Hanoi expels Vietnamese-French activist reporter
HANOI (Reuters) - Vietnam deported a Vietnamese-French activist journalist more than three weeks after her arrest, the official Vietnam News Agency reported on Thursday, the fourth foreign national to be expelled this week.
VNA said French citizen Nguyen Thi Thanh Van, 51, was deported late on Wednesday night at the Ho Chi Minh City airport in the presence of French consular officials.
She was one of six members of the U.S.-based Viet Tan (Vietnam Reform Party) who was arrested on November 17. The group is opposed to one-party Communist rule and counts among its members Vietnamese whose families left or did not return after the end of the Vietnam War in 1975.
Police confiscated about 7,000 leaflets that the group said promoted peaceful political change in Vietnam, which does not tolerate opposition or advocates of a multi-party system.
Van is a reporter of the "Democratic Viet Nam" newspaper and the radio "New Horizon," run by Viet Tan, an outlawed group in Vietnam.
The official news agency described her as a "reactionary" and state media reports last month said she and others held were engaged in "terrorism crimes" but these accusations were never substantiated.
Another Viet Tan member, U.S. citizen Truong Leon, was deported on Tuesday.
Two other U.S. citizens left the country on Wednesday. They were arrested on November 23 for smuggling in arms and have been linked by state media to the six.
Viet Tan rejects any connection, saying it does not support the use of violence.
A U.S. Embassy spokesman said on Thursday that another U.S. citizen, Nguyen Quoc Quan, had been detained since November 17 without American officials being formally notified of any charges. The other detainees are a Thai and two Vietnamese.
