Blogger Sentenced To Ten Years In Jail In Vietnam

Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, 37, is a leading Vietnamese blogger known as “Mother Mushroom” has been writing for years to expose the torture and oppression of the one-party state.  This week Vietnam showed the world that, despite its portrayal as one of the world’s emerging economies, it remains an authoritarian warmed-over Communist regime.  It convicted Quynh and sentenced her to 10 years in jail.  For telling people the truth about their government.

Quynh was arrested in October 2016 and charged with anti-state propaganda over her Facebook posts about politics and the environment.  She was charged under Article 88 of Vietnam’s criminal code.  She was denied counsel and the trial was of course an utter sham.

The “judge” ruled that Quynh had defamed the government, harmed national unity, eroded popular trust of the government and undermined national security. What is always chilling is how authoritarian governments use these faux judges and courts to carry out these measures.

Quynh has shown incredible courage in the face of such oppression.  For those of us who criticized the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Barack Obama (who obviously had achieved little at the start of his first term beyond defeating George Bush), the frustration was knowing that there were people like Quynh who put their very lives in danger to fight for civil liberties and freedom.

For the many businesses investing in Vietnam, the incarceration of Quynh should be wake up call that Vietnam is no modern or stable democratic society. It was and remains a one-party state that is threatened by even on blogger willing to tell the truth.

25 thoughts on “Blogger Sentenced To Ten Years In Jail In Vietnam”

  1. Have you even bothered to write anything of the AMERICAN that was railroaded by AMERICAN kangaroo courts Mr Turley?

    How about spending some time on the kidnapping and incarceration of Schaeffer Cox? BY AMERICAN COURTS! and he is just the tip of the iceberg. But you MR Turley being a shill for the globalists would not touch these stories with a 20 foot pole.

    Liberty Advocate Framed by FBI? – The Schaeffer Cox Story

  2. Hmmmmm, there are striking similarities with Liberals.

    Intolerance for dissent and criticism. Check
    Desire for a Single Party State. Check
    Desire for a Single Party Media. Check
    Violence against political opponents is deemed justified and fighting the good fight. Check
    Polarization of all government agencies, including the Court, in compliance with the Single Party. Check

  3. (music to song by Country Joe and The Fish)

    And its one, two, three, what are we fightin for?
    Don’t ask me I dont give a damn!
    Next stop is Viet Nam.

    And its five, six, seven, open up the Pearly Gates…
    Ain’t no time to wonder why…
    Whoopee we’re all gonna die!

  4. JT writes….

    “For those of us who criticized the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Barack Obama (who had achieved nothing at the start of his first term beyond defeating George Bush)

    Excuse me professor. Please correct….
    “who had achieved nothing at the start of his first term beyond” to include HIS SECOND TERM TOO!

  5. Let us all pray to our gods that she survives prison. Playing nice with Vietnam has been McCain’s fault, so I am going to blame this on him, too.

  6. It seems that the more a people are attacked or are made to feel they are attacked the closer they get to a single ruler system. This can be seen in Turkey, The Philippines, China, North Korea, etc. It takes generations of stability to institute true democratic systems: multiple parties for more accurate representation, no concentrated funding of candidates/representatives, no special interest dominance of government decisions, etc. One can see where a country is on the road to democracy by comparing and contrasting these conditions. One has to ask where Vietnam would be today if it were not subjected to the war that killed almost three million of its people and entrenched the present day regime.

  7. I add that the Vietnam government is considered to be highly corrupt.

  8. Maybe I missed it, John, surely you must have had some commentary about Amazon, the paragon of Free Markets blah,blah. no longer making available books by scientists and historians using documentation, logic and the science such as chemistry, hydrology, geology, thermodynamics, to name a few, cast doubt on aspects of the Holocaust.
    Or perhaps not exactly in your bailiwick, at least not a mention that Google maps has made Palestine disappear.

  9. President Obama’s peace prize award was certainly the most undeserved and political in recent memory, But reliance on the Norwegian NGO to bequeath righteousness on virtuous and brave individuals is overlooks great things accomplished by many. All acts of good must be recognized in ordinary days.

    I am not one to always use the tired refrain to complain about the US when commenting on injustice in a foreign land we are not extraordinarily far away here from what is happening to this courageous woman. The will is there for many politicians to throw people in jail for criticism of the state, but it is those same politicians who can deconstruct the protections and eventually have a system of punishing dissenters criminally.

  10. > This week Vietnam showed the world that, despite its portrayal as one of the world’s emerging economies, it remains an authoritarian warmed-over Communist regime.

    > For the many businesses investing in Vietnam, the incarceration of Quynh should be wake up call that Vietnam is no modern or stable democratic society. It was and remains a one-party state that is threatened by even on blogger willing to tell the truth.

    Horrific news and also very disappointing, esp since so many young folks move to Vietnam for the lifestyle and the inexpensive accommodations allowing them to bootstrap their various startups.

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