A district court in southern Vietnam has sentenced a woman to two years in prison for using social network accounts to subvert the Party and State.

The People’s Court of Binh Thuy District, Can Tho City, on Thursday handed down the jail term on 45-year-old Le Thi Binh, a local resident, for “abusing democratic freedoms to violate the interests of the State, as well as the lawful rights and interests of organizations and individuals,” following the amended 2015 Criminal Code of Vietnam.

As stated in the indictment for the defendant, Binh possessed many Facebook accounts, including 'Binh Le,' 'Le Ngoclan Ct,' 'Ngoc Lan CT Ngoc CT Le,' and 'Anna Nguyen,' and used them as a means to spread wrongful information.    

Binh frequently used the Facebook accounts on her Internet-connected mobile phone to host live streams while also publishing and sharing many posts that defamed and offended Party and State bodies and leaders from October 2019 to November 2020.

During their investigation, Binh Thuy police collected and seized a lot of evidence related to Binh’s offenses, including 47 video clips shared on her Facebook accounts.

All the posts Binh uploaded to Facebook were aimed at propagandizing reactionary thinking and viewpoints, maligning Party and State agencies and leaders, and even abolishing the country’s current political regime, according to the indictment.

The woman took advantage of the right to freedom of speech to publish posts and video clips with contents opposing the Party and State, which undermined the people’s trust in the Party and State leadership, the indictment said.

Binh's acts infringed laws, violated the State’s interests as well as the legitimate rights and interests of organizations and individuals, and adversely affected social order and security, the court concluded. 

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