Vuong Van Tha

Vietnam jails four for flying flag of 'Saigon regime,' Reuters, January 24, 2018

Vietnam Sentences Outspoken Buddhist Hermit to 12 Years in Jail, Radio Free Asia, January 23, 2018

Notes:

It was brought to our attention that Vuong Van Tha advocated for the use of violence to oppose the Communist Party of Vietnam. And it was suggested to us that we take Tha and his followers' cases out of the database as they do not comply with international human rights standards.

While we do share the concern regarding the advocacy for violence, we have decided to keep Vuong Van Tha and followers’ cases in our database for the following reasons:

-  Vuong Van Tha and his followers were sentenced under Article 88 (propaganda against the socialist state), which targets speech that should be protected. They were not tried under Article 84 (terrorist acts against the people's government), as the 15 people who were tried on December 26-29 (whom we excluded from the database). That group, according to the indictment, actually planned specific acts of violence (for example, plotting to bomb Tan Son Nhat airport), instead of just talking about the use violence against the Communist Party. Vuong Van Tha and his followers were specifically tried for having made and waved South Vietnam flags, which would be a peaceful form of activism. Tha and his followers were not tried for inciting violence.

- Vuong Van Tha called for the use of violence to suppress the CPV on social media but there is no evidence that people followed him, that his speech had any influence among the public, or that any imminent violence was caused by his speech. This is a fine line to walk, but in the absence of influence and any imminent result of his speech, Tha’s messages do not appear to be speech that international law would prohibit, and thus we believe that he and his followers should be included in our database.