Vietnam detains pro-democracy activist

HANOI: Vietnamese authorities arrested a pro-democracy activist, state media said, the latest in a crackdown on political dissidents in the southeast Asian country.

Tran Khac Duc, 29, was held on charges of “creating, storing, distributing or disseminating information, documents and items aimed at opposing the Socialist Republic of Vietnam”, according to the publication Safeguarding the Law.

He was arrested in September, but authorities only announced his detention through state media yesterday.

Duc is affiliated with the Assembly for Democracy and Pluralism (ADP) organisation, whose website says it aims to “establish a multi-party democratic system” in the communist nation.

Its website praised Duc as an “intelligent, wise, dynamic and gentle young man” who “firmly believes that Vietnam should progress towards a pluralistic democracy”, maintaining that he is an “informal member” of the group.

It reposted state media’s announcement of Duc’s arrest, but did not directly comment on it.

ADP was founded in 1982 and is led by Nguyen Gia Kieng, an intellectual and former official of the US-allied South Vietnamese government before the end of the Vietnam War in 1975.

Kieng – who lives in exile in France – told Radio Free Asia yesterday that ADP members had previously been harassed and beaten by police, but that Duc’s arrest was “unusual”.

It comes less than two weeks after a Vietnamese court sentenced a blogger who criticised the government to 12 years in jail on the same charges.

The country ranks 174th out of 180 countries in the Reporters Without Borders campaign group’s World Press Freedom Index.