· October, 2010

Stories about Vietnam from October, 2010

Free Blogger Dieu Cay

  22 October 2010

Two and a half years ago, in April 2008, police in Vietnam arrested Nguyen Van Hai and detained him secretly for several weeks. Mr. Hai, now 58-years old, blogged under the nickname Dieu Cay which means “the peasant’s water pipe.” At the time, authorities denied targeting Dieu Cay for his writings even though he was then one of the country’s best known bloggers and government critics. Through his Yahoo 360 blog, Dieu Cay exposed government corruption, called for freedom of expression and was among the first Vietnamese to criticize a Chinese government decision to incorporate the Paracel and Spratly Islands—which are claimed by Vietnam and several other Asian countries— into an administrative unit under China’s Hainan island.