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Vietnam / AFP
Vietnam jailed three women on Wednesday on charges of spreading anti-state propaganda after they waved the flag of the former US-backed South Vietnam regime, state media said.
A court in Ho Chi Minh City found the women guilty of carrying out “propaganda against the socialist Republic of Vietnam,” the official ThanhNien newspaper reported.
The trio had waved the flag of the former regime—defeated in 1975 after a bitter decades-long war with the communist north—outside the US Consulate General in the city. The court concluded the trio’s activities were “serious, violated national security… and caused suspicion and distrust in the people about the party and state,” the newspaper reported.
The charges fall under article 88 of the communist country’s criminal code, which rights groups say is one of many vaguely worded provisions used to pursue regime critics.