Vietnamese woman gets 9 years for anti-state propaganda

The court judgement said the defendant had a certain level of awareness, understood and knew the consequences of her actions, but kept actively committing the crime repeatedly for a long time.

According to Hanoi prosecutors, Trang, a Hanoi resident, “made, stored and spread documents and articles with anti-state content” from Nov. 2017 to Dec. 2018.

Trang’s interviews with the BBC’s Vietnamese language channel and Radio Free Asia (RFA) distorted the authorities’ leadership and policies, defamed the government, triggered psychological warfare and spread fabricated information to cause confusion among the people, the prosecution said.

Trang is known as a blogger who has worked for several newspapers and has had her writing published abroad.

Under Vietnam’s Penal Code, anti-government propaganda can be punished with up to 20 years in jail.