Ta Phong Tan
| Tạ Phong Tần | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1968 Vĩnh Lợi District, Bạc Liêu Province, Vietnam |
| Occupation | Police officer, freelance journalist |
| Organization | Free Journalists' Club |
| Known for | Dissident blogging |
| Relatives | Dang Thi Kim Lieng (mother) |
| Awards | International Women of Courage Award (2013) |
Tạ Phong Tần (born 1968 in Vĩnh Lợi District, Bạc Liêu Province) is a Vietnamese dissident blogger. A former policewoman and a member of the Communist Party of Vietnam, she was arrested in September 2011 on anti-state propaganda charges for her blog posts alleging government corruption. On 30 July, Tạ Phong Tần's mother Dang Thi Kim Lieng immolated herself in front of the government offices in Bạc Liêu Province in protest of the charges against her daughter. On 24 September 2012, Tạ Phong Tần was sentenced to ten years in prison. Her arrest was protested by groups including the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the US State Department, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch.
Released after about 3 of 10 years of sentenced arrest and has traveled to the USA, where she arrived on Saturday 20 September 2015, as US Foreign Ministry and CPJ (Committee to Protect Journalists) said.
When she began to blog, Tạ Phong Tần worked as a policewoman. In 2004, she became a freelance journalist. Two years later, she started a blog titled Cong Ly va Su That ("Justice and Truth"), which became popular for its reports on police abuses. Because of these reports and the criticism on the web about the policies of the Communist Party of Vietnam, she was expelled from the Party and lost her job in 2006.
Tạ Phong Tần was arrested in September 2011. She, along with fellow dissident bloggers Nguyễn Văn Hải and Phan Thanh Hải, had posted through the "Free Vietnamese Journalists' Club". The three were charged with writing anti-state propaganda. The charges carried a maximum sentence of twenty years' imprisonment.The Economist described the arrests as "the latest in a series of attempts by Vietnam's communist rulers to rein in the country's blossoming internet population."
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