A Vietnamese court on Tuesday sentenced a dissident to five years' prison for spreading propaganda against the communist state and for disrupting security, the sixth activist to be jailed in a week.
Lawyer Tran Quoc Hien, 42, received three years' prison for anti-state propaganda and two years for disrupting security, to be followed by two years' probation, said Ho Chi Minh City People's court official Phan Ba.
The half-day trial of Hien, which was open to the media, was the most recent in a series of arrests and trials of political activists in Vietnam that have drawn protests from Western governments and human rights groups.
Vietnam's foreign ministry on Monday reiterated its position that it does not jail people for their political views, only for breaking the law.
"As we have said time and time again, the Vietnamese government has always respected the rights to freedom and democracy, including the freedom of speech," the government said in a statement.
"In Vietnam, no one is arrested for their political or religious beliefs. Only those who have breached the law are punished."
Hien, the former director of the Saigon Legal Consultancy, was a member of the underground pro-democracy movement Bloc 8406 launched over a year ago and a spokesman for a banned workers' and farmers' organization.
The state-controlled Phap Luat (Vietnam Law) daily said Hien "visited reactionary Web sites to exchange anti-state views with some reactionaries under the cover of fighting for freedom, democracy and human rights in Vietnam.
It reported: "He wrote articles and disseminated them on the Internet to slander and distort the policy of the party and state of Vietnam."
"More seriously, he organized and gathered people with complaints for a demonstration," it said.
The Tien Phong newspaper said Hien had encouraged people "to demonstrate, causing political instability during the US delegation's trip to Vietnam for the APEC [Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation] summit in November 2006."
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