UN body says Vietnam is unlawfully detaining journalist

Washington — A United Nations working group has found that a VOA contributing journalist imprisoned by Vietnam was arbitrarily detained prior to sentencing and incarceration.  Pham Chi Dung was arrested in November 2019 and is serving a 15-year prison term for sharing what Vietnam calls “anti-state propaganda.”  The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention earlier in October adopted an opinion that Pham’s “deprivation of liberty lacks a legal basis” and his “detention resulted from his exercise of his right to freedom of opinion and expression.”  The 58-year-old journalist is being held in a prison in Dong Nai province. Pham, a contributor to VOA Vietnamese, is also the founder and head of the Independent Journalists Association of Vietnam, or IJAVN.  The group advocates for democracy, freedom of the press and expression, and against corruption in Vietnam. In the indictment against Pham, authorities described the IJAVN as “illegal.”  The journalist’s lawyer, Kurtulus Bastimar, welcomed the U.N. working group’s opinion.  “The U.N. has decided that fundamental rights and freedom of [Pham have] been violated. For example, he was not allowed to communicate with his lawyers and with his family,” Bastimar, who filed his case to the working group, told VOA.  Based in Turkey, Bastimar is an international lawyer who specializes in human rights and arbitrary detention.  The U.N. working group also found that the journalist’s detention violates Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Bastimar said. Both guarantee freedom of expression.  “The arrest and the detention was due to the fact that he was exercising his right to freedom of expression, and because of his being a journalist or journalist-related works,” the lawyer said.  VOA Director Mike Abramowitz said that the broadcaster stands with its contributor.  "For decades, Voice of America has acted on a clear mission to deliver fact-based information to people in unfree, closed societies and protect press freedom worldwide. VOA stands with Vietnamese journalist and VOA contributor Pham Chi Dung and denounces his unjust imprisonment after exercising his right to free speech," Abramowitz said in a statement.  A copy of the U.N. working group opinion shared with VOA recommended that Pham be freed immediately and that a full and independent investigation be held into the circumstances of his detention.  Before adopting the opinion, the working group requested comment from the Vietnamese government. The request, which gives the government 60 days to respond, was sent on March 12. To date, the authorities have not responded.  In response to a 2021 request from the U.N., however, the government said that the cases of Pham and Nguyen Tuong Thuy, who contributes to VOA sister network Radio Free Asia, “were prosecuted due to their activities which violated Vietnamese law, not for the exercise of their fundamental freedoms.”   Neither the Vietnamese embassy in Washington nor its Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded to VOA's request for comment.  Journalist jailings  Police arrested Pham at his home in Ho Chi Minh City on Nov. 21, 2019, and seized documents. He was accused of “producing, possessing, and spreading anti-state information and documents” and disseminating “distorted information,” according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, or CPJ.  A court convicted him during a one-day trial in January 2021.  Vietnam has a poor record for media freedom and jailings of journalists. Pham is one of 19 journalists detained in late 2023, when CPJ released its latest census of media workers imprisoned for their work. The country ranks 174 out of 180 countries on the World Press Freedom Index, where 1 denotes the best environment for press freedom.  The U.N. has ruled that Vietnam should stop persecuting people over their right to freedom of expression, said Bastimar, who has defended other imprisoned journalists in Vietnam.  “In each and every case, the government has used the penal code or propaganda grounds to restrict or to violate the right to freedom of expression,” he said.   In its opinion, the U.N. working group referenced the high number of cases in Vietnam.  “The present case is one of a number of cases brought before the working group in recent years concerning the arbitrary deprivation of liberty of persons, in particular human rights defenders, in Vietnam,” the opinion said.  The working group said that the cases follow a pattern of arrest that does not comply with international norms, including lengthy pretrial detention with no access to judicial review; denial of or limited access to legal counsel; people held incommunicado; brief trials held behind closed doors.   It added that prosecutions are often under vaguely worded criminal offenses for the peaceful exercise of human rights.  “The working group is concerned that this pattern indicates a systemic problem with arbitrary detention in Vietnam, which, if it continues, may amount to a serious violation of international law,” the U.N. group said.  This story originated in VOA’s Vietnamese Service.