Nguyen Vu Binh

Journalist and writer Nguyen Vu Binh was released from Nam Ha prison in June 2007 under a presidential amnesty. The amnesty occured in the same month as President Nguyên Minh Triêt’s 2007 visit to the United States, the first such visit by a Vietnamese head of state since the end of the Vietnam War. Subsequently Binh lived under strict house arrest. According to this 2010 Human Rights Report on Vietnam, released by the U.S. Department of State on 8 April 2011, Nguyen Vu Binh is now allowed to travel within Vietnam but not overseas.

Binh was jailed on September 25, 2002, following the online publication of one of his critical essays, “Some Thoughts on the China-Vietnam Border Agreement”. On December 31, 2003, following a three-hour trial before the Hanoi People’s Court, he was sentenced to seven years' imprisonment for his critical writings.

Binh, a proponent of political reform and a critic of government policy, worked for Tap Chi Cong (Journal of Communism), the official publication of the Communist Party of Vietnam. He left his post in January 2001 to form the independent Liberal Democratic Party and was also a leading member of the Democracy Club for Vietnam.

Sydney PEN applauds Nguyen Vu Binh’s release but calls on the Vietnamese government to lift the travel restrictions on Nguyen Vu Binh, and to release other Vietnamese writers and dissidents who have been imprisoned in violation of their right to freedom of expression as guaranteed by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Vietnam is a signatory.

(Information courtesy American PEN Center)