Nguyen Van Hoa is a citizen journalist who reported on protests against the Formosa environmental disaster. He pioneered the use of drones to capture protest footage. Hoa was detained on January 11 and held incommunicado for two weeks before his family received notice of his detention by security police. Police informed his family on January 23 that he was temporarily detained under Article 258 for “abusing democratic freedoms”. A videographer with Radio Free Asia’s Vietnamese language service, Hoa was also physically attacked by police and had his mobile phone and camera taken in November 2016. He was tried on 27 November 2017 and sentenced to seven years in prison and three years house arrest.

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Note on Penal Code provisions:

A revised and expanded penal code took effect January 1, 2018 (known as the “Amended 2015 Penal Code”). While the previous provisions criminalizing political expression remained unchanged, they were renumbered. For instance, Article 79 (attempting to overthrow the government), Article 88 (anti-state propaganda), and Article 258 (abusing democratic rights) were renumbered as Article 109, Article 117, and Article 331, respectively.

For consistency with past media coverage, our database records the Article(s) that the prisoner was charged with (i.e., based on the version of the penal code applicable at the time of the sentencing).

Activists