Vietnamese student held, accused of spreading anti-state propaganda

A 20-year-old Vietnamese student, missing for two weeks since a police raid on her home, is being held for allegedly spreading propaganda against the one-party communist state, reports said on Thursday.

University student Nguyen Phuong Uyen, who was detained on October 14, is accused of distributing anti-state leaflets and is being questioned as part of a case involving “security matters”, according to a brief report in the state-run Ho Chi Minh City Law newspaper.

Uyen, a student at Ho Chi Minh City’s Food Technology University, is being held at a jail in Long An province in southern Vietnam, the report said, quoting sources involved in the investigation.

Charges of disseminating anti-state propaganda, which carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in jail, are routinely laid against dissidents in a country where the ruling Communist Party forbids all political debate.

Uyen was arrested “after 10 policemen stormed into her room” and was held at an undisclosed location, according to an open letter by Uyen’s classmates to Vietnam’s President Truong Tan Sang on Saturday.

The letter, widely reproduced on Vietnamese-language websites, said Uyen was “always the first in line to help school charity events and activities”, the students wrote, calling for her immediate release.