By Emily Alpert
Los Angeles Times
February 12, 2013, 4:46 p.m.
Nguyen Hoang Vi was knocked from her motorcycle in an accident she believes was no accident. The windows of a car she was riding in were smashed nine months later, gashing her arms, legs and face, she told activists. Last spring her passport was taken away, rights groups say.
Then, in December, police arrested and stripped her, saying she was hiding “illegal exhibits” inside her body, she alleged. State nurses forcibly searched her as she screamed for help, she said.
She was targeted, human rights activists claim, for blogging.
In Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, almost all teens and young adults go online, market researchers say, making the Internet a new fact of life. Millions of blogs have popped up in the last eight years. The social media analysis company Quintly found that, over the course of a year, Vietnam had the fastest growth in Facebook users in the world.
Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-report-vietnam-bloggers-jailed-20130212,0,2953509.story
