7 year cell for Vietnamese environmental logger

hanoi - A Vietnamese blogger who denounced an environmental scandal was sentenced to Monday to seven years in prison for 'propaganda against the state.'

Nguyen Van Hoa (22) was arrested in April. He became known after a poison from a steel factory in the Vietnamese branch of a Taiwanese plastics producer, causing more than 200 kilometers of coastline to become polluted. In videos on his blog Hoa had called for protests, which many people listened to.

Another person who had protested against the poison scandal, Nguyn Ngoc Nhu Quynh, also known as Me Nam (Mother Mushroom), was given a ten-year prison sentence. The lawyer who had defended Quynh, Vo An Don, announced on Monday that he had been suspended from the tableau in Phu Yen province. He can therefore not represent Quynh on appeal.