A Catholic priest jailed for his criticism of Vietnam's human rights record, has had his long prison sentence cut by five years for good behaviour, the Vietnamese said, but diplomats dismissed the move as a hollow gesture.
The People's Court of the northern province of Ha Nam announced its decision on Wednesday to reduce the time Father Thadeus Nguyen Van Ly, 57, will spend behind bars to 10 years.
Diplomats, however, said the move was aimed at appeasing Hanoi's human rights critics, particularly in the United States, and said he should never have been imprisoned in the first place.
Ly, a leading dissident and advocate for freedom of religion and expression, was handed a 15-year jail term, followed by five years' house arrest, on October 19, 2001 for undermining national unity.
His sentence provoked a storm of protest from the United States and human rights groups, which have long charged the communist government with smothering all dissent and jailing democracy activists, critics of the regime and church leaders that it fears could undermine its grip on power.
The army mouthpiece, the Quan Doi Nhan Dan, said the decision to cut Ly's sentence was due "to his good behaviour during his time in jail".
"When a person is still facing a 10-year jail sentence followed by five years of house arrest simply for the peaceful expression of his views, the government doesn't get much credit for such action," said a Western diplomat.
The move followed the June 27 release of Vietnam's most famous Buddhist dissident Thich Quang Do two months earlier than scheduled from a two-year house arrest order.
"The Vietnamese government are becoming much more media savvy and this may all be part of that. I don't buy the government's argument that it is being humane and compassionate," said another diplomat.
"I don't think the timing of these two moves are coincidental either, given the Vietnam Human Rights Act in the United States," he added.
Congress is currently considering legislation that would limit non-humanitarian aid to the Southeast Asian nation until there is an improvement in its rights record.
Political observers say it is unlikely to be passed.
Ly was placed under house arrest in March 2001 after providing written testimony to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom the previous month. He had been barred from travelling to Washington.
The priest -- who led a small parish in the central city of Hue -- had urged the US Congress to delay approval for the July 2000 US-Vietnam bilateral trade agreement until Hanoi eased curbs on religion.
His statements outraged the Vietnamese government, which denounced him as a traitor. The trade pact finally came into force in December 2001.
He was formally arrested in May and charged with violating his house arrest order.
A lifelong critic of Vietnam's record on religious rights, Ly had previously spent 10 years in jail from 1977-78 and 1983-92 "for opposing the revolution and destroying the people's unity".
In late May this year, Vietnamese authorities postponed the trial on espionage charges of three of Ly's relatives, saying they needed more time to prepare the prosecution.
Nguyen Vu Viet and Nguyen Truc Cuong, two nephews of Father Thadeus Nguyen Van Ly, and Nguyen Thi Hoa, his niece, were arrested in June 2001, one month after Ly was taken into custody.
Their crime was to pass on information about their uncle to "reactionary" organizations in the United States. Amnesty International described the charges against them as "vindictive" and "politically motivated". It has called for their immediate release.