A Vietnamese court has sentenced a noodle vendor who became famous for imitating celebrity chef ‘Salt Bae’, to five-and-a-half-years in prison for allegedly mocking a top government official.
According to CNN, the court convicted Bui Tuan Lam, 39, of anti-state propaganda.
The conviction is the latest in what rights groups say is the government’s wide-ranging attempt to silence voices critical of the governing Vietnamese Communist Party.
A video of Lam went viral in November 2021 after a top Vietnamese official was caught on camera eating gold-encrusted steak at the London restaurant of the Turkish chef, Salt Bae, whose real name is Nusret Gökçe.
Lam, who described himself in a Facebook post uploaded with the video as ‘Green Onion Bae’, was arrested late last year. He was convicted last week of ‘making, storing, distributing or disseminating information, documents and items against the state’, the Danang police department said after a one-day trial.
Besides running a beef noodle stall in the city, Lam publicly advocated for democracy in Vietnam and participated in many anti-China and pro-environment protests.
Human Rights Watch deputy Asia director Phil Robertson called on the Vietnamese government to stop prosecuting Lam and others for criticising the Vietnamese Communist Party.
‘The list of posts and videos listed as “evidence” of Bui Tuan Lam’s “crimes” shows the extreme lengths to which the Vietnamese go to block any sort of online criticism of the government’, Robertson said.
‘For the Vietnamese leadership, even songs are a threat to their monopoly of power’, he added.
[Image: Jp16103, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=67566539]