Vietnam journalist blames "disastrous misunderstanding" for arrest

       A Vietnamese journalist yesterday blamed a "disastrous misunderstanding" for her recent arrest that sparked an outcry from global press and human rights groups.
       Pham Doan Trang, who wrote for the prominent VietnamNet news website,was one of three online writers who had touched on the sensitive topic of relations with China. All were held for more than one week recently but have been freed.
       Ms Trang said she thought police arrested her outside a Hanoi cafe late last month after a misunderstanding that she was involved in a venture to produce T-shirts with politically sensitive slogans.
       "I was shocked ... I had never thought that I could be arrested some day,especially over a disastrous misunderstanding," Ms Trang said.
       "I was not involved in the effort," she said.
       The shirts called for a halt to a bauxite mining project and declared Vietnamese sovereignty over two South China Sea archipelagos, the Spratlys and Paracels.
       "I was later detained for nine days as the police wanted to know more about my work and my relationships as a reporter," said Ms Trang.
       Police told her "to consider things carefully before writing anything" as a reporter, she said.