Dissident jailed for online criticism

HANOI, Vietnam, May 21 (UPI) -- The wife of a jailed Vietnamese dissident petitioned Friday to see her husband, on a two-week hunger strike to protest his seven-year sentence for espionage.

Bui Thi Kim Ngan told Radio Free Asia that authorities had not permitted her to visit her husband, Nguyen Vu Binh, or informed her of his transfer from a Hanoi prison to Nam Ha, about 50 miles south of the capital. She learned of his transfer only upon visiting the Hanoi prison.

Vu Binh was convicted of espionage for posting articles on the Internet criticizing the Vietnamese government. Vu Binh, founder of a group called Democracy and Freedom, had called for political and economic reforms.

According to Reporters Without Borders Vu Binh, a former journalist, launched a hunger strike May 5 after an appeals court upheld his sentence of seven years' jail and three years' house arrest.

On Thursday the party newspaper Nhan Dan announced a campaign against "bad and poisonous information on the Internet," RFA reported.

Several dissidents have been imprisoned in the past two years for criticizing the government online.