Joint statement: stop the crackdown
Vietnam
A coalition of Vietnamese and international human rights organizations, Lawyers for Lawyers amongst them, called on the Vietnamese authorities to stop the crackdown against peaceful expression in the country. Vietnam is in the midst of an unprecedented political crackdown against peaceful expression. One of Vietnam’s most renowned human rights lawyers and bloggers, Nguyen Van Dai, has been arbitrarily detained for almost two years without trial.
Nguyen Van Dai is the co-founder of the Vietnam Human Rights Committee and a prodemocracy activist. He has provided legal assistance to government critics and members of religious minorities. On 16 December 2015, Nguyen Van Dai was arrested while he was on his way to a meeting with delegates from the European Union as part of the annual EU-Viet Nam Dialogue on Human Rights. He is accused of “conducting Propaganda against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam” under Article 88 of the Penal Code. His house was searched, items of property seized, and he was transferred immediately to a detention centre. Nguyen Van Dai was held incommunicado for more than a year.
This is not the first time Nguyen Van Dai was arrested. In 2007, Van Dai was sentenced to 4 years imprisonment, also for spreading propaganda against the state. After he served his sentence in 2011, he was placed under house arrest for a while. All this has not stopped Nguyen Van Dai from promoting human rights. Besides his work as a lawyer, he writes blogs and articles about human rights in Vietnam.
Please find the full statement here.