Vietnamese journalist Nguyen Vu Binh is serving a seven-year prison sentence on a conviction of propagandizing against the state, a charge the ruling Communist Party frequently uses to stifle independent news reporting.
On September 10, 2024, Binh was convicted by a Hanoi court under Article 117 of the penal code over comments he made in videos on political, economic, and social topics posted on YouTube channel TNT Media Live in January and March 2022, news reports said.
On February 29, 2024, Binh was summoned to police headquarters in Hanoi to discuss his reporting on TNT Media Live and was then taken back to his rented house where he was officially arrested, The 88 Project, an independent rights group that monitors the situation of Vietnamese political prisoners, quoted his sister saying.
Since 2015, Binh has written regularly for U.S. Congress-funded Radio Free Asia’s Vietnamese language service about corruption, land rights, police abuse, the environment, and human rights. Binh’s last article before his arrest criticized the government’s persistent crackdown on pro-democracy activists.
A former reporter with the state-owned Tap Chi Cong San (Communist Review) magazine, Binh was jailed for espionage in 2003 after he began writing online articles promoting democracy. He was freed in 2007 under an amnesty order.
Binh was being held at Hanoi Police Detention Center No. 1 and suffered from high blood pressure and diabetes in late 2024, according to The 88 Project.
Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security, which oversees the country’s prison system, did not respond to CPJ’s emailed request for comment on Binh’s conviction, legal status, detention, and health in late 2024.