Vietnamese journalist and cyber-dissident Nguyen Vu Binh was jailed for seven years yesterday on espionage charges after criticizing controversial border accords between Vietnam and China, judicial sources said.
The trial of Binh, 35, who was arrested in September 2002, lasted less than three hours at the Hanoi People's Court.
He was also sentenced to three years of house arrest after his release from jail.
The former journalist at the state-run Tap Chi Cong San (Journal of Communism) had been detained in September 2002 after posting an article on the Internet entitled: "A reflection on Sino-Vietnamese border agreements."
The agreements triggered intense debate among critics of Hanoi's communist regime who accused the government of handing over territory to China.
"He was charged with two violations, firstly concerning [his comments on] the Sino-Vietnamese border accord and secondly for collecting information and documents and transmitting them abroad via the Internet," the source added.
No other details were available. Theoretically, Binh was facing a sentence ranging from 12 years in prison to the death penalty on the espionage charges.
According to several right groups, the charges also related to a letter sent by Binh in July 2002 to the Human Rights Commission of the US Congress.
Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontieres) said he was also accused of being in contact with other "subversive dissidents" currently behind bars, and having received 4.5 million dong (about US$250) "from a reactionary organization based abroad."
"He is basically persecuted for the expression of personal views", a EU diplomat said, condemning a "very harsh sentence."
Binh has been a consistent critic of the communist regime. He left his newspaper in January 2001 after applying to form an independent opposition organization called the Liberal Democratic Party with other dissidents.
He was also behind the proposed launch of an anti-corruption organization, which was rejected by the government.
He crossed the red line by criticizing the border agreements, explicitly accusing Hanoi of ceding land to its neighbor.
Signed in 1999 after six years of negotiations, the accord was not published until September 2002 on the Web site of the Communist Party mouthpiece, the Nhan Dan (People).
But Binh accused the government of providing false information, adding Vietnam had lost a significant quantity of land. Hanoi has always denied any territorial concessions. No scientific and independent sources have so far verified the claims of either side.
Binh had also attacked some members of the powerful Communist Party's politburo.
The signature of the accords, he wrote, "results from a global fall of vigilance and a conception of how much we have to pay in exchange of the Chinese aid."
"These people have used the ancestral land to swap it for individuals' interests."
Binh notably accused the then general secretary of the Party, Le Kha Phieu, of allowing the accord to gain the political support of Beijing and thus stay in charge of the country.
Phieu was finally replaced by Nong Duc Manh in 2001.
Human rights groups have long charged the Hanoi regime with muzzling all dissent and jailing its critics.
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