Nguyen Dan Que - Later Activism

Later Activism

Que remained in Vietnam, and on 12 May 1999, posted a statement to the Internet advocating free elections for the National Assembly. On 17 March 2003, Que was arrested for again after he wrote a series of articles about Vietnamese media censorship. On 29 January 2004, the Ho Chi Minh People's Court found him guilty of "abusing democratic rights to jeopardise the interests of the state, and the legitimate rights and interests of social organisations and citizens" and sentenced to 30 months' imprisonment. However, he was granted an amnesty on 31 January 2005 for Tết, the Vietnamese New Year, along with fellow dissidents Nguyen Van Ly, Nguyen Dinh Huy, and Huynh Van Ba.

In mid-February 2011, Que posted an Internet appeal for mass demonstrations in Vietnam on the model of the Arab Spring uprisings, calling on citizens to make a "clean sweep of Communist dictatorship and build a new, free, democratic, humane and progressive Vietnam". He was then detained by the authorities for "directly violating the stability and strength of the people's government". Following a raid on his home, police reported that they had found thousands of anti-government documents in his home. A government media report stated that he had been caught "red-handed keeping and distributing documents" calling for revolution. Amnesty International named him a prisoner of conscience and called for his immediate release. On 6 March 2012, former U.S. Representative Joseph Cao organized a Vietnamese-American lobbying effort for Que, Nguyen Van Ly, Dieu Cay, and other Vietnamese political prisoners, calling on the administration of President Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress to take a stronger stand on their behalf.