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Vietnam: standing up for one who stood up
Media champion jailed for 'subversion'

In another country stressing the importance of human rights and promoting democratic structures would be seen as the normal business of politics. But not in one-party Vietnam, at least as far as lawyer Le Cong Dinh is concerned.

This January the 41-year old attorney was sentenced to five years in prison for subversion. An internationally-respected defender of Vietnamese bloggers, human rights, labour and democracy activists, and a campaigner for a multi-party system, he was arrested in June last year along with four others.

He was initially charged under article 88 of the criminal code with "conducting propaganda against the government," a provision often used against dissidents and carrying a 20-year sentence. In August he was shown on state television reading out a confession, saying: "I regret my wrong actions. I wish the state to consider clemency for me."

Since then another nine prominent activists have been arrested, and on Christmas Eve a state-run newspaper, Thanh Nien, reported that Dinh and blogger Nguyen Tien Trung had been charged with subversion, a more serious charge that carries the death penalty.

The highly successful lawyer, who is a former vice-president of the Ho Chi Minh City Bar Association, appears to be the victim of an increasingly severe crackdown by the ruling Communist Party, which analysts say is intent on warning that economic liberalisation does not mean political pluralism.

A graduate of Hanoi Law School and a Fulbright Scholar at New Orleans' Tulane University, Dinh is best known for his defence in 2007 of fellow lawyers Nguyen Van Dai and Li Chi Cong Nhan. At an appeals court hearing he said: "Talking about democracy and human rights cannot be seen as anti-government unless the government itself is against democracy."

The regime is building up towards a critical Party Congress next year amid fears that a younger generation will push for a looser political system to match the country's new prosperity. In this context the lawyer has been accused of hatching a foreign plot against the country. A December report in Thanh Nien said that Dinh "colluded with Vietnamese reactionaries and hostile forces in exile to form a political organisation aimed at overthrowing the people's government."

Since his detention, he has been held virtually incommunicado and denied regular access to his family, while his televised "confession" has raised serious concern among Western governments and rights groups about his treatment in detention.

A member of the Southeast Asian Media Legal Defence Network, Dinh has not been able to find a lawyer of his choice to represent him, largely because he was the last advocate in Vietnam willing to take on cases like the one now being made against him. He has rejected the offer of a state-appointed attorney, saying he has no faith in that lawyer.

The Media Legal Defence Initiative worked to ensure that international observers were present at the trial, believing it is vital that the Vietnamese government should know the outside world is watching.

"MLDI's mandate is to provide legal defence to journalists," said Peter Noorlander, MLDI's legal director. "Dinh is not a journalist but he's a defender of journalists. When the defenders we work with are targeted, we have to stand up for them."