HANOI: A Vietnamese blogger who vanished in Thailand earlier this year is being held in a Hanoi prison, his friend and wife confirmed Thursday.
Truong Duy Nhat wrote weekly posts about politics and current affairs for Radio Free Asia (RFA) and last posted about the prospects for change in Vietnam in light of major anti-government demonstrations in Venezuela.
All independent media is banned in Vietnam and bloggers, activists and rights lawyers are routinely jailed. The one-party state has seen an uptick of arrests under a hard-line leadership in charge since 2016, with nearly 60 put behind bars last year according to an AFP tally.
Nhat, 55, fled to Thailand in January and applied for refugee status with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, according to RFA.
His employer and family lost contact with him soon after and he has not been heard from since. The UN said does not comment on individual cases.
Nhat’s friend Pham Xuan Nguyen said he visited Hanoi’s T-16 jail on Wednesday and received confirmation Nhat was being held there.
“I took Nhat’s wife to the jail yesterday. I saw the book the jail gave to her to register future visits,” he said Thursday.
“Inside the book, the date of his arrest was written January, 28 2019 ... it said that he was transferred to the jail the same day,” he said, adding that they did not see Nhat.
The blogger’s wife Cao Thi Xuan Phuong confirmed the account to AFP, declining to comment further.
His daughter Truong Thuc Doan, who lives in Canada, said she believes he was taken from Thailand against his will.
“It’s clear that my father did not voluntarily go back to Vietnam,” she told RFA.
The circumstances of Nhat’s return have not been confirmed by Hanoi and he has not yet been formally charged.
This is Nhat’s second prison stint. He was jailed for two years in 2014 for “abusing democratic freedoms” after writing blogs critical of Vietnam’s communist leadership.
Hanoi has in the past forcibly returned corruption suspects, including a former state oil executive kidnapped by Vietnamese security agents from a Berlin park in 2017.
Last year a fugitive spy was sent back from Singapore to face trial for divulging state secrets.
Vietnamese blogger who vanished in Thailand jailed in Hanoi
Vietnamese blogger who vanished in Thailand jailed in Hanoi
- Truong Duy Nhat fled to Thailand in January and applied for refugee status with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees
- His employer and family lost contact with him soon after
UAE outlines approach to AI governance amid regulation debate at World Economic Forum
- Minister of State Maryam Al-Hammadi highlights importance of a robust regulatory framework to complement implementation of AI technology
- Other experts in panel discussion say regulators should address problems as they arise, rather than trying to solve problems that do not yet exist
DUBAI: The UAE has made changes to 90 percent of its laws in the past four years, Maryam Al-Hammadi, minister of state and the secretary-general of the Emirati Cabinet, told the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday.
Speaking during a panel discussion titled “Regulating at the Speed of Code,” she highlighted the importance of having a robust regulatory framework in place to complement the implementation of artificial intelligence technology in the public and private sectors.
The process of this updating and repealing of laws has driven the UAE’s efforts to develop an AI model that can assist in the drafting of legislation, along with collecting feedback from stakeholders on proposed laws and suggesting improvements, she said.
Although AI might be more agile at shaping regulation, “there are some principles that we put in the model that we are developing that we cannot compromise,” Al-Hammadi added. These include rules for human accountability, transparency, privacy and data protection, along with constitutional safeguards and a thorough understanding of the law.
At this stage, “we believe AI can advise but still (the) human is in command,” she said.
Authorities in the UAE are aiming to develop, within a two-year timeline, a shareable model to help other nations learn and benefit from its experiences, Al-Hammadi added.
Argentina’s minister of deregulation and state transformation, Federico Sturzenegger, warned against overregulation at the cost of innovation.
Politicians often react to a “salient event” by overreacting, he said, describing most regulators as “very imaginative of all the terrible things that will happen to people if they’re free.”
He said that “we have to take more risk,” and regulators should wait to address problems as they arise rather than trying to create solutions for problems that do not yet exist.
This sentiment was echoed by Joel Kaplan, Meta’s chief global affairs officer, who said “imaginative policymakers” often focus more on risks and potential harms than on the economic and growth benefits of innovation.
He pointed to Europe as an example of this, arguing that an excessive focus on “all the possible harms” of new technologies has, over time, reduced competitiveness and risks leaving the region behind in what he described as a “new technological revolution.”
