Le Van Thanh

Le Van Thanh is a Vietnamese radio journalist and activist. He is a member of the Falun Gong religious movement. broadcast Chinese-language radio programs on short-wave frequencies on the Sound of Hope Network from their farm in the town of Thach Loi, on the outskirts of Hanoi.

Arrests Thanh and Trung were arrested in April 2011. The arrests prompted Reporters Without Borders (RSF) to protest against the Vietnamese government, claiming they were doing the bidding of the Chinese government. "Beijing's reach does not stop at China's borders," claimed RSF spokesman Gilles Lordet. "Reporters Without Borders has learned that the Chinese government successfully pressured the Vietnamese authorities to arrest two people, Vu Duc Trung and Le Van Thanh." The trial was postponed and rescheduled for October 6, 2011, and then postponed again. A representative of the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi went to court to attend the October 2011 trial only to discover it had been postponed. The Vietnamese court claimed the October 2011 postponement as a response to a request from the Bureau of Radio Frequency Management.

On October 6, 2011, Freedom House condemned "China's use of diplomatic pressure to engage in further crackdowns on religious minorities and to restrict freedom of expression outside of its borders" and urged Vietnam to drop all charges against Trung and Thanh and to release them immediately.

Protests Protests in support of Trung and Thanh were staged in early October 2011 in New York City, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Houston, as well as in Australia.

On November 8, 2011, about 30 members of Falun Gong held a demonstration in support of Trung and Thanh. They were subsequently arrested by police and driven away on a bus. by Vietnam's Supreme People's Court. They were found guilty under a statute of the penal code that bans "the illegal transmission of information on a telecommunications network." Their lawyer, Tran Dien Trien, demanded to be shown any law that prohibited radio broadcasting into China, but never received a response. On the same day, Trung and Thanh were sentenced to three years and two years respectively for illegal broadcasting into China.

Responses RSF had called the sentences laid against the two men "harsh and outrageous," asserting that "The unlicensed transmission of programmes that were not in Vietnamese nor aimed at a Vietnamese audience should not have been characterized as anything other than an administrative offence. This verdict shows the authorities were conveying the anger of their Chinese counterparts, who were the targets of the criticism expressed in the radio programmes." RSF called on "the international community to put pressure on the Vietnamese government" for the men's immediate release, which RSF described as part of a widespread "crackdown" in Vietnam on journalists and bloggers.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) declared the sentences against Trung and Thanh "a violation of freedom of expression". HRW's deputy Asia director, Phil Robertson, said "Vietnam should not violate human rights and punish its own citizens merely because their activism displeased China."

Erping Zhang, a Falun Gong spokesman, called the date of the men's sentencing a "sad day for Vietnam," adding that their radio work did "absolutely nothing to harm Vietnamese society or break Vietnamese law." He added, "Sentencing Trung and Thanh to prison in a show trial is shameless and sets a dangerous precedent of the Vietnamese government caving to Chinese Communist Party pressure."