(VOVworld) - The Ho Chi Minh City People’s Court on Wednesday sentenced Pham Nguyen Thanh Binh to three years in prison on the charge of “conducting propaganda against the State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam” under Article 88 of the 1999 Penal Code. After finishing his sentence, Binh will be kept under three-years of constant surveillance. Binh was born in 1983 in Hai Phong city and lives in Ho Chi Minh city.  

According to the indictment, in early 2012, Binh regularly read the blog “Vietnamese people for the Vietnamese nation” of Nguyen Xuan Chau, leader of a reactionary group living in exile in Australia. Binh contacted Chau and agreed to write 8 articles which distorted the Party’s guidelines and the government’s management and fabricated facts about the personal lives of Party and State leaders.  Binh admitted that he wrote articles for Chau on corruption and wastefulness, desiring to prove himself to Chau. During the investigation, Binh showed a sincere and cooperative attitude, admitting his legal violations and wrote an application for clemency.