Vietnamese journalist and human rights activist Pham Doan Trang was sentenced to nine years in prison by a Hanoi court on Tuesday over her conviction of “conducting propaganda against the state.” In their verdict, the judges ruled that Trang’s actions were harmful to society because she had acted “with the intention of violating the socialist regime” and that she should face harsher punishment. “It was such a long sentence, close to the maximum term for such activities,” one of her lawyers, Nguyen Van Mieng, said Trang did not plead guilty at the trial but that they would later discuss a possible appeal. Trang, who published material widely on human rights and alleged police brutality in Vietnam, wrote to Human Rights Watch before her trial that the government of Vietnam had responded in a “heinous manner” to citizens who wrote unpleasant things about the government. “The longer the prison sentence, the …