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The Individuals’s Court docket of Vietnam’s Dak Lak province will maintain an attraction listening to on the case of native non secular freedom activist Y Wo Nie (also called Ama Quynh) on August 16.
The 52-year-old, from the Ede ethnic minority, was a deacon of the Evangelical Church of Vietnam. He was sentenced to 4 years in jail by the Individuals’s Court docket of Cu Kuin district on Could 20 this yr.
Nie was charged with “abusing freedoms and democracy to infringe upon the pursuits of the state, the lawful rights and pursuits of organizations and people,” as said in Clause 2, Article 331 of the Legal Code.
He’s alleged to have taken footage of three handwritten human rights studies and despatched them to worldwide organizations and in addition met with U.S. diplomats.
Nie didn’t have a protection lawyer at his trial however within the upcoming attraction session, Nguyen Van Mieng will defend him.
Mieng wrote on his Fb web page that Dak Lak province’s Division of Info & Communication made the preliminary evaluation on Y Wo Nie, regardless of Vietnam’s dedication to worldwide conventions on human rights.
“Contacting him on the Dak Lak provincial Police Division’s Detention Middle, he was at all times cheerful,” Mieng mentioned. “He at all times prayed day and night time for the peace of the Church and his household. He prolonged his because of all of the diplomatic missions, organizations and people involved together with his case.”
The indictment towards Nie states that he wrote three studies, took footage and despatched them by way of WhatsApp to quite a few abroad organizations.
The primary report was on the non secular and human rights state of affairs of the Ede ethnic folks within the Central Highlands and the second involved violations of the appropriate to spiritual freedom, which he despatched to the U.N. Human Rights Committee and the U.S. Fee on Worldwide Spiritual Freedom (USCIRF).
The third report was titled “On the state of affairs of non secular freedom on the whole and particularly for ethnic folks within the Central Highlands.”
The indictment additionally exhibits that Nie met with representatives of Ho Chi Minh Metropolis’s U.S. Embassy and Consulate in Gia Lai province in June 2020.
Dak Lak-based human rights activist Vo Ngoc Luc, who monitored the unique trial, advised RFA:
“For my part, legally, all of this stuff will not be incorrect and don’t violate the regulation. It’s regular for some activists right here to satisfy with consular workplaces.”
“As for taking human rights lessons on-line, any type of studying is nice. When folks study to know extra in regards to the regulation, that is a very good factor, not a criminal offense.”
“As for the accusation of sending footage, if the data is claimed to be distorted, there should be an analysis to show that they’re faux photos to slander and misrepresent. However, there was no conclusion and that proves the photographs he gave are actual, all of which exhibits that he did nothing incorrect.”
Speaking in regards to the upcoming attraction, Luc mentioned that in political circumstances it is extremely uncommon to have sentences decreased. Nevertheless, he mentioned that if the decision is upheld, it could adversely have an effect on diplomatic relations between Vietnam and america.
RFA has emailed the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi and the USCIRF to request touch upon the case however has but to obtain responses.
Nie was arrested in September 2021 and his actions have been alleged to have “affected the political safety state of affairs, social order and security, and the traditional operation of state administrative companies, and decreased the general public’s confidence within the regime, and affected the picture of the State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in addition to the status of the Communist Social gathering of Vietnam in worldwide diplomatic relations.”
Nie was beforehand sentenced to 9 years in jail for “undermining the unity coverage,” a ruling usually used to imprison non secular freedom activists among the many many ethnic minorities in Vietnam’s Central Highlands and northern mountainous areas.
Round 200 thousand Ede Montagnard dwell within the Central Highlands, in keeping with the non-profit group The Peoples of the World Basis, residing primarily in Dak Lak province. Most Ede are Protestant Christians. Montagnard is a collective time period for the ethnic minorities residing within the mountainous area.
A latest report on non secular freedom from the USCIRF criticized the Vietnamese authorities’s crackdown on Montagnard non secular teams within the Central Highlands.
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