Poor trade-off: Jailed journalists released into exile as Vietnam pushes for weapons deal

In September, Vietnamese blogger Ta Phong Tan was released after serving three years of a 10-year prison term and was immediately flown to Los Angeles. InOctober 2014 Tan’s colleague Nguyen Van Hai, whom she co-founded the Free Journalists Club with in 2007 and who was also imprisoned for his work, followed the same route.

In a blog Hai wrote for CPJ a few months after arriving in Los Angeles, he captured perfectly the bitter-sweet nature of his and Tan’s freedom. “As the plane took off, I looked back at my home country, where I had been held in bitter conditions in communist prisons, and where my friends are still seeking freedom for our country. I had just been released from jail and immediately forced into exile in the U.S.,” he wrote.