Vietnam releases another detained blogger

Vietnamese police have released a blogger more than a week after detaining her for questioning about postings critical of the government's handling of relations with China, her mother said today.

Vietnamese police have released a blogger more than a week after detaining her for questioning about postings critical of the government's handling of relations with China, her mother said on Sunday.

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Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh was freed on Saturday after police determined her acts "were not serious enough for prosecution," Nguyen Thi Tuyet Lan said by telephone from the southern resort city of Nha Trang.

Police in Nha Trang could not be reached on Sunday. The release of Quynh, 30, who writes under the pen name Me Nam, came a week after police freed another blogger, Bui Thanh Hieu, and online journalist Pham Doan Trang. Police did not comment on their release.

All had denounced the government for its support of a controversial bauxite mine being built in the Central Highlands by a Chinese company. They also criticized the government's handling of territorial disputes with China, Vietnam's powerful northern neighbor, over the Spratly and Paracel archipelagos in the South China Sea.

Quynh was detained Sept 2 for allegedly "abusing the democratic freedoms to infringe on the interests of the state." Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Nguyen Phuong Nga in a regular press briefing Thursday said the two bloggers and the reporter had been detained for alleged violations of national security. "Regrettably, some organizations and individuals have intentionally exaggerated and distorted this issue with ill intention," she said, without being specific.

Earlier this year, the government tightened its rules for bloggers, requiring that they restrict their writings to personal matters.