Calls mounted yesterday for the release of a prominent lawyer in Vietnam, with Human Rights Watch saying his arrest would have a “chilling effect” on the country’s legal profession.
The arrest of Le Cong Dinh at the weekend is “yet another setback” for the rule of law in Vietnam, said Brad Adams, Asia director for the US-based rights watchdog.
Dinh, 40, was arrested by security forces on Saturday for “collusion with foreign forces” to carry out acts of opposition against the government, state radio reported.
He is accused of violating Article 88 of Vietnam’s criminal code, which prohibits distributing information harmful to the government. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
“By arresting one of the country’s most prominent human rights lawyers, other lawyers will think twice before taking up politically sensitive cases,” Adams said yesterday. “This will have a chilling effect on Vietnam’s legal profession.”
Vietnamese lawyers, he added, should be able to carry out their work without fear of harassment, intimidation or arrest — an internationally recognized right reflected in agreements that Vietnam has signed.
Global press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said Dinh had written many pro-democracy articles and called for his immediate release.
“We fear that this arrest is aimed at punishing a respected man who promotes the cause of the rule of law in Vietnam,” the Paris-based group said in a statement late on Monday.
Meanwhile, the US embassy in Vietnam expressed deep concern yesterday about the arrest and issued a statement calling for Dinh’s immediate release.
“No individual should be arrested for expressing the right to free speech, and no lawyer should be punished because of the individuals they choose to counsel,” the statement said.
According to accounts in Communist Vietnam’s state-controlled media, authorities believe Dinh “colluded with domestic and foreign reactionaries” bent on “sabotaging” the state and overthrowing the government.
Dinh, one of Vietnam’s most high-profile attorneys, came to prominence several years ago when he defended Vietnamese catfish farmers in a trade dispute with US fishermen. He also represented two human rights attorneys, Nguyen Van Dai and Le Thi Cong Nhan, who were jailed by the government in 2007 for allegedly spreading anti-government propaganda.
In his defense of Dai and Nhan, he made a strikingly direct plea for free expression, highly unusual in a country where the government tightly controls public speech. Dinh has argued it is wrong to accuse those who promote free speech of undermining the state.
The Communist Party newspaper Nhan Dan said Dinh used the trial to “take advantage” of his work as a defense lawyer and “propagandize against the regime and distort Vietnam’s constitution and laws.”
Authorities also accused Dinh of exploiting a national debate over an expansion of bauxite mining in Vietnam’s Central Highlands to “incite people against the Communist Party and the government,” the official Vietnam News Agency reported.
Dinh opposed the expansion, which includes a processing plant being built by a Chinese company. The plans have stirred an unusual level of debate in Vietnam, where government policies are rarely challenged.
Opponents of the plans say they would cause grave environmental damage. They also say Vietnam should not allow a Chinese company into the Central Highlands because of its strategic location along the border with Cambodia.
Suspicions of China are deep in Vietnam, which has fought several wars against its northern neighbor, most recently in 1979.
Dinh studied law at Tulane University in New Orleans for two years on a Fulbright scholarship.
His arrest came just days after Vietnam hosted the 17th Congress of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, a UN affiliated group which supports the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
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