RFA Vietnamese contributor Nguyen Vu Binh, 55, was arrested by Hanoi authorities on Feb. 29, 2024. He faces charges of “propagandizing against the state” under Article 117 of the penal code and will be detained pending investigations.
Binh has contributed more than 300 entries to the Radio Free Asia blog since 2015. Binh’s last article, published on February 22nd, criticized the Hanoi government’s suppression of pro-democracy activists. Radio Free Asia reached out to a relative of Binh who claimed, “The police brought Nguyen Vu Binh home, read out the search warrant, a list of confiscated items and other documents, and took him away,”
In December 2003, Nguyen Vu Binh was sentenced to seven years in jail for “espionage,” the Hanoi People’s Court accused him of distorting the democratic and human rights situation in Vietnam. He was released in 2007 as a part of an amnesty order and continued his advocacy of human rights and democracy in Vietnam.
Binh is a two-time winner of the Hellmann/Hammett writers’ grant— recognizing writers who have been victims of political persecution, in 2002 and 2007. In 2015 he was one of a dozen bloggers and human rights activists beaten by plainclothes police in Hanoi.
PEN International released in a statement, “RFA and PEN International firmly uphold the guaranteed freedoms of expression as enshrined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We demand Nguyen Vu Binh’s charges be dropped and call for his immediate release.”