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Brussel.
European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton Thursday demanded Vietnam
respect freedom of expression and immediately release a French-Vietnamese
blogger, who is an EU citizen.
"I am
seriously concerned about the sentencing" of Pham Minh Hoang, a French and
Vietnamese national, sentenced to three years behind bars at a trial Wednesday
in Ho Chi Minh City, Ashton said.
"This
sentence, which follows the imprisonment of other democracy activists in the
past weeks, is not consistent with the fundamental right of all persons to hold
opinions and freely and peacefully express them," she said in a statement.
"I
call on Vietnam to respect the right to freedom of expression, in accordance
with its international obligations, and to release Professor Hoang, a citizen
of the EU, and other detained human rights defenders immediately."
The
56-year-old, the latest peaceful democracy advocate convicted in Vietnam, was
accused of "blackening the image of the country" in a series of
articles under the pen name Phan Kien Quoc.
France has
called for the verdict to be reconsidered and media watchdog Reporters Without
Borders (RSF) too called for a halt to a "dangerous" trend in
"Chinese-style" censorship.
RSF said
Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, recently handed a second term,
"has instigated a crackdown that bodes ill for journalists, bloggers and
free speech defenders".
Hoang has
already spent one year in custody, which will count towards his jail sentence.
This will be followed by a further three years of house arrest.
Dozens of
peaceful political critics have been sentenced to long prison terms since
Vietnam launched a crackdown on free expression in late 2009, according to
Amnesty International.
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