting online. His whereabouts remain unknown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hanoi, 30 Aug 2006 (dpa) – Newly freed Vietnamese internet dissident Pham Hong Son vowed hours after his release Wednesday that he would continue to call for free elections in communist-ruled Vietnam despite remaining under house arrest. \u201cI will speak and exchange opinions freely and openly,\u201d Son, 37, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa by …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":375,"featured_media":0,"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":[60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","","category-press-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654","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\/375"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}