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An American of Vietnamese origin, detained for nearly a year for attempting to overthrow the power in Vietnam, was sentenced Monday, June 24 to twelve years in prison.
Michael Nguyen was facing the death penalty; he was finally sentenced to 12 years in prison. During the speedy trial held in Ho Chi Minh City, the economic capital, this 55-year-old Vietnamese-American citizen was convicted, along with his two co-defendants, of inciting anti-government demonstrations and planning Molotov cocktail attacks, especially against public buildings in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. It had been almost a year since he was detained pending trial.
This father of four had settled in the United States at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, fleeing as more than a million Vietnamese the communist government that had just taken control of the country. He was arrested last summer in southern Vietnam with two activists. Tran Long Phi and Huynh Duc Thanh Binh were sentenced to 8 and 10 years in prison.
In June 2018, another US citizen, Will Nguyen, was arrested in the country for "breach of public order" after joining demonstrations against a controversial draft law creating special economic zones. He was eventually deported to the United States.
Despite the implementation of important economic reforms and a climate of openness to social change, the Vietnamese Communist Party continues to reign supreme over the country by applying very strict censorship on the media and repressing opponents, especially since the 2016 legislative elections. Lawyers, activists and journalists considered too critical of the regime and repression are regularly imprisoned. Since 2016, at least 130 prisoners of conscience languish behind bars in Vietnam.