Vietnam Sentences Reporter to 2 Years in Prison

Source: Washington Post

BANGKOK, Oct. 15 -- A court in Vietnam on Wednesday sentenced a journalist to two years in prison after he exposed a scandal involving Transportation Ministry officials siphoning off aid money, in part to bet on European soccer matches.

Nguyen Viet Chien, who worked for the Thanh Nien daily newspaper, was convicted of "abusing democratic freedoms to infringe upon the interests of the state." One of his sources, Lt. Col. Dinh Van Huynh, 50, was given a one-year sentence for "deliberately revealing state secrets."

Chien was unrepentant during the trial.

"With my journalist conscience, I can say I never have any other purpose in mind when writing my reports but exposing wrongdoing and fighting corruption," he told the court.



Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/15/AR2008101501106.html

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My hat's off to Chien for his bravery in standing up to his totalitarian government.

"abusing democratic freedoms to infringe upon the interests of the state."

"Democratic freedoms" mean freedom of the press. The "abuse" was to report theft of money by high government officials.

Since the state is run by and for such officials, it is interested in keeping the theft a secret. Revealing the theft infringes upon the interests of the state.

Yes, it all makes perfect sense. George Orwell would have understood this reasoning.

What, exactly, should America do about it?

Is our government any better than that of our former enemy?

Maybe after we stop torturing prisoners, restore habeas corpus, and otherwise reinstitute civil rights at home, we will be in a position to criticize others.

executive order. Protecting national security, donchaknow. As popular as American whistle-blowers. Here's an interesting link:

http://www.medialens.org/alerts/08/080611_complicit_enablers_the.php

Except in the US, it was the administration which revealed the state secrets, bringing down a whole clandestine operation to monitor possible trafficking in nuclear materials.

Also, read Joe Bageant's latest letter, too. Those judges should be thrown out of office without a pension. Why should anyone be punished for a putative offence, the nature of which he had not been notified of. A whole chain of criminally inappropriate sanctions were imposed on him. I'm sure the concept of ignorance of the law being no defence was not envisaged to cover informational lacunae such as those - still less, such swingeing penalties even if he had been actually guilty of the. More Republican government grand larceny.