CORRESPONDENCE - 85A COMBINED REPORTS OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN VIETNAM 2012

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VIETNAM 12 [into China] and operating information networks without a license" and sentenced them to three and two years' imprisonment, respectively. Police had arrested them in Hanoi in November 2010 for broadcasting Falun Gong radio programs. In March the People's Court of Tri Ton District, An Giang Province, sentenced Chau Heng, a Khmer Krom land - rights activist to two years' imprisonment for "deliberately destroying property and creating social disorder." Police had arrested Heng in December 2010 as he reentered Vietnam after being denied political refugee status by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Thailand. Heng had led protests in 2007 and 2008 against local government land seizures. Also in August the Ho Chi Minh City People's Court sentenced Pham Minh Hoang, a dual national and professor at the Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology, to three years' imprisonment followed by three years' house arrest for alleged ties to a foreign -based prodemocracy group, posting critical comments online against the government under a pseudonym in 2010, and activities aimed at overthrowing the government. Hoang admitted guilt and asked to return to a foreign country. An appeals court in Ho Chi Minh City in November reduced the imprisonment from three years to 17 months, and Hoang continued to serve his sentence at year's end. In March the appellate division of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Court reduced Le Thang Long's original sentence from five years' imprisonment to three- and -a- half years. In May the Ho Chi Minh City People's Court denied the appeal of businessman and blogger Tran Huynh Duy Thuc and upheld his original sentence of 16 years' imprisonment. Long and Thuc - -as well as prominent attorney Le Cong Dinh and DPV leader and Viet Youth for Democracy cofounder Nguyen Tien Trung- -had all been arrested in 2009 and tried jointly in Ho Chi Minh City in January 2010 for involvement in a plot to create new political parties and overthrow the government. Dinh and Trung had pleaded guilty to joining political parties other than the CPV but had denied attempting to overthrow the government. During the year there were no developments in the cases of Dinh and Trung. On August 29, the government amnestied and released Bloc 8406 member Tran Duc Thach (see section I .d., Amnesty). Authorities had arrested Thach plus Bloc 8406 members Vu Van Hung and Pham Van Troi in 2008, convicted them in 2009 of antistate propagandizing for displaying banners that criticized the CPV and advocated multiparty democracy, and sentenced them to prison (Thach and Hung, three years' imprisonment; Troi, four years). In January 2010 the Hanoi Appellate