Six Vietnamese political dissidents will face court in three trials in coming weeks, officials and state media said yesterday as the communist government rejected US criticism over its human-rights record.
The activists will all be tried and sentenced in one-day hearings on charges of spreading propaganda against the one-party state, a crime under Vietnamese law that carries up to 20 years' jail, court officials said.
Three members of an illegal party and a spokesman for an outlawed workers and farmers rights group will go on trial in Ho Chi Minh City, while two human-rights lawyers will face a previously scheduled trial in Hanoi.
The hearings come ahead of May 20 National Assembly elections, which the underground Bloc 8406 pro-democracy coalition has urged citizens to boycott because the poll allows only candidates approved by the Communist Party.
Next Thursday, three key members of the banned People's Democratic Party -- medical doctor Le Nguyen Sang, 48, journalist Huynh Nguyen Dao, 39, and lawyer Nguyen Bac Truyen, 39 -- will face Ho Chi Minh City People's Court.
They are accused of communicating online with Vietnamese-American dissident Cong Thanh Do with the aim of "sowing the seeds of discontent among the Vietnamese public," said the state-run Vietnam News Agency (VNA).
California-based Do, who was jailed but released after US pressure last September, had instructed Sang "to print and distribute leaflets that contained highly distorted information against Vietnam's state and party," VNA said.
Dao allegedly distributed the leaflets from October 2005 to June last year.
In the second trial next Friday, Hanoi lawyers and pro-democracy activists Nguyen Van Dai and Le Thi Cong Nhan, who were arrested in March, face trial in the capital Hanoi, also accused of defaming the state.
And on May 15, lawyer Tran Quoc Hien, 42, a spokesman for the United Workers and Farmers' Association and a Bloc 8406 member, will be prosecuted in Ho Chi Minh City, again on charges of disrupting security.
The trials in the southern commercial hub formerly called Saigon will last one day each and be open to local and foreign media, said Ho Chi Minh City's People's Court official Vu Phi Long.
The Hanoi trial is also expected to be open, according to sources.
In late March, foreign media were allowed to attend a trial in the central city of Hue in which dissident Catholic priest Nguyen Van Ly, 60, was sentenced to eight years' jail, also for spreading anti-state propaganda.
The open trials and a flurry of unusually detailed state media reports attacking dissidents have signalled a more assertive line from Hanoi against activists who challenge the political monopoly of the Communist Party.
The arrests and trials have raised tensions between Washington and Hanoi over political and religious freedoms ahead of a visit by Vietnam's President Nguyen Minh Triet to the US scheduled for June.
The US Commission on International Religious Freedom said on Wednesday Vietnam should be blacklisted as a country violating religious freedoms after being taken off the list shortly before a November visit by US President George W. Bush.
The commission said that since Hanoi was taken off the list and then joined the WTO in January, "positive religious freedom trends have, for the most part, stalled."
On the same day the US House of Representatives passed a resolution calling for the release of Father Ly and all other political prisoners.
In Hanoi, Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Dung said Vietnam "opposes the interference of foreign countries in its internal affairs" and said "no-one in Vietnam is arrested due to their political views or religion."
"Recently there have been individuals who have used the cloak of democracy and freedom to violate Vietnam's laws, undermining security, social order and stability," he said in a statement.
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