Vietnam jailed a reporter for two years yesterday for his coverage of state corruption in a court case that has sent a chill through the country’s media industry.
The Hanoi court also imprisoned for one year a senior police officer who had provided information on the graft scandal to the media, but it allowed a police general and a second journalist to walk free.
The jailed reporter, Nguyen Viet Chien, almost three years ago helped pry open the graft case, which centered on a transport ministry unit whose officials had squandered foreign aid on gambling and high living.
The revelations led to a series of arrests and moved anti-corruption to the center of government policy, while Vietnam earned international plaudits for allowing its state-controlled media unprecedented freedoms. In May, however, police arrested two of the journalists who led the coverage of the explosive case — Chien of the Thanh Nien (Young People) newspaper, and Nguyen Van Hai of the Tuoi Tre (Youth) daily.
The deputy editors of the two popular papers were replaced and the Communist Party’s ideology committee has since revoked the press credentials of several more journalists who had jumped to their colleagues’ defense.
Yesterday, the Hanoi People’s Court found both journalists guilty of “abusing democratic freedoms to infringe upon the interests of the state.”
Chien, a 56-year-old award winning journalist who maintained his innocence throughout the two-day trial, was sentenced to two years in prison, a term that was backdated to the day of his arrest.
Hai, 33, who admitted to some unintended errors in his reporting and once during the hearings broke down in tears, received a more lenient two-year non-custodial term and was allowed to walk free.
The court also convicted the two senior police officers who had given information to the press during the 2005-2006 investigation.
Retired policeman General Pham Xuan Quac, 62, who headed the investigation, received only an official warning, but Lieutenant Colonel Dinh Van Huynh, 50, was sentenced to one year’s jail, also including time served.
Prosecutors argued that the journalists’ reports contained errors and bias and had tarnished the image of officials, party cadres, and Vietnam.
The judge said “hostile forces, reactionaries and political opportunists” had taken advantage of the scandal to hurt the country.
A US embassy statement said the sentences “contradict the rights available to journalists under Vietnamese law and the verbal commitments of Vietnamese officials on freedom of the press.”
“These results are particularly worrisome in light of the serious corruption issues that their earlier investigations had brought to light,” it said.
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