The indictment against journalist and democracy activist Pham Doan Trang was made public on October 18, Vietnam time. We are summarizing the main issues from the 15-page indictment, which you can read here in Vietnamese.
The main points of the indictment are:
- The indictment stated that the investigation was done between September 22, 2016 and October 7, 2020. October 7, 2020 was also the day that the authorities arrested Doan Trang.
- The Department of Cyber Security and High Tech Crimes under the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), the national police in Vietnam, petitioned the investigation department to pursue legal proceedings against Doan Trang on May 4, 2020 and October 7, 2020 and included its documents and materials against her.
- The Department of Information and Communications of Hanoi City also submitted two petitions with documents and materials to the MPS on December 26, 2017 and January 7, 2019, requesting legal proceedings against Doan Trang.
- The Investigation Unit of Hanoi City’s Police formally opened the investigation on September 10, 2020.
- The decision to initiate criminal proceedings against Doan Trang was issued on September 28, 2020.
- Doan Trang was arrested under a warrant on October 7, 2020 in Ho Chi Minh City.
- She refused to provide her laptop’s password to the police and accordingly, the police could not access its data.
- She also refused to acknowledge the Facebook account of the name “Pham Doan Trang” belonged to her, and the investigative unit could not charge her for the information posted via that account on social media.
- Doan Trang acknowledged that she was one of the authors of the “Report Assessment of the 2016 Law on Belief and Religion in relation to the exercise to Freedom of Religion and Belief in Vietnam” in both English and Vietnamese. This report was published on the website of Luat Khoa Magazine.
- On February 19, 2021, the Authority of Information Security (under the Ministry of Information and Communications) submitted a document to the investigative unit which stated that it could not determine who owned and managed the domain name luatkhoa.org to pursue further legal proceedings against it.
- The indictment stated that Doan Trang repeatedly committed unlawful conduct which can be used to increase her punishment.
- The indictment also did not find any facts to reduce the punishment against her.
- The investigation of her case was concluded on August 26, 2021.
- The indictment stated that Doan Trang continued her unlawful conduct from 2017 to 2019 so both the 1999 Penal Code and the 2015 Penal Code (which took effect on January 1, 2018) could be used to prosecute her.
- However, the indictment also stated that Doan Trang did not confess to any of these crimes and that the 1999 Penal Code would be more beneficial to the defendant since Article 88 of that penal code starts the sentence at 3 years imprisonment versus 5 years imprisonment under Article 117 of the 2015 Penal Code. Therefore, the government dropped charges under Article 117 and only prosecuted Doan Trang under Article 88.
The Evidence against Pham Doan Trang under the indictment:
- English document named “Brief report on the marine life disaster in Vietnam”;
- English document named “General Assessments of the human rights situation in Vietnam”;
- English and Vietnamese versions of the “Report Assessment of the 2016 Law on Belief and Religion in relation to the exercise of the right to Freedom of Religion and Belief in Vietnam”;
- Two interviews with Pham Doan Trang by BBC News Vietnamese and Radio Free Asia – Vietnamese (RFA) in 2018.
The Hanoi People’s Procuracy Office prosecuted Doan Trang under Article 88, Section 1, subsections a, b, and c for “propagandizing against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam ” of the 1999 Penal Code. The sentencing for this crime will be 3 to 12 years imprisonment.
The indictment is dated August 30, 2021. However, it was only made public on October 18, 2021, in Vietnam, just more than two weeks before Pham Doan Trang’s trial. For almost two months, Doan Trang’s family and her attorneys, as well as the public, have been kept in the dark about the case Vietnam has against her.
