Wide Support for Democracy Activist in Vietnam

By artappraiser on Sun, 04/03/2011 - 12:23pm |

By Seth Mydans, New York Times, April 2/3, 2011

BANGKOK —....The defendant, Cu Huy Ha Vu, 53, has been in prison since November, charged with antistate propaganda for posting critical articles on the Web and giving interviews “maligning party and state institutions and policies,” according to the government.....

Mr. Vu is the latest of dozens of Vietnamese lawyers and activists arrested over the past five years for challenging the government. His case, along with the continued detention of many other dissidents, suggests that a crackdown many analysts had seen as a prelude to a Communist Party congress in January may not have eased.

Mr. Vu’s case “may well evolve into one of the most important cases involving a political dissident in the recent history of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam," Human Rights Watch said in a report released on Saturday....

URL:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/world/asia/03vietnam.html?ref=world