Phan Sơn Tùng. — Photo by Hà Nội's Police

HÀ NỘI — A man residing in Mỗ Lao Ward, Hà Nội's Hà Đông District has been sentenced to six years in prison for “making, storing, distributing, or disseminating information, documents, and items against the State of the Socialist Republic of Việt Nam.”

The Hà Nội People’s Court on Monday opened a first-instance trial for 39-year-old Phan Sơn Tùng, with its ruling made pursuant to Article 117, Clause 1 of the Penal Code.

According to the indictment issued by the Hà Nội People’s Procuracy, the Investigation Security Agency of Hà Nội Police on March 1, 2022 received an official dispatch attached with documents from the Division of Cyber Security and High-Tech Crime Prevention and Control under the Ministry of Public Security, asking for verification and handling of violations in the use of the Internet related to Tùng.

Some of his video clips posted on Facebook and YouTube had contents slandering the regime, distorting the truth about the political and socio-economic situation in Việt Nam, and defaming Party and State leaders.

Investigators found that since 2011, Tùng had created, managed and used four accounts on social networks, with three on YouTube, namely “Vì Việt Nam Thịnh Vượng” (For a prosperous Việt Nam), “Son Tung TV” and “Phan Son Tung”, and another on Facebook namely “David Phan.”

As of August 2022, Tùng published more than 1,000 video clips on his Facebook account, which had been available on the YouTube channels earlier, attracting 148 million views and 530,000 followers. He reportedly earned US$80,000 from the monetisation of his videos on YouTube.

Between August 5-31, 2022, he posted 10 video clips on “Vì Việt Nam Thịnh Vượng”, calling for the establishment of an illegal organisation with the name of "Đảng Việt Nam Thịnh Vượng” (Prosperous Vietnamese party) to lure public attention.

Competent forces concluded that Tùng made and distributed 16 video clips online with contents violating the law, most of them against the State, Party and administration.

At the court, Tùng confessed his distribution of the video clips, but did not admit that their contents violate the law. — VNS