Three Vietnamese activists were jailed for up to a year and a half Thursday on charges of anti-state activity, their lawyer said, in the latest step against opposition in the country.

Three Vietnamese activists were jailed for up to a year and a half Thursday on charges of anti-state activity, their lawyer said, in the latest step against opposition in the country.

The court in southern Dong Nai province found Pham Minh Vu, Do Nam Trung and Le Thi Phuong Anh guilty of "abusing democratic freedoms to infringe on the interests of the state," lawyer Tran Thu Nam told Agence France Presse.

Vu, the only defendant to deny the charges, was given 18 months in jail while Trung was handed 14 months in jail, and Anh received 12 months, Nam said after the end of the half-day trial.

Of the three defendants, only Le Thi Phuong Anh was well-known as an anti-China activist and a government critic, particularly on foreign policy issues.

The three were arrested in May last year and originally accused of disrupting local traffic in Dong Nai, but the charges were later changed.

Early this week, authorities allowed well-known writer Nguyen Quang Lap and blogger Hong Le Tho, both of whom had been arrested on similar anti-state charges, to be released on bail ahead of the lunar new year holiday, which starts next week.

A number of other high-profile bloggers remain in custody, awaiting trial.

According to Reporters Without Borders, Vietnam is currently holding at least 34 bloggers in prison.