Career
Blogging as "Anhbasg" or "Anh Ba Sài Gòn" at the website "Independent Journalists" Club", Phan discussed controversial topics including other dissidents, Vietnam"s maritime border with China, and government corruption scandals. A lawyer by training, Phan was denied permission to practice due to his blogging and his involvement in protests. In 2007, he was arrested after a protest against the Beijing Olympics and later placed under police surveillance.
In October 2010, he was arrested in Ho Chi Minh City and charged with disseminating anti-state information and materials, carrying a maximum sentence of twenty years" imprisonment.
He later confessed to the charges. Fellow "Independent Journalists" Club" posters Nguyen Van Hai and Ta Phong Tan were also arrested.
Though their trial was scheduled to begin in August, it was delayed indefinitely after Ta"s mother Dang Thi Kim Lieng immolated herself in front of the government offices in Bac Lieu province in protest of the trial. The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights criticized the arrests, stating its concern for "what appears to be increasingly limited space for freedom of expression in Viet Nam".
Amnesty International described the three bloggers as prisoners of conscience, "detained solely for the peaceful exercise of their right to freedom of expression through their online writings", and urged their release.
The International Federation for Human Rights and World Organisation Against Torture also released a joint statement calling on the Vietnamese government to release the three bloggers unconditionally. On 4 October 2012, Panh Than Hai pled guilty and was sentenced to four years in prison in a one-day hearing The Economist described as looking "very much like an old-fashioned Soviet-style show trial".
