Mother Mushroom, Vietnamese Activist, Is Said to Be Released

HONG KONG — A prominent Vietnamese activist and blogger who was sentenced to a lengthy prison term last year was released Wednesday to fly to the United States, human rights groups said.

The blogger, Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, better known by her online handle Mother Mushroom, was released as Defense Secretary Jim Mattis made a two-day visit to Vietnam. She boarded a flight to Houston around noon local time Wednesday, said Martin Gemzell, Asia program director for Civil Rights Defenders, a group based in Sweden.

“It’s good news but also sad news, that they exile human rights defenders as a precondition for their release,” he said.

Quynh, 39, was arrested in 2016 and accused of “conducting propaganda against the state.” She had written about a series of sensitive subjects such as corruption, land appropriation and pollution, including a chemical spill from the Taiwan-owned Formosa Ha Tinh Steel plant in 2016 that sickened people and caused devastating fish kills along Vietnam’s central coast. Last year, she was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

After her trial, she said via her lawyer that she did not regret the path she had chosen.

“I hope that everyone will speak up and fight, overcome their own fears to build a better country,” she said.

Quynh had been on hunger strike for periods during her imprisonment, was harassed by other inmates and her health had deteriorated, Gemzell said.

In recent years, authoritarian Vietnam has engaged in a widespread crackdown on online dissent. Amnesty International says that more than 100 people are imprisoned in the country because of critical things they have said or written.

Mattis was making his second trip this year to Vietnam, a former wartime enemy with which the United States has cultivated warmer relations as part of efforts to offset China’s growing strength. A U.S. aircraft carrier made a port call in Vietnam in March, the first such visit since U.S. troops withdrew from the country in 1975.

Human rights groups say they worry that the improved ties have overshadowed Vietnam’s continuing abuses of civil liberties.

Another Vietnamese activist, Le Dinh Luong, is scheduled to have an appeal of his 20-year prison sentence heard Thursday, Human Rights Watch said. He was convicted in August of “carrying out activities that aim to overthrow the people’s administration” in relation to environmental protests, including over the Formosa chemical spill.