The Vietnam Court closed journalist Hugh Duk for 30 months over Facebook posts | Freedom of news in the print

Hui Duk works for influential state newspapers before creating a popular blog critical of the country's leaders.

Leading independent journalist and author of books from Vietnam has been sentenced to 30 months in prison for posting publications critical of the government.

Following a trial that lasted only a few hours, a court in the capital, Hanoi, has condemned 63-year-old Hui Duk for “Abuse of Democratic Freedoms to break the interests of the state” by posting 13 Facebook articles.

“These articles have a large number of interactions, comments and shares, causing adverse effects on social order and safety,” the indictment quoted by the Vietnamese news agency said.

Hui Duk works for influential state newspapers before creating one of the most popular Facebook blogs and accounts in Vietnam, where he criticizes the country's communist leaders on issues such as corruption, media control and relations with China.

Hui Duk, whose real name is Truon Hugh San, is a former lieutenant of senior army.

In 2009, he was fired by a state newsletter to criticize past actions by the former communist ally of Vietnam, the Soviet Union.

In 2012, Hui Duk spent a year at Harvard University in Niman Scholarship.

During his time abroad, his story about life in Vietnam was published after the end of the war with the United States, the winning country.

His sentence comes just a few months after Blogger Duong Van Thai has been closed for 12 years on charges of publishing anti -Stasive information.

He had almost 120,000 YouTube followers, where he regularly recorded Livestreams critical of the government.

In January, a prominent former lawyer was also closed for three years for Facebook publications.

Shortly before his arrest in June, Hui Duk strives online for the new powerful Vietnam leader Up to Lamas well as his predecessor Nguyen Fu Trong. It is unclear whether the allegations were related to these specific positions.

Vietnam, one -party state, no free media and is strongly pressed against disagreement. This is one of the world's best prisoners for journalists, according to reporters without Borders (RSF) a print freedom campaign.

RSF said earlier that its articles are “an invaluable source of information that allows the Vietnamese public to access censored information from the Hanoi regime.”

Right campaigns say the government has strengthened its repression in civil society in recent years.

In December Vietnam entered New Online Rules Required Facebook and Tiktok to check the identity of users and transmit data to the authorities.

According to Decree 147, all technological giants working in Vietnam must check user accounts by telephone number or Vietnamese identification numbers and store this information together with their full name and date of birth.