Tran Dai Quang, hard-line Vietnamese president, dies

President HONG KONG —

Tran Dai Quang of Vietnam, a former police general who presided over a crackdown on free speech in the one- party state, died Friday, the country’s state-controlled news media reported. He was 61.

The cause of Quang’s death was given as “serious ill- ness” by the official Viet- nam News Agency, which did not include further details. Nguyen Quoc Trieu, a government doctor, was quoted by the state news media as saying that Quang had died of “a rare and serious viral disease” at a military hos- pital in Hanoi, the capital.

Trieu said Quang had fallen ill last July and traveled to Japan six times for treatment.

Vietnam, like China, is governed by an authoritarian Communist Party but promotes a version of state cap- italism. Unlike China, where Xi Jinping is both president and Communist Party chief, Vietnam has a power structure in which responsibilities at the top are split among a party chief, a president who serves as head of state and a prime minister who runs the government.

Of the three roles, the pres- ident is generally considered the least powerful. Quang, however, was among a group of influential hard-liners who took charge in 2016 during a power transfer that occurs within the party every five years. He was also a former chief of the country’s powerful Ministry of Public Secu- rity, which oversees the uniformed police and a network of intelligence agents.

Since 2016, top party offi- cials have used the secu- rity ministry to intensify an anti-corruption purge against some of their com- rades. Some political ana- lysts see that campaign as internal party rivalries spill- ing out into the open, rather than a bona fide project to clean up Vietnam’s systemic corruption.

Several former Vietnamese officials declined to comment on Quang’s death when reached by telephone Friday. But on Facebook, Vietnamese intellectuals spoke of him in withering terms. Many criticized him because he supported the passage of a cybersecurity law in June that would require Facebook and other technology companies to open offices in Vietnam and store “important” user data on local servers. Rights groups say such a move would enable further government repression of political dissidents.

“Since Mr. Tran Dai Quang was highly educated, many people had a lot of hope for him,” human rights lawyer Tran Vu Hai said. But when he took over the security ministry, Hai said, “the situation for dissidents remained the same.”