HANOI - The United Nations on Thursday urged Vietnam to "cease persecution" of government critics after a blogger and his assistant were jailed on loosely worded anti-state charges.
Vietnamese blogger Nguyen Huu Vinh (left) and his assistant Nguyen Thi Minh Thuy (R) stand trial in Hanoi on March 23, 2016.
Nguyen Huu Vinh, more commonly known as Anh Ba Sam, was handed a five-year jail term on Wednesday, with his assistant, Nguyen Thi Minh Thuy, getting three years, both on charges of "abusing democratic freedoms".
The charge falls under article 258 of Vietnam's penal code, which is one of several vaguely worded provisions in the communist country's laws that rights groups say are used to persecute regime critics.
The UN Human Rights Office said it was "very concerned" by the conviction and "the vagueness of the charges provided under article 258", which it said contradict Vietnam's international obligations.
"We urge the Vietnamese government to stop convictions under this provision, and other similarly vague ones," said Laurent Meillan, the body's acting regional representative, in a statement issued in Bangkok.
He also called on the government to "cease prosecution of individuals merely for expressing an opinion".
Vinh was arrested in 2014 and has been held in detention ever since, accused of disseminating anti-government articles on his wildly popular news site.
Both Vinh, 60, and Thuy, 35, denied the charges against them and maintained their innocence in the court in central Hanoi Wednesday.
According to the official verdict, the blogs run by the defendants, which attracted more than 3.7 million page views, "misrepresented the party's line... and lowered public trust", in Vietnam's communist leaders.
Vinh, once a policeman himself, founded the well known political and social blog "Ba Sam" in 2007 -- initially to store articles for his own reference.
The blog then became a news aggregator with links to major stories in state-run newspapers as well as blog posts from activists.
Constant hacking attacks forced Vinh to regularly change the blog's web address.
It was taken down shortly after his arrest and has not been available since.
Vietnam bans private media and all newspapers and television channels are state-run. Lawyers, bloggers and activists are regularly subject to arbitrary arrest and detention.