A Starving Blogger’s Vietnam Crusade

viet-nam-dieu-cayAsia Sentinel 
Written by Pham Doan Trang
SUNDAY, 04 AUGUST 2013

Dieu Cay’s prison-bound campaign for his fellow prisoners

As I write this story, it is the 38th day of Dieu Cay’s hunger strike. Word that Vietnam’s most famous blogger has been refusing food since June 20 has seeped out from the prison where he is confined on a trumped-up charge of propagandizing against the State. The 61-year-old dissident is protesting harsher treatment meted out to prisoners who refuse to confess their “crimes.”

I have never met Dieu Cay. When he was first jailed in 2008, I was still a reporter who had grown up during Vietnam’s boom years, and hardly paid attention to politics. Dieu Cay is old enough to remember the American War and the hard days that followed it.

Dieu Cay’s blogging opened a window for me. It met readers’ demands for free access to true information, which is not the information provided and distorted by Vietnam’s state-owned press in the interest of the regime and the ruling Communist Party. Continue Reading