Human Rights Watch calls for Vietnam to release dissidents:

The Vietnamese government should immediately release Dr. Nguyen Dan Que, a 62-year-old physician who was sentenced to two and a half years’ imprisonment for “abusing democratic freedoms,” Human Rights Watch said today. Dr. Que is one of three dissidents, all winners of the prestigious Hellman/Hammett award for persecuted writers, convicted this month solely for exercising their rights to freedom of expression. On Thursday, Dr. Que, a longtime human rights advocate, was convicted for writing an essay—distributed over the Internet—about state censorship of information and the media. Since his arrest in March 2003, he has been held in incommunicado detention.