A video mocking a Vietnamese official’s lavish meal has landed in jail

This is a story of two meals and two men named Lam. It starts with a joke and ends with a prison sentence.

Two years ago, one of Vietnam’s most powerful officials ate a steak encrusted with 24-carat gold on a trip to London. It was not well received at home – a one-party state that, despite its free-running capitalism and rising inequality, is still ruled by a communist party and officially referred to as a socialist republic.

The official, General To Lam, who heads the powerful Ministry of Public Security, was criticized and ridiculed online. A Vietnamese activist who also runs a noodle stand counterfeited the plated meal by making a video showing him theatrically sprinkling green onions on a bowl of noodles.

On Thursday, the activist, Bui Tuan Lam, was convicted of conducting propaganda against the state and sentenced to more than five years in prison. Authorities in Danang, the central Vietnamese city where he lives, said he was guilty of “creating, storing, distributing or disseminating” anti-state information and materials.

Mr Lam has denied the allegations. His wife, Le Thanh Lam, said in an interview Friday that they were “completely untrue”.

“I don’t see how my husband committed a crime or misconduct, or encroached on anyone’s interests,” she said. “He only exercises freedom of speech and other rights clearly stated in Vietnam’s constitution and laws.”

Ngo Tuan, one of Mr Lam’s lawyers, said the judge in the case forced him to leave the courtroom before he could defend his client. “It seems that some people think that whatever they do to political prisoners is acceptable,” Tuan said.

Reached by telephone on Friday, the judge in the case, Ngo Ha Nam, declined to comment on the verdict.

General Lam’s plated steak and Mr. Lam’s parody of his over-the-top meal were unusual. But the conviction is in line with the usual approach to quelling dissent in one of the world’s few remaining communist dictatorships: Mr Lam, 39, was convicted of a general offense that has over the years killed many other Vietnamese activists in has set the trap.

One of these is Pham Doan Trang, a journalist and activist who was sentenced to nine years in 2021 after being convicted of similar charges faced by Mr Lam.

Mr. Lam’s parody video, filmed at the noodle stand he owns in Danang, was not his first foray into activism. Over the years, he has joined a number of protests over both Vietnam’s government policies and China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea. Mr. Lam, who also goes by the name of Peter Lam Bui, has also posted videos criticizing Vietnamese officials.

But mocking General Lam was particularly risky.

General Lam certainly didn’t expect images of his plated steak to circulate on social media – especially now that many Vietnamese have grown tired of lockdowns and strict rules on masking, quarantines and contact tracing.

Public displays of wealth by Vietnamese officials are also sensitive, in part because Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong has conducted a years-long crackdown on corruption that has trapped a number of top executives.

The 2021 parody video mocked an earlier video posted and later deleted from the TikTok account of Nusret Gokce, a Turkish restaurateur and social media star known by the name Salt Bae.

In the TikTok video, Salt Bae carries what appear to be two golden tomahawk steaks to General Lam’s table at his London restaurant. He then feeds the communist official a piece from the tip of a meat cleaver, earning him a thumbs up.

General Lam had traveled to Britain for a world summit on climate change. In addition to visiting Salt Bae’s restaurant, he also visited the grave of Karl Marx, the 19th-century philosopher who railed against the concentration of wealth.

In the parody, Mr. Lam is the activist seems to mimic Salt Bae’s flamboyant style as he cuts meat and drops green onions into a bowl of bun noodles at his stall. He said at the time that he made the video purely for fun and to get things going.

Before he was sentenced this week, Mr Lam wrote a poem for his wife and three children which she later posted on social media. In it, he said he was undeterred by the prospect of a long stint in prison:

Though my body can bear the weight of the responsibility

My mind remains steadfast as a mountain

Walk upright on this chosen path

For the sake of Vietnam, I am committed.