Hanoi - One of Vietnam's best-known dissidents was arrested last week for trying to post documents on the Internet, in a sign of the regime's growing fear of losing control of the web.
Pro-democracy activist Nguyen Dan Que, a thorn in Hanoi's side for the past three decades, who was released from nearly 20 years' jail in 1998, was arrested at his home in southern Ho Chi Minh City on March 17.
On Thursday, the foreign affairs ministry confirmed that the veteran campaigner would be prosecuted.
"Que was caught at an Internet cafe handing over documents criticising the Socialist Republic of Vietnam to a US-based organisation called High Tide humanist movement," the official Vietnam News (VNA) agency reported.
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'This type of person is closely watched. If he does not do anything, okay' "He has been prosecuted by the municipal police department investigation office and his case will be brought to court," VNA said, adding that police had discovered incriminating documents at the home of the "agitator".
The endocrinologist's history of political activism goes back to the first years of reunified Vietnam. According to several sources, Que, a co-founder of the Cho Ray hospital in the former Saigon, was detained without trial in 1978 after criticising the country's political system.
After he was freed, he founded the High Tide humanist movement before being sentenced to 20 years' jail in 1991 for "activities aimed at overthrowing the government of the people".
According to the Paris-based Vietnam Committee on Human Rights, he was released in 1998 on condition that he went into exile in the United States. But he refused to leave.
"This type of person is closely watched. If he does not do anything, okay. But if he leaves his home, meets people or acts suspiciously, he is arrested," a foreign diplomat told reporters.
'Any vaguely competent student can jump over the firewalls' Que is one of a long list of activists who have been silenced by the regime in recent months.
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