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Two Vietnamese teachers were sentenced to prison on Wednesday in separate cases for criticizing authorities on social media under vague statutes often used to stifle dissent, people with knowledge of the situation said.

They are the latest examples of how Vietnam systematically suppresses basic freedoms and civil rights.

Duong Tuan Ngoc, 39, was sentenced by the Lam Dong People’s Court to seven years in prison and three years of probation under Article 117 of the country’s Penal Code for disseminating anti-state propaganda and “smearing senior leaders” on his social media accounts.

Retired teacher Nguyen Thu Hang, 62, received a two-year sentence under Article 331 for abusing democratic freedom that violated the interests of the state, rights and the legal interests of organizations and individuals.

She was convicted by the Dong Hoi People’s Court for using personal Facebook accounts to defame a judge who had presided over the land dispute case in which she was involved. She was also accused of streaming such video clips at various provincial offices.

Under the one-party rule of the Communist Party of Vietnam, the government severely restricts rights to freedom of expression, religion, association, peaceful assembly and movement, according to human rights and civil society groups.

“No one should be targeted for comments made on social media criticizing the government,” Josef Benedict, a researcher covering the Asia Pacific region for the CIVICUS Monitor, told RFA via text message.

Health videos

Ngoc, jailed since July 15, 2023, was an online teacher who specialized in macrobiotic diets, which aim to avoid foods containing toxins. He used to post articles and livestream videos about education, health and social issues on his Facebook and YouTube pages.

Police in Lam Dong province in southern Vietnam summoned him and his wife, Bui Thanh Diem Ngoc, on July 10, 2023, to question them about anonymous reports that Ngoc used his Facebook account to sell drugs.

But after Ngoc proved he was innocent, the police initiated a new probe on the charge of distributing anti-state propaganda and arrested him five days later.

Authorities accused the teacher of posting and sharing articles and videos on his Facebook and YouTube accounts that mocked, defamed and criticized the government and the party’s policies, and smeared senior party and state leaders, according to notices Lam Dong Police gave to Ngoc’s family.

A relative, who requested anonymity for safety reasons, told Radio Free Asia that Ngoc’s first-instance trial, which his wife and lawyer were allowed to attend, lasted about two hours on Wednesday morning.

“The defense lawyer did not make a defense case for him but requested sentence litigation, saying that he had a clean criminal record and had performed many charity activities before his arrest,” the person said.

During the trial, Ngoc admitted to having “spoken ill of government officials” but affirmed his wish of “a multiparty and pluralistic regime and an improved political regime,” said the relative.

It appears as though Ngoc will not appeal the verdict because he wants to serve his sentence as soon as possible so he can see his family again and resume work, the person said.

‘Lip service’

Benedict from CIVICUS said Ngoc’s arrest for peaceful expression online is the latest attempt by the Vietnamese regime to stifle peaceful expression, which contravenes the country’s international human rights obligations to protect fundamental freedoms.

He expressed concern over the government’s use of Article 117, which U.N. experts have found overly broad and aimed at silencing those who seek to exercise their right to freely express their views and share information with others.

“These actions are unbecoming of a member of the U.N. Human Rights Council and shows that the government has been only merely paying lip service to human rights and has no intention of respecting and protecting them,” Benedict said.

Vietnam is a current three-year member of the Human Right Council in Geneva, Switzerland, for the 2023-25 term and will seek reelection to the body for the 2026-28 term, despite widespread rights violations.

Ngoc is well-known on social media, and his Facebook page has more than 45,000 followers with an introductory description declaring: “I have rights as a citizen. You have rights as citizens. Citizens are the rightful owners of the country.”

He has two YouTube accounts, one of which features hundreds of videos on health, medicine and life in the countryside, and has nearly 95,000 followers. His other channel has about 39,000 followers and features videos discussing politics, corruption and poor leadership in Vietnam.

Ngoc is the eighth Vietnamese activist convicted this year, and the third to be charged with disseminating “anti-state propaganda” according to an RFA tally.

Retired teacher

Meanwhile, the retired teacher, Nguyen Thu Hang, was sentenced to two years in jail for abusing democratic freedoms to infringe on the interests of the state.

Hang, a resident of Dong Hoi city in Quang Binh province in central Vietnam, previously worked at a middle school in Dong Hoi, and was arrested on Nov. 27, 2023.

Dong Hoi police’s investigation agency said Hang disagreed with a verdict handed down in a civil trial about a land-use rights dispute and a request to annul a land-use rights certificate in which she was a plaintiff.

The agency said that from March to May 2023, Hang repeatedly used her Facebook account to livestream comments on Judge Nguyen Van Ngh, posting videos of herself speaking at the headquarters of Nam Ly ward, Dong Hoi’s Department of Education and Training, and Quang Binh province’s Inspection Department.

A prison in Vietnam’s Thanh Hoa province is refusing to allow the family of political prisoner Nguyen Thi Tam to bring her traditional medicine to treat uterine fibroids, her sister told Radio Free Asia.

Fibroids are growths, which don’t normally develop into cancer but can cause major swelling in the uterus leading to the appearance of pregnancy.

Tam, 52, was arrested in June 2020 on charges of “propaganda against the State” under Article 117 of the criminal code.

The charges related to social media posts about a police attack on Dong Tam commune during which officers shot and killed protester Le Dinh Kinh.

In Dec. 2021, the People’s Court of Hanoi sentenced Tam to six years in prison.

After the appeal was rejected in Aug. 2022, Tam was transferred to serve her sentence at Gia Trung Prison in Gia Lai province, and then to Prison No. 5 in Thanh Hoa from the end of May 2023.

On Monday, Nguyen Thanh Mai told RFA her sister, Tam, was found to be suffering from fibroids in March last year.

She was not treated by an outside medical specialist but only at the prison’s infirmary, which lacked suitable medical equipment.

Her family sent traditional medicine and said Tam’s condition improved after using it. But since October, the prison stopped accepting the pills and dried leaves they sent.

“They said they could not determine the ingredients of the medicine the family sent,” Mai said. “They also said if she got sick she would have a prescription and the family could buy medicine according to the new instructions and send it.”

The medicine, Crinum latifolium, is on a list of 70 medicinal plants approved by Vietnam’s Ministry of Health in 2014, saying it was an “anti-cancer and eliminating fungus” supporting the treatment of cervical cancer,

Mai said the basic medicines given to Tam by the prison hospital had no effect on the fibroids and her sister had been bleeding for 17 consecutive days.

The reporter called Prison No. 5 to verify the information provided by Tam’s family. The unidentified call operator said prisoners can only receive medication with a doctor’s prescription.

“People here have a hospital. When they get sick they go to the hospital,” he said.​​

“As for Vietnamese medicine, we don’t know how it should be taken. There are no instructions on how to take it so how can anyone know?”

The person asked the reporter to come directly to the detention facility to have additional questions answered in person.

Mai said the prison also stopped giving Tam many other items the family sent including cassava flour and green bean powder which the prison canteen doesn’t have or sells at exorbitant prices.

Tam’s cell was searched, her sister said, and many belongings such as diaries, English books and writing materials were confiscated.

On March 29, Tam called her family to talk about mistreatment but a prison officer repeatedly intervened, telling her to “only talk about health issues” and finally hung up the phone.

Amnesty International publicized Tam’s health issues in March 2023, urging the Vietnamese government to urgently provide adequate health care and unconditionally release Tam and other activists. imprisoned for peacefully exercising human rights.

Former prisoner of conscience Dang Thi Hue said conditions in Prison No. 5 are extremely harsh, and poor nutrition caused even healthy inmates to get sick.

Le Thi Ha, the wife of Dang Dang Phuoc, told Project88 that she received a decision by the head of Daklak’s School of Pedagogy to “discipline” the music teacher because he’s convicted of “anti-state propaganda” and is serving an 8-year prison sentence. On the same day that decision was signed (12/21/2023), another decision by the Bureau of Education and Training of Dak Lak was also issued to fire him; however, Le Thi Ha said she only received the latter a few days ago. She added that Phuoc had been receiving only half of his salary between the time he was arrested (Sep. 2022) to Dec. 2023; after Jan. 2024, everything was terminated. On March 25, Ha also received a notification that Phuoc’s electronic devices and data related to the case will be destroyed, and the rest will be returned to her.

Huynh Ngoc Chenh, husband of Nguyen Thuy Hanh, told Project88 that on March 10 he was called to the police station to file paperwork that would allow him to bring Hanh home for cancer treatment, provided that she remain at the residence where she was living at the time of her arrest. However, that apartment had since been leased to another tenant, and the lease would not expire until March 18. Chenh told the police he would try to negotiate with the tenant to end the lease early so his wife could move back to that residence; however, that effort failed. Then on March 17, he called the authorities to let them know that he could take Hanh home on March 18, but received no response from them. Then on March 22, after Hanh’s radiation therapy, the authorities went to K Hospital and read an order to continue Hanh’s “temporary detention” for another three months. She was then taken back to the jail on 2 Thuong Tin St. It is not clear why Hanh’s family was given such false hopes.

Below is a letter from Tran Phuong Thao, wife of imprisoned climate leader Dang Dinh Bach. In it, she alleges Prison No. 6 in Nghe An province deliberately withheld a package of food from Bach, leaving him to have essentially no access to food for two weeks. This serious allegation should be thoroughly investigated by the international community.

Bach, who is serving five years in prison on spurious charges of tax evasion, has been subjected to harsh prison conditions and has undertaken numerous hunger strikes in protest. His family has also faced constant harassment from the Vietnamese authorities, even threatening the confiscation of their home.

---

Hanoi, 13.03.2024 ~

Dear friends, colleagues and international organizations

I came home yesterday (March 12) at 9PM after visiting my husband Đặng Đình Bách in Prison No. 6, Nghe An province. I left home (in Hanoi) at 9PM the day before (March 11), which means twenty three hours on the road to see and talk to Bách through a glass pane for one hour, and to bring him the 5kg of dried vegetarian food allowed by the Vietnamese authorities, vital for his survival.

This letter is going to be short, because there is no amelioration to Bách’s detention situation to report. It has gotten even worse, so bad that I have been feeling suffocated from anxiety for Bách’s health and safety, as the prison seemed to increase their policy of deprivation of food by not handing over the 6kg of food I sent Bách per post on Feb 28.

This food parcel was the only nutrition source Bách would get for the last 2 weeks, as he depends entirely on his family’s supplies to eat vegetarian and safe food. In his last phone call on Feb. 2, Bach had already informed me that he was running out of food.

VN Post recorded that parcel 475790 (sent by me on Feb 28) was delivered on March 4 at 9:25:33 to a prison warden named San. But the parcel never reached Bách, and my husband was left without food for the last 2 weeks.

“Every two or three days, the canteen sold me something,” Bách said, “and my teeth are getting loose.”

Bách would like to thank —

–Ms. Mary Lawlor, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders; Irene Khan, Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, Mr. Clément Nyaletsossi Voule, Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association.; Mr. David Boyd, Special Rapporteur on the issue of human rights obligations relating to the enjoyment of a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment; Mr. Marcos A. Orellana, Special Rapporteur on the implications for human rights of the environmentally sound management and disposal of hazardous substances and wastes; Ms. Priya Gopalan (Chair-Rapporteur), Mr. Matthew Gillett (Vice-Chair on Communications), Ms. Ganna Yudkivska (Vice-Chair on Follow-Up), Ms. Miriam Estrada-Castillo, and Mr. Mumba Malila – Working Group on arbitrary detention,

for urging the Government of Viet Nam to stop targeting, convicting, and mistreating him

  –Chairman Cardin for mentioning him and calling for his release in the Truth to Power series of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee SFRC.

As last week Vietnam and Vanuatu sought advice from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on national climate change obligations, Bách puts his trust in the wisdom and farsightedness of his friends and colleagues to monitor Vietnam’s national commitment on climate change issue.

Bách would like to wish you all endurance, peace of mind, and harmony.

Yours faithfully,

Tran Phuong Thao (Mrs)

Vietnamese state media declared two human rights organisations as terrorist groups on 6 March.

The groups are the North Carolina-headquartered Montagnard Support Group Inc (MSGI) and Montagnard Stand for Justice (MSFJ), which was established in Thailand. Both organisations specialise in defending the rights of the Montagnard minority ethnic group.

The majority of Montagnards are Christians and live in Vietnam’s central highlands. The community has a long history of conflict with the Vietnamese government and have faced intense harassment and intimidation since a June 2023 attack on provincial Communist party offices in Dak Lak that left nine dead, including local party officials and police.

The MSGI and MSFJ are accused of having helped plan the attack in Dak Lak, but leaders of both groups strongly deny these allegations.

The Vietnamese government’s press release named several human rights activists as terrorists and threatened that anyone working with them would face similar charges. It went on to give the personal home addresses of several key human rights figures in Thailand and the US.

CSW's Founder President Mervyn Thomas said: ‘The government of Vietnam is endangering the lives of human rights defenders by naming them and sharing their addresses on state media, which poses an immediate security concern and is clearly intended to silence, harass and intimidate. The government of Vietnam is an authoritarian state that is paranoid that the world will know the true nature of their control and repression of religious and ethnic minorities, and this is further evidence of its lack of inhibitions in participating in transnational repression against activists who are simply exercising their right to freedom of expression. CSW rejects the designation of the MSGI and MSFJ as terrorist organisations and we call on the Vietnamese government to recognise human rights groups as legitimate voices in any healthy civil society.’

A court in Vietnam on Tuesday sentenced a man to eight years in prison for managing a Facebook page that shared news and content that authorities said was against the state.

Nguyen Van Lam, 33, was the administrator of “The Diary of Patriots,” a page on Meta’s social media platform that authorities said defamed and smeared Vietnam's senior leaders.

Lam was convicted in the Tien Giang People’s Court in southern Vietnam of “making, storing, disseminating, propagandizing anti-state information and materials” under Article 117 of Vietnam’s Penal Code, which is criticized by rights groups as being an intentionally vague law that allows Hanoi to stifle dissent.

According to the indictment, Lam, a native of Vinh Hoa commune, Vinh Loc district in Thanh Hoa province, regularly visited websites and social media pages to read posts and articles with bad content and therefore developed a “hostile and anti-state” attitude.

He used the Facebook account “Nguyễn Lâm” to put up 19 posts with content distorting and defaming the system of one-party rule in Vietnam, it said..

There are multiple pages on Facebook with the same name, and Lam may have had connections to more than one of them, state media said.

One of the “Diary of Patriots” pages had more than 800,000 followers.

The earliest page was created in 2011, at the beginning of widespread demonstrations against China’s claims and aggressiveness in the South China Sea. Though Vietnam upholds its own claims, it often stifles anti-China dissent.

Restricting freedom of speech

The arrest was aimed at punishing those who had “created a forum for people to discuss and share multifaceted information in the spirit of freedom of speech,” said a member of that page who wished to remain anonymous for security reasons.

“I am against the punishments against those who exercise human rights and promote human rights values,” he told RFA Vietnamese in a text message, saying that he did not know Lam personally.

He called on Vietnamese authorities to adopt the world’s “civilized standards,” and said that the international community has a responsibility not to ignore Vietnam’s crackdowns on activists while supporting Hanoi’s bid to stay on the U.N. Human Rights Council.

State media reports did not include information about Lam’s arrest.

RFA attempted to find details about his arrest by contacting the Tien Giang provincial police department, but staff who answered the phone refused to respond to queries.

Lam did nothing criminal by managing pages on social media, said Phil Robertson, Deputy Asia Director for New York-based Human Rights Watch.

“He should be immediately and unconditionally released,” Robertson said. “Sadly, it looks like Vietnam’s leaders will not stop this crackdown until they have imprisoned every last activist in the country.”

In July 2023, Ho Chi Minh City police arrested Phan Tat Thanh, who was allegedly the former administrator of “The Diary of Patriots” page, charging him with “propaganda against the state” under Article 117.

RFA’s database shows that since January 2024, the Vietnamese government has arrested six activists on the same charges and sentenced one to six years in prison for the same accusation.

Two ethnic Khmer Krom activists who were arrested last year on suspicion of distributing books about indigenous peoples’ rights were sentenced to prison on Wednesday by a Vietnamese court.

Nearly 1.3-million Khmer Krom live in a part of Vietnam that was once southeastern Cambodia. They have faced serious restrictions on freedom of expression, assembly and movement.

The Cau Ngang District People’s Court in southern Vietnam’s Tra Vinh province convicted To Hoang Chuong, 38, and Thach Cuong, 37, of “abusing democratic freedoms” under Article 331, a section of the penal code used by the government to silence dissenting voices.

Chuong received a four-year sentence and Cuong was given three-and-a-half years in prison, state media reported.

Last month, a court in neighboring Soc Trang province sentenced Danh Minh Quang, 34, to three-and-a-half years in prison on the same charge.

Quang was arrested in July 2023 as part of the same investigation as Chuong and Cuong.

Police in both provinces told local media that the men passed out copies of the United Nations’ “Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,” which states that indigenous peoples have the right to maintain and develop their political, economic and social systems or institutions.

Prosecutors last month said that Quang used his personal Facebook account to post comments and live-stream videos that “violated Vietnam laws.”

The indictments for Cuong and Chuong also accused them of using their Facebook accounts to live-stream videos and to post and share photos and video clips, according to the Tra Vinh newspaper.

The contents of the articles, photos and video clips “affected the national and religious unity, distorted the history of Vietnam and the authorities and insulted the prestige” of police and local authorities, according to the Tra Vinh provincial Department of Information and Culture.

‘The reality of suppression’

A Khmer Krom resident of Vietnam who follows Chuong on Facebook told Radio Free Asia on condition of anonymity that he never saw any posts from Chuong that opposed the Vietnamese government.

“They reflected the reality of suppression against the Khmer community in southern Vietnam,” he said.

There was no information about whether Chuong and Cuong had a defense attorney present during Wednesday’s trial.

Khmer Kampuchea Krom for Human Rights and Development Association Secretary General Son Chum Chuon said the severe sentences were unfair and were particularly unjust if the two men were tried without access to a lawyer.

“These allegations are contrary to their actual activities,” he told RFA. “That is why we urged the Vietnamese government or the court to give them a lawyer.”

Josef Benedict, Asia Pacific civil space advocacy expert for rights group CIVICUS, called Wednesday’s convictions “an outrageous travesty of justice.”

“Both were targeted for their advocacy of the rights of the Khmer Krom community and should have never been brought to court,” he said.

Human Rights Watch Deputy Asia Director Phil Robertson called the charges “bogus,” saying they were designed to stop the Khmer Krom activists exercising their civil and political rights.

"Article 331 is a perfect example of the total injustice perpetrated by the government because they can use this charge to criminalize virtually anything the authorities don't like,” he said.

“The lapdog Vietnamese courts do whatever they are told to do by the ruling party, and the ordinary Khmer Krom people who stand up for their communities, their religion and their culture have no chance to escape being sent to prison.”

A Vietnamese activist, accused of “propaganda against the State” is being denied access to a lawyer, his family told Radio Free Asia.

Phan Tat Thanh, 38, has been detained since July 2023, charged under Article 117 of the criminal code.

Prosecutors say he used three Facebook accounts to post and distribute content, “propagating information and documents with distorted content, causing confusion among the people, and fabricating and defaming the Communist Party of Vietnam.”

Thanh’s family have been able to meet him twice at a police detention center in Ho Chi Minh City, the first time on Feb. 16, 2024, and the second time on March 15.

Thanh told them that after a detention order expired police investigators issued a second order which lasted until Feb. 7.

Even though the police finished their investigation and transferred the case file to the City Procuracy, Thanh said he had not been allowed to meet the lawyer – Tran Dinh Dung – his family hired for him.

“Lawyer Dung went through all the procedures to request access to the files and contact Thanh. He doesn’t understand why the Procuracy and Security Investigation Department were completely silent and did not respond to him,” Thanh’s father Phan Tat Chi said on Wednesday.

The law states that defense lawyers should be allowed to participate in legal proceedings after the investigation has finished, even in cases relating to alleged violations of national security.

It also stipulates that lawyers are allowed to access documents related to the defense after the end of the investigation in order to take notes and make copies.

Ha Huy Son of the Hanoi Bar Association told RFA lawyers can file a complaint, asking the Procuracy to explain the reason for not allowing the lawyer to contact the client, and can use this to prove prosecutors failed to follow the correct procedures.

Thanh told his father investigators couldn’t find any evidence to convict him and didn’t appear to have any documents to support their case.

He also said he had been beaten by many of the policemen at the detention center.

RFA called the Ho Chi Minh City Procuracy to ask about Mr. Thanh’s case. The person on the phone said the reporter needed to come to the agency, or send a text in order to receive a reply.

Phan Tat Thanh is one of six Facebookers arrested on charges of “anti-state propaganda” last year.

Vietnamese authorities on Thursday arrested and charged two Facebook bloggers for “abusing democratic freedoms to infringe the interests of the state” for posting comments about the handling of a case of a death row inmate, Vietnamese media reported.

The Security Investigation Agency of the Binh Duong provincial police charged Nguyen Duc Du and Hoang Quoc Viet under Article 331 of Vietnam’s Penal Code, saying their social media posts about death row inmate Ho Duy Hai being unjustly sentenced had insulted judiciary agencies.

Their cases bring to five the number of people who have been prosecuted under Article 331, a law that rights groups say authorities regularly use to suppress dissent or criticism of the government.

Authorities arrested and temporarily detained Du, 48, while they banned Viet, 46, from leaving his residential area. Both live in Binh Duong province in southern Vietnam.

The Public Security Ministry’s People’s Public Security Newspaper reported that police said Du and Viet published many social media posts with content that distorted, slandered and defamed agencies and individuals – without specifying the content of their posts.

The prosecution of the two bloggers also illustrates the lengths that authorities will go to to silence critics for comments they made or social media posts they wrote in the past.

Nguyen Van Dai, who used to work as a lawyer in Hanoi for many years, said social media platforms have been full of information defending and demanding justice for Ho Duy Hai since 2008.

Hai was arrested in March 2008 and convicted nine months later of robbery and the murder of two postal employees in Long An province. He was sentenced to five years in prison for the theft and given the death penalty for the murders, despite a lack of crucial evidence and irregularities in how the case was handled.

In 2020, the Supreme People’s Court rejected a request by the Supreme People’s Procuracy to reinvestigate the case, prompting Hai’s family members to petition lawmakers over his death sentence. That petition has not been addressed, and Hai, now 39, is still on death row.

The prosecution of Du and Viet is a crackdown on freedom of speech and was carried out to serve the political purposes of several officials in the judiciary system, Dai said.

“The arrest and detention of the two individuals who posted information concerning the Ho Duy Hai case on social media is nothing more than suppression, as the information [they posted] has been available for a long time,” Dai said.

Numerous democratic countries and human rights groups have called on Hanoi to repeal or amend Article 331, along with Article 117, arguing they are abused to stifle dissent.

In a separate case, Le Thanh Lam, wife of political prisoner Bui Tuan Lam, also known as “Spring Onion Bae,” wrote on her Facebook account that police in Da Nang had fined her and seized the foods that she sold to make a living, claiming that these goods did not have proper invoices declaring their origins. After her husband was arrested and imprisoned, Thanh Lam, a mother of three, started to sell local snacks and condiments on social media to earn extra income.

However, on Feb. 2, a market inspection team of the Da Nang Police Department approached Lam when she delivered goods to a customer, confiscating all her products worth about 2 million dong ($82). On Feb. 19, the inspection department summoned Lam, fining her another 1.5 million dong for “selling undocumented goods.”

Thanh Lam believed the police had selectively targeted her because her husband, Bui Tuan Lam, is a political prisoner. She said that after she was forcefully taken to a police station for trying to attend the public trial of her husband in May 2023, a Da Nang public security officer pointed his finger at her face, telling her that he would not leave her and her daughters alone, implying that the police would continue to intimidate and harass them due to their peaceful resistance.

Human rights lawyer Dang Dinh Manh on Feb. 20 wrote on social media that Ngo Oanh Phuong, an influential Facebook user, had been banned from traveling abroad and that she had been summoned by the Ho Chi Minh City Police Department for posting information critical of the conglomerate Vingroup.

According to Manh, Phuong, a businesswoman with thousands of followers on her Facebook account, often engages in charity work and raises concerns on different social issues. Phuong learned she was prohibited from traveling outside Vietnam in early October last year when she boarded a flight at Tan Son Nhat Airport in Ho Chi Minh City.

Later, the Security Investigation Agency of Ho Chi Minh City Police summoned Phuong twice for questioning, on Jan. 19 and Jan. 30, stating that they had received a defamation complaint filed against her by Vingroup. Manh added that he could not access Phuong’s Facebook account, which she used as a platform to publish opinions and commentaries criticizing the business model of Vingroup - a crony conglomerate owned by Vietnam’s richest man, Pham Nhat Vuong.

Previously, in Dec. 2023, Tran Mai Son, a social media commentator known by his pen name “Sonnie Tran,” was allegedly detained by the Ho Chi Minh Police Department for days for questioning about his criticisms of the company. The account “Sonnie Tran” has over 3,000 followers on Facebook.

Son, an ardent critic of VinFast, the automobile subsidiary of Vingroup, frequently inquires about the company’s finances and suggests that it uses shell companies to hide debt and inflate its sales figures. Anonymous sources told VOA News that following the detention, the police confiscated all of Son’s electronic devices, interrogated him for 35 hours over four separate days, and threatened to charge him with Article 331 for “abusing democratic freedoms.”

In 2021, VinFast reported Tran Van Hoang, a customer and a local YouTuber, to the police after he posted a video complaining about the quality of his VinFast vehicle on his YouTube account. The company said Hoang’s complaints were made up to hurt its reputation, and its lawyers had “sufficient grounds to prove it is not just a normal complaint.” The Vietnam-owned automaker added that if a similar incident occurred when operating in the United States, they “will also submit a request to the authorities in accordance with local law.”

Trinh Thi Nhung, the wife of Bui Van Thuan, told Project88 that during the Tet holidays she was suddenly summoned to the police station on Feb. 16 without a reason. Once there, they showed her a Facebook account using her name but which had been created only one day earlier; the account contained posts that could potentially be deemed “anti-state propaganda.” She denied it was hers and refused to sign an affidavit. Since that day, the police have allegedly been posting men around her house. She reported that unknown men wearing face masks have also been following her and her young child everywhere. At night, they even allegedly asked her neighbors to shine their lights on her house “all through the night.”

Activist Trinh Dinh Hoa reported to Project88 that he was abducted on Jan. 30 and interrogated for hours by Hanoi police. Three days earlier, while on his delivery route near the Ministry of Public Security, Hoa saw a large group of land rights protesters and stopped to take some photos, which he later posted on social media. On the day he was abducted, he got a delivery order to an address next to the police station of Buoi Ward. As soon as he got there, he was allegedly forced by a group of non-uniformed police into the station for questioning. Hoa was kept there from 11:30 a.m. until 2 p.m. The police focused their questioning on three videos he had posted about police abuse in 2016, the BOT protests in 2018, and a public gathering near Ho Chi Minh’s tomb in 2021. Before releasing Hoa, they asked him to sign an affidavit admitting that the Facebook account “Hoa DT” belonged to him, which he refused to do.

Trinh Dinh Hoa became an activist in 2015 when he participated in a memorial for soldiers killed by the Chinese Navy at Johnson Reef in 1988. In 2016, he joined protests for protection of trees in Hanoi and later against the Formosa environmental disaster. Then in 2018, he became actively involved in the nationwide protests against the proposed Cybersecurity Law. During those years, Hoa also attended–or tried to attend–the trials of other activists. In 2017, he was beaten by police and had his ID card and phone confiscated outside the courthouse where Tran Thi Nga was sentenced to eight years in prison for disseminating “anti-state propaganda.” During the Dong Tam trials in 2019, his home was monitored by police for an entire week. Hoa also participated in the translating of two books – one about the Formosa incident and the other about anti-democratic elections in Vietnam. Since 2019, however, Hoa has remained low-key and works as a deliveryman for a restaurant in Hanoi.

The Security Investigation Agency of the Ho Chi Minh City Police Department has issued a third summons for Ngo Thi Oanh Phuong, an influential Facebook user and a critic of conglomerate Vingroup, saying that they received a defamation complaint filed against her by Vingroup, according to a recent Facebook posting of human rights lawyer Dang Dinh Manh.

Previously, Manh wrote on social media that the police had twice summoned Phuong, also known by her Facebook name Phuong Ngo, on Jan. 19 and Jan. 30. In the third summons, dated Feb. 26, they told her to come to the security investigation headquarters on March 4 to question her relations with Tran Mai Son, another critic of Vingroup, and to resolve the defamation report submitted by the conglomerate.

Manh said that Phuong did not come to the previous questioning sessions because she said she was busy. He suggested that if she were absent this time, the investigation agency would issue a warrant to search for her, similar to the warrants the Long An Provincial Police Department filed against him and other human rights lawyers, Nguyen Van Mieng and Dao Kim Lan, last year.

According to Manh, no legal provisions allow Vietnamese investigators to search for people who do not respond to summons. Attorneys Manh, Mieng, and Lan fled to the United States late last year after Long An Provincial Police issued warrants to search for them after they were accused of violating Article 331 of the Penal Code, which concerns “abusing democratic freedoms.”

The Hanoi Police Department on Feb. 29 detained and searched the house of activist and blogger Nguyen Chi Tuyen to investigate his alleged engagement in “distributing anti-state propaganda,” a violation of Article 117 of the Penal Code.

Nguyen Thi Anh Tuyet, Tuyen’s wife, confirmed her husband's detention on the same day, adding that he would be held at Hanoi Detention Center No. 2 for four months during the investigation period. The police also confiscated his cell phone, a laptop, and some of his handwritten notes.

Tuyet said that the previous afternoon, her husband received a summons from the Hanoi Police Department to come in for questioning, but he declined to go because he felt unwell. Last January, the police sent Tuyen a notice informing him that he was prohibited from traveling outside Vietnam.

Tuyen, who is also known by his blog name “Anh Chi,” is a renowned environmental activist, blogger, and human rights defender who often participated in demonstrations against China’s excursions in Vietnam’s maritime territories. He also established two YouTube channels, Anh Chí Râu Đen and AC Media, that discuss social issues in Vietnam and report on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Because of his activism, Tuyen became a target of harassment and surveillance by Vietnamese security. In 2015, he was hospitalized after being beaten by strangers, possibly plainclothes police.

Independent journalist and former political prisoner Nguyen Vu Binh has been arrested again. On the morning of Feb. 29, the 56-year-old Binh was summoned to the police headquarters in Hanoi to discuss the YouTube channel TNT Media Live, which he and lawyer Nguyen Van Dai (currently in exile) worked on together from 2021 to 2022. After the meeting with the police, Binh was taken back to his apartment where the police formally arrested him and searched his residence. Nguyen Thi Phong, his sister, who witnessed the arrest, told Project88 that when she went to the police station on March 4 to retrieve Binh’s motorbike, she was told verbally that he had been charged with conducting “anti-state propaganda” under Article 117. She said she was not shown anything in writing. The police said Binh will be held at Detention Center No.1 in Hanoi for four months while they investigate his case.

Four months is the maximum amount of time by law that authorities can detain a suspect; however, they can file for multiple extensions which can stretch the detention period to years, as has happened to many political prisoners in the past. Phong said that her brother had been “invited” to visit the police many times in the past year. She added that it was thus reasonable to assume that the police have been following his activities for some time now, and that the need to “investigate” Binh was just a legal fig leaf in order to detain him for as long as the law allows. Binh is no stranger to the Ministry of Public Security. He worked for The Communist Magazine for 10 years before joining RFA in the early 2000s. He was convicted in September 2002 and sentenced to seven years in prison for “espionage” – that is, for exposing the party’s dirty secrets. Under international pressure, Binh was released early in 2007. He was awarded the Hellman-Hammett Prize by Human Rights Watch in 2002 and again in 2007 for his courageous activism.

Vietnam police have been summoning the wives of political prisoners for questioning over the past week, leading one lawyer to suggest that the Ministry of Public Security has launched a new harassment campaign against relatives of prisoners of conscience.

According to information obtained by Radio Free Asia, police summoned the wives of four prisoners this week: Trinh Thi Nhung, wife of Bui Van Thuan; Le Thi Ha, wife of Dang Dang Phuoc; Do Thi Thu, wife of Trinh Ba Phuong; and Nguyen Thi Tinh, wife of Nguyen Nang Tinh.

The women were questioned about their social media activities.

They also summoned Nguyen Thi Mai, daughter of female prisoner Nguyen Thi Tam.

The five prisoners are serving sentences of between five and 10 years, all for the crime of “propaganda against the state.”

On Tuesday, police also summoned Le Thi Kieu Oanh, wife of former prisoner Pham Minh Hoang, following her trip to France to see her husband.

In 2017, Hoang was stripped of his Vietnamese citizenship and deported after serving a 17-month prison sentence for “activities aimed at overthrowing the government.”

Questioned about Facebook Trinh Thi Nhung was summoned for questioning by the Nghi Son Town Police in Thanh Hoa province on Wednesday morning.

They said they believed she had used the Facebook account “Nhung Trinh” to sign a petition calling for the release of human rights activist Nguyen Thuy Hanh, who has cancer and is being held in a secure mental facility.

Nhung told the police the account was not hers and refused to sign a statement.

Do Thi Thu was asked to visit Ha Dong District Police in Hanoi on Thursday, also in connection with Facebook but she refused.

“I’m not going to meet them there because they've invited me so many times about the same thing,” she said.

“The investigator asked me if the [Thu Do] Facebook account was mine.

“They told me not to share articles related to prisoners of conscience.”

Le Thi Ha was summoned by the Internal Security Department of Dak Lak Provincial Police.

They asked her to come in on Thursday to provide information about her use of social media. She told RFA she would attend even though she doesn’t have a Facebook account.

“I find it annoying,” she told RFA Vietnamese. “It affects my job because I work all day at school and have no time to rest.”

Human rights lawyer Nguyen Van Miem wrote on Facebook, "There seems to be a campaign to harass the wives of prisoners of conscience."

Josef Benedict, Asia Pacific civil space advocacy expert for rights group CIVICUS also criticized Vietnam for harassing families of political prisoners.

"The Vietnamese government must halt the shameful and vindictive campaign of harassment against the wives of political prisoners for their social media posts,” he said.

“Prisoners’ families should not be targeted simply because they seek justice for their loved ones .

Instead they should be able to exercise their basic right to freedom of expression peacefully without fear of reprisal.”

According to Amnesty International, Vietnam currently has more than 250 political prisoners.

Hanoi always claims it has no political prisoners, only those convicted of crimes.

A court in Vietnam’s Soc Trang province has sentenced an ethnic Khmer Krom man to three-and-a-half years in prison for “abusing democratic freedoms” under Article 331 of the country’s criminal code, state-controlled media reported.

Prosecutors said Wednesday that Danh Minh Quang, 34, used his personal Facebook account to post comments and live-stream videos which “violated Vietnam laws.”

Quang set up the account in Dec. 2018 and the prosecution claimed that from 2021 to July 2023 there were 51 comments, photos and videos that had “contents that were negative, propaganda and distorted realities for defaming the honor and dignity of State officials.”

Quang was arrested by Soc Trang Provincial Police on July 31, 2023 along with Thach Chuong and To Hoang Chuong.

All three were prosecuted on charges of “abusing democratic freedoms to infringe on State interests, legitimate rights and interests of organizations and individuals.”

Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch , called for authorities to drop all charges against Quang and immediately release him.

“The government of Soc Trang province shamelessly trampled on the right of freedom of expression and retaliated against a citizen for simply stating his politically independent views on social media,” Robertson said in a statement on Feb. 11.

“The National Assembly of Vietnam should urgently amend the penal code and repeal rights-abused articles, including Aticle 331, which is systematically being used by the Vietnamese government to violate rights of ordinary people across the country,” he said.

Nearly 1.3-million Khmer Krom live in a part of Vietnam that was once southeastern Cambodia. They have faced serious restrictions on freedom of expression, assembly and movement.

In August last year, community members living in the U.S. organized a demonstration in front of the Vietnamese Embassy in Washington DC to protest the policy of oppressing the Khmer Krom people and demanding the release of the three men.

Prison authorities have refused to sell jailed Vietnamese prisoner of conscience Tran Huynh Duy Thuc food from the facility’s canteen, a week after he voluntarily ended a hunger strike, members of his family said Wednesday.

Convicted in 2010 on charges of plotting to overthrow the government, Thuc is serving a 16-year sentence for writing online articles criticizing Vietnam’s one-party communist state.

Thuc is now in the final year of his sentence, counting the time of his detention in 2009, and is in poor health. He has staged other hunger strikes in the past to protest conditions at Prison No. 6 in Nghe An province. He began his latest hunger strike on Jan. 27.

In Vietnam, prisoners are fed basic prison food, but can also buy higher quality food from the canteen, and inmates are allowed to receive non-perishable food from their families. But it’s not unusual for jail authorities to deprive political prisoners of canteen food, hot water, medicine and outside health care as a means of further punishment.

Thuc ended his hunger strike on Feb. 2 after canteen workers finally sold him something to eat. But a week later, they again refused to sell him food, saying that he had exceeded the monthly limit for purchases, even though he had not bought enough to meet his dietary needs, his relatives told Radio Free Asia, two days after a prison visit on Feb. 12.

Canteen workers said Thuc purchases exceeded the monthly limit of 1.7 million dong (US$70), and he could only buy more food beginning in March, according to his family.

Thuc has only one package of instant noodles and about 8 kilograms (18 pounds) of other food his relatives gave him on Monday.

Tran Huynh Duy Tan, Thuc’s younger brother, said the family was happy when Thuc ended his hunger strike, but now they are worried about the possibility that he will resume it. They also expressed concern that the food they gave him will only last a few days.

“The family is very worried that he will continue to not have enough food,” Tan said. “He said he would continue to protest by going on another hunger strike if the prison continued to mistreat him, as it is doing now.”

RFA was unable to reach prison officials for comment.

During his recent hunger strike, Thuc became exhausted and lost consciousness, his family said. He also complained of being constantly cold, although he had not complained previously about the winter weather in Nghe An.

Thuc’s family called on Vietnamese authorities as well as human rights organizations and the governments of democratic countries to pressure the prison to stop treating Thuc harshly.

Prison authorities have continued to restrict access to hot water for Thuc and his cellmate, fellow political prisoner Dang Dinh Bach, Thuc’s relatives said.

Bach, a lawyer and the director of the environmental group that had been campaigning to reduce Vietnam’s reliance on coal, was arrested in July 2021 and sentenced to five years for “tax evasion.”

When the warden said Thuc could only exchange instant noodles for boiling water because the amount of water was limited, Thuc refused, his family said.

The correctional authorities of Gia Trung Prison in Gia Lai Province have disciplined prisoner of conscience Truong Van Dung for allegedly insulting prison personnel. Dung’s wife, Nghiem Thi Hop, told Radio Free Asia (RFA) about his punishment. Dung is serving a six-year prison sentence on accusations of “distributing anti-state propaganda,” a violation of Article 117 in Vietnam’s Penal Code.

According to Gia Trung Prison, Dung will not be allowed visitations or to receive supplies and handwritten mail from his family for a month, starting from Jan. 16. Hop said she was worried about Dung as the Lunar New Year, a national holiday in Vietnam, was approaching. The prison added that after the punishment concludes on Feb. 17, Dung can only see his family once every two months, instead of once a month, until he is “progressively rehabilitated.”

On Jan. 3, Dung’s family sent some gifts to him in prison, including a poster prepared by the Viet Tan Party, which is deemed a “terrorist organization” by the Vietnamese government. The organization named Dung the recipient of its 2023 Le Dinh Luong Human Rights Award. When the parcel containing the poster arrived a week later, the warden examined it and then refused to let Dung receive it. A tense argument broke out between him and the correctional officers, leading to disciplinary action.

According to a notice from Gia Trung Prison dated Jan. 17, Truong Van Dung was disciplined for “insulting the honor and dignity of others,” but they did not elaborate on what he said. On Nov. 9, 2023, Dung was transferred from An Diem Prison in Quang Nam Province to Gia Trung Prison in Gia Lai Province, hundreds of miles from his home in Hanoi. The Vietnamese authorities often send human rights activists to prisons far from their homes to make it difficult for family members to visit them often.

A Vietnam court in Phu Yen Province on Jan. 26 sentenced Nay Y Blang, a Rhade religious activist, to four and a half years in prison on charges of “abusing democratic freedoms” for allegedly holding unauthorized spiritual services in his home, state media reported. Blang did not have a lawyer defending him.

Blang, 48, was arrested on May 18, 2023, for his alleged engagement in the Central Highlands Evangelical Church of Christ, an indigenous religious organization that the Vietnamese government has banned. According to the state media, the Rhade religious activist has “admitted his wrongdoing and has asked for leniency.”

The Communist authorities in Vietnam have called this Protestant group a “foreign-based reactionary organization” that purportedly seeks to “incite ethnic minority groups in the Central Highlands and the surrounding areas to erode the national solidarity bloc, trigger secession, and promote the establishment of a separate state.” The indictment of Blang said that from the end of 2019 to 2022, he used his private home in Phu Yen to gather key figures of this religious sect for meetings and prayer sessions and hosted other online Christian fellowships.

Pastor Aga, the North Carolina-based founder of the Protestant sect, told RFA that his group is purely religious and that they do not conduct any anti-state activities nor attempt to establish a separate state. “We just want to express our religious beliefs, our religion, to worship God and follow the religion that suits us while still following the laws of the Vietnamese government,” Pastor Aga said.

Prisoner of conscience Nguyen Nhu Phuong told his family that he coughed up blood and had suffered pain after being assaulted by the correctional officers of the Ba Ria - Vung Tau Provincial Police Detention Camp in Long Dien District, according to Phuong’s mother, Nguyen Thi Thu Ha. In 2022, two Vietnamese courts sentenced Phuong to a sentence of six years and three months on combined charges of “distributing anti-state propaganda” and “storing and using narcotics.”

Ha told RFA that the assaults began on Nov. 20, 2023, after she visited the detention camp and gave her son two shirts. However, Phuong said he did not receive them even though the shirts were shown in the gift receipt record. After that, he went to meet the correctional officers to ask them about these items, but the officer reportedly cursed and beat him.

Phuong told Ha that a correctional officer named Nhat used a glass bottle to hit him in the face, and then several other officers rushed in to beat him and lock him in an isolated room. Ha added that her son was also punished by not being allowed family visits in December 2023. When she called Nhat to question the beating of her son, the officer allegedly admitted that the beating happened, but it was because Phuong "spoke rudely" to him and asked her to forgive the beating.

Ha told RFA that on Jan. 8, she went directly to the Ba Ria - Vung Tau Provincial Police Detention Camp to inquire about the incident. A detention supervisor named Luan apologized to her and asked her not to make a big deal of this incident. The officer named Nhat and the provincial detention camp did not immediately respond to RFA reporters' request to verify the incident.

Police in Hanoi have detained a former member of a YouTube channel on which videos about those who had suffered injustices were posted, his wife told Radio Free Asia on Tuesday.

Authorities apprehended Phan Van Bach, a former member of the CHTV channel, an independent television channel on YouTube specializing in social injustice issues, from his home in the capital’s Dong Da district on Dec. 29. They have held him for five days without informing his family, his spouse Nguyen Thi Lieu said.

Bach, 48, was involved in the channel from 2017 to 2019, according to Vu Manh Tuan, another CHTV member who now lives in Nha Trang city.

“Bach did not focus on any particular subjects,” he told RFA. “He used to conduct talks in an improvisational way. He used to talk about the bad things of the regime and society. Then, Bach announced he was quitting CHTV.”

It is common for security forces in the one-party communist state to detain activists for days of interrogation before publicly disclosing their arrest warrants and charges.

Lieu said her husband was home alone at the time of his arrest, and before leaving with authorities, gave his house keys to a police officer in charge of the residential area to hand over to his family.

That officer told Lieu that city police searched their home but confiscated nothing.

“The neighborhood police officer said that my husband had been ‘invited’ to a meeting by the city police,” Lieu said. “I went there [to city police headquarters] the next day to ask about my husband, but the staff said I’d better just leave my phone number, and their agency would contact me later.”

As of Tuesday, the family had not received any updates from police.

No word

During the past few days, Lieu dropped by city police headquarters multiple times only to receive the same response. She said she didn’t know why police were still holding her husband.

“Previously, they summoned him for meetings several times but let him return home on the same day,” she said. “However, this time [is different].”

RFA could not reach the neighborhood police officer for comment.

A staffer at the Hanoi police hotline said the service did not have information about Bach’s detention.

Bach participated in several peaceful demonstrations in Hanoi, including protests against China’s aggressive activities in the South China Sea since 2011, tree cutting in 2015, and the environmental disaster caused by a toxic waste spill that affected Vietnam’s central coastal area in 2016.

He also spoke up against government crackdowns on political dissidents, supported people facing injustice via Facebook, and took part in campaigns demanding the release of detained activists.

Founded by prisoner of conscience Vu Quang Thuan, CHTV covered hot-button socioeconomic issues in Vietnam.

Thuan along with members Le Van Dung and Le Trong Hung are in prison on charges of disseminating anti-state propaganda because of their involvement in CHTV.

Former CHTV member Tuan said police also summoned and questioned him about the YouTube channel, but released him the same day.

When visiting friends and some activists in the Central Highland province of Lam Dong in late December 2018, Bach was injured during a beating by local security forces, and then forced to return to Hanoi, said activist Pham The Luc.

In recent years, Bach worked with a company that sends Vietnamese people abroad as guest workers, according to information on his Facebook account.

Former political prisoner Pham Thanh Nghien, who emigrated to the United States with her husband earlier this year, reported that HCMC Police have surrounded their former neighborhood, Loc Hung Vegetable Garden in Binh Thanh District, which for years has been a contentious flashpoint against land-grabbing by the authorities. Since Dec. 6, work trucks have been bringing dirt, sand and other construction material to the site. Ambulances, fire trucks and frequency-jamming vehicles have been stationed in two schools near the area. All roads going in and out are monitored and controlled by police. Several people who live right outside Loc Hung have also been ordered not to leave their homes.

Political prisoner Nguyen Ngoc Anh’s wife, Nguyen Thi Chau, continues to be “invited” by Ben Tre provincial police in Binh Dai County to “receive guidance on fire prevention for small businesses and other related matters.” The latest “invitation” was on Dec. 8, with the previous one delivered on Dec. 4. Chau told the police to stop sending her these invitations because it causes her stress and she would not comply the next time.

The Internal Political Security Department of the Tra Vinh Provincial Police on Dec. 23 said it had issued a fine to Thach Tha, 56, and Kim Vu Linh, 33, both Khmer residents of Tra Cu District, Tra Vinh Province, for allegedly “posting and sharing false information” to “distort, slander and insult the reputation of government agencies and organizations,” according to the official announcement.

The Tra Vinh Provincial Police concluded that since 2022, Thach Tha had used his personal Facebook account to participate in online discussions organized by groups deemed as “reactionary,” which, according to Vietnamese authorities, share distorted information about the history of the southern region and seek to divide the “great national unity bloc.”

One specific incident occurred on Nov. 24, when Thach Tha shared on his personal Facebook account a 7:29-minute video clip from a social media page that allegedly accused the authorities of Vinh Long Province and its police forces of using brute force to crack down on religious freedom. The Tra Vinh Police Newspaper stated that during the questioning regarding the online posting on Dec. 21, Thach Tha admitted that the content in the video clip was “untrue.”

Meanwhile, the police alleged that Kim Vu Linh, another Khmer resident of Tra Vinh, on Aug. 27, 2022, live streamed on his Facebook account, Nhatliinh Kimvulinh, a 7:47-minute video clip with content that was considered “untrue, distorted, and insulting.” On Dec. 19, Linh was called in for a questioning session by the police, in which he reportedly admitted that the livestream content in the video clip was false and agreed to remove the video. The police did not comment on the content of the video Linh published on his social media.

Thach Tha and Kim Vu Linh received a fine of 7.5 million dong ($309) each for their alleged violations of Decree No. 15/2020/ND-CP issued by the government, which criminalized the activities of publishing “false information” on the internet.

Vietnamese human rights activist Lù A Da was arrested by Thai Royal Police at his rental home near Bangkok on Dec. 7, his wife said.

His arrest comes two weeks after he publicly denounced the Vietnamese government’s “systematic suppression of H’mong communities in Vietnam.”

“Last Thursday, the police arrested him and took him away while he and our daughter were washing a vehicle,” Lù’s wife Giang Thi A told Radio Free Asia.

“He’s now being held in a police station. If we pay 10,000 Thai baht, he will be transferred to the IDC [the Immigration Detention Center],” she said.

Giang explained that the 10,000 baht (US$280) bail is an administrative fee levied on Lù for having entered Thailand illegally in 2020.

If Giang does not pay the fee, her husband will have to remain detained at the police station for 20 days before being transferred to the IDC, she said.

RFA contacted the Thai Royal Police about his case, but has yet to receive a response.

Missionary and activist

Before arriving in Thailand, Lù worked as a missionary and preacher at the Northern Evangelical Church of Vietnam. He also served as the head of the H’mong Human Rights Coalition.

Lù fled to Thailand with his family in 2020 to escape ethnic and religious persecution and seek official refugee status from the UNHCR. His wife told RFA that their family has applied for refugee status twice since first arriving in Thailand.

Their first application was rejected, and their appeal – filed in March– has not yet been processed by the UNHCR, the U.N. refugee agency.

Because they have not been officially recognized as refugees by the UNHCR, Lù, Giang, and their two children now face being deported back to Vietnam.

Although Thai police have yet to issue an official statement on the case, Lù was likely arrested for denouncing Vietnam’s “systematic suppression of ethnic and religious minorities” in a video released by Boat People SOS, a U.S.-based advocacy group for Vietnamese refugees.

“Tens of thousands of H’mong people in Vietnam are not granted identification and birth and marriage certificates,” Lù stated in the video.

“As a result, children cannot go to school, adults cannot work, and seniors are not entitled to healthcare assistance provided by the government like others from the dominant ethnic group.”

The BPSOS video was released on Nov. 29 as a preview to the UN’s upcoming review of Vietnam’s implementation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. The findings of the U.N. review were officially released on Dec. 8.

Asylum-seekers in Thailand

As of December 2023, there are more than 1,000 H’mong asylum seekers living in Thailand, the H’mong Human Rights Coalition reports.

Because Thailand has not signed the International Convention on Refugees, Thai police can arrest asylum seekers without providing any justification.

In late November, Thai police arrested 11 members of the Montagnard ethnic minority in a raid near Bangkok. As of Dec. 13, they have not yet been released from detention at the IDC.

Like the H’mong minority, roughly 1,500 Vietnamese Montagnards have sought freedom from persecution in Thailand.

After her husband’s arrest, Giang Thi A sought assistance from the Center for Asylum Protection, or CAP, in Bangkok.

“Yesterday, an attorney there said that they would be paying the fine for my husband today so that the police could send him to the IDC right away,” she told RFA.

“After being transferred to the IDC, the attorney could talk to the Thai police to see how much money they would need [to bail him out].”

The head of CAP said that the organization was working with the UNHCR office in Bangkok to support Lù A Da.

He explained that individuals who are in the process of applying for or have already been granted UNHCR refugee status can be released from the IDC provided that they post a 50,000 baht bail.

RFA reached out to the UNHCR in Bangkok to seek information about Lù’s case, but the organization responded that they “can not provide applicants’ personal information.”

Former Vietnamese political prisoners and relatives of prisoners say police are monitoring their homes with surveillance cameras and they believe hackers may be planning to sell the images on social media.

Recently, state-controlled media have run a number of reports about hacker groups selling accounts that allow people to access hundreds of cameras in bedrooms, bathrooms, student dorms, spas and massage parlors.

One group posted an advertisement on the Telegram messaging network claiming: "The group specializes in hacking videos from super hidden cameras of families and facilities in Vietnam. They are hidden and offer hot scenes of families," according to the VnExpress news site.

Dissidents and relatives of political prisoners are doubly concerned, saying police are already monitoring their every move with cameras pointing at their homes.

Le Thi Ha is the wife of former Dak Lak Pedagogical College music lecturer Dang Dang Phuoc. He was sentenced to eight years in prison in June, accused of “propaganda against the state.”

She lives in Dak Lak province’s Buon Ma Thuot city. On Monday, she told Radio Free Asia the police were spying on her.

“Neighbors secretly told me that local police installed cameras on Dec. 15. The camera was installed on the neighbor's porch across from my house and pointed directly at my house," Ha said.

“I don't know whether images from the camera will be posted online or used for some other purpose. But having a camera pointed directly at my house violates my privacy and shows that they want to closely monitor my daily schedule."

RFA Vietnamese called the Tan Loi Ward police to ask about the camera but the person who answered the phone asked the reporter to go to the agency's headquarters. RFA also called the Dak Lak provincial police department to ask about the incident but no one answered the phone.

Nguyen Thi Chau, wife of prisoner Nguyen Ngoc Anh, told RFA that the police of Binh Dai district in Ben Tre province installed two cameras pointing directly at her house several years ago, after her husband was arrested and charged with "conducting anti-state propaganda.”

On Monday she told RFA the police had ignored her concerns about the cameras.

“When I complained to the local police, they said the cameras were installed to prevent crimes,” she said. “I asked them not to point them at my house and they promised to fix it, but they didn't fix it and just kept monitoring my family for the past three years."

Concerned about the invasion of privacy, Nguyen Thi Chau tried to disable or reduce the ability of the two cameras pointed at her home by putting a black grille over the gate and fence.

RFA reporters repeatedly called Binh Dai district Police to ask about the cameras but no one answered.

Former political prisoners face the same surveillance as the families of current prisoners. Le Quy Loc was released in early September after a five year prison sentence for "disturbing security" and is currently serving two years’ probation in Truong Quang Trong ward, Quang Ngai city. He told RFA that his gate now has a camera pointed at it.

This camera was installed in the house of a neighbor who works as a police officer about 10 days before he left the prison.

When he questioned the neighbor, he was told the camera was for the purpose of preventing theft, not aimed at former political prisoners.

However, he said the local police recently went to his house and planned to install a new camera near his house.

National monitoring system

In February 2021, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh approved a project of the Ministry of Public Security with a budget of VND 2.15 trillion (US$90 million) to install surveillance cameras and traffic command and control equipment across the country. The plan has now been taken up at a local level.

On Dec. 13, the Dak Lak Electronic Newspaper reported that the chairman of Buon Ma Thuot City People's Committee Vu Van Hung had announced plans to install over 100 security cameras in the city, including some with facial recognition, for security and order reasons. Buon Ma Thuot city has already installed 454 cameras in wards and communes. They will be connected to the surveillance center of the ward and commune police, the city police and the Provincial Smart Urban Operation Monitoring Center.

Vietnamese law has provisions to protect personal information. Article 38 of the 2015 Civil Code regulates the right to protect private life, personal secrets, and family secrets. According to the law, the collection, storage, use, and disclosure of information related to private life and personal secrets must be approved by the person concerned.

Article 21 of the Vietnamese Constitution stipulates: everyone is entitled to the inviolability of personal privacy, personal secrecy and familial secrecy and has the right to protect his or her honor and prestige. Information regarding personal privacy, personal secrecy and familial secrecy is safely protected by the law.

However, local security forces often send policemen to guard and monitor social events or visits by high-ranking foreign officials and the growing use of security cameras means that political activists and their families feel that the state is constantly watching them.

A Vietnamese court on Monday sentenced a man to eight years in prison for his Facebook posts in a trial with no defense lawyers that lasted only two hours.

The An Giang People’s Court found Nguyen Hoang Nam, 41, a member of the Hoa Hao Buddhist community, guilty of “disseminating, propagandizing information, materials against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam” in violation of Article 117 of Vietnam’s Penal Code, a law that is often criticized by rights activists to be a vaguely written tool that the government uses to silence dissent.

“It was only my husband and I in the courtroom. Witnesses did not come,” Nam’s wife Lam Thi Yen Trinh told RFA Vietnamese. “They were invited [by the court], but it costs hundreds of thousands of dong (tens of U.S. dollars) to travel to the court, and they couldn’t afford that.”

The indictment said Nam had used four Facebook accounts to share and disseminate images and video clips with content against the ruling Communist Party and the state, state media said.

He had live-streamed many times on his Facebook profiles to satirize and insult local authorities and regularly took photos and filmed local government employees who passed by his home, and posted the videos on social media for offense and defamation purposes, the indictment said.

During the trial, Nam denied the accusations, saying that he had only taken photos of those who often insulted and teased him, his wife said.

According to Trinh, her family signed a contract to hire an attorney from Ho Chi Minh City but the attorney was not allowed to not see Nam before the trial or participate in the trial due to a prohibition put in place by the head of the law firm. She did not know the name of the law firm and refused to disclose the attorney’s name.

Her husband pleaded innocent, disagreed with the sentence, and announced that he would make an appeal, she said.

Hoa Hoa sect

Vietnam’s government officially recognizes the Hoa Hao religion, which has some 2 million followers across the country, but imposes harsh controls on dissenting Hoa Hao groups, including the sect in An Giang province, that do not follow the state-sanctioned branch.

Rights groups say that authorities in An Giang routinely harass followers of the unapproved groups, prohibiting public readings of the Hoa Hao founder’s writings and discouraging worshipers from visiting Hoa Hao pagodas in An Giang and other provinces.

“The Vietnam government's absurd idea of what constitutes a ‘crime’ is on full display in the outrageous eight year prison sentence given to Nguyen Hoang Nam simply because he posted opinions on Facebook that the government didn't like,” Phil Robertson, Deputy Director of Human Rights Watch’s Asian Division told RFA.

“Locking people away for years for peacefully expressing views is what petty dictatorships do, and shows just how the Vietnamese government falls pathetically short in meeting its obligations to respect human rights,” Robertson said.

Robertson also called on the Vietnamese government to immediately release Mr. Nguyen Hoang Nam and “end its campaign of harassment against Hoa Hao Buddhists who refuse to come under the state's rigid control.”

The eight-year conviction of Nam for conducting ‘anti-state propaganda’ is outrageous, CIVICUS Monitor's Asia-Pacific researcher Josef Benedict told RFA via text messages. CIVICUS Monitor is a research tool that provides data on civic freedoms in 196 countries.

“It highlights the severe punishment faced by activists in Vietnam and the relentless efforts by the authorities to silence individuals who have critical or dissenting views,” said Benedict. “This is a clear violation of the country’s obligations under international human rights law. CIVICUS calls for his immediate and unconditional release.”

Benedict called on Vietnam to stop using vague laws like Article 117 to silence online criticism and live up to its status as a member of the UN Human Rights Council.

“Such actions are the reason why the CIVICUS Monitor continues to rate Vietnam’s civic space rating as ‘closed’, the worst rating a country can have.”

Nam was previously sentenced to a four-year jail term in 2018 for “disrupting public order” and “resisting officers on official duty” along with five other Hoa Hao Buddhists.

A Vietnamese court in Binh Thuy District, Can Tho City, on Dec. 6 sentenced Le Minh The, a social media user, to 30 months in prison on charges of "abusing democratic freedoms to infringe on the interests of the state and the legitimate rights and interests of other organizations and individuals," under Article 331 of the Penal Code. This is the second time he has been charged and convicted of violating Article 331.

The, 60, was arrested on Feb. 22 this year after the Department of Cyber ​​Security and High-Tech Crime Prevention and Control of Can Tho City Police found that The had allegedly used his two personal Facebook accounts, "Minh The" and "Le Minh The," to post, share and comment on articles containing content aimed at "distorting the Communist Party's guidelines and the state's laws and policies."

The police investigation agency added that The also posted livestreaming on social media, attracting anti-state critics living in Vietnam and abroad. The police alleged in a statement that those live streamings had “called for the overthrow of the government and demanded political pluralism and separation of powers in Vietnam.”

The refused his right to have a defense lawyer because he believed he was innocent, according to his family. Le Thi Nghia Tinh, his daughter, told Radio Free Asia (RFA) that the family had been informed about the trial a few days earlier. Tinh said in a message to RFA that her mother was allowed to attend the trial but was only allowed to observe the trial through a monitor in another room near the courtroom.

The Can Tho social media user was first arrested in October 2018 under Article 331. He was accused of using Facebook to "host livestreaming that contained propaganda defaming the VCP and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam." The police said his livestreaming sought to "sabotage national unity, cause divisions between the people and the party, and harm national security and social safety." He was convicted during a trial in March 2019 and was released from prison in July 2020.

The authorities of Tan Binh District, Ho Chi Minh City, on the morning of Dec. 7, sent a large number of police and security forces to surround and build barricades made of metal sheets around the Loc Hung Garden area, forcibly evicting the remaining residents of the area from their makeshift homes, according to representatives of the evicted households. As of this writing, the dispute between the residents of Loc Hung Garden and Tan Binh District authorities has not been resolved.

Photos shared by Loc Hung residents showed that many police and plainclothes security forces were deployed to block all roads leading to the disputed area. Many former residents of Loc Hung said on social media that there was a heavy presence of police officers around their homes, preventing them from going outside.

Cao Ha Truc, one of the Loc Hung residents who has not received the compensation, said police and security forces surrounded his residence on the morning of Dec. 7.

"Today, beginning at 6 a.m., [the Tan Binh authorities] sent around 400 police officers and security forces to surround Loc Hung Garden. Then, they blocked the doors of the former residents of Loc Hung and did not allow them to enter or leave. They sent excavators and trucks carrying iron frames and corrugated iron sheets [to the disputed Loc Hung Garden]. Then, the excavators started to dig and plant corrugated iron pillars to barricade Loc Hung Garden," Truc told RFA on Dec. 7.

In January 2019, local authorities sent bulldozers to demolish the homes of Loc Hung Garden residents, making hundreds of residents of this settlement homeless overnight. In addition to flattening more than 500 homes in the area, Ho Chi Minh City authorities also destroyed their crops and gardens, claiming these structures had been built illegally.

The evicted residents had to relocate to other places or establish makeshift dwellings, and the land has since remained unused. Many of the Loc Hung residents are Catholics, political dissidents, and veterans of the former Army of the Republic of Vietnam. For years, they have sought legal assistance from lawyers and sent numerous petitions to the central government, but the case has not yet been resolved.

Last November, the Tan Binh authorities introduced a plan to raise compensation for the evicted Loc Hung Garden households to solve the years-long dispute. The authorities also announced that three schools would be built on the property once the case is settled. However, many Loc Hung residents who lost their homes in the area rejected the compensation offered by the authorities, saying that they are much lower than the market price.

A provincial board of Vietnam’s only state-recognized Buddhist Sangha decided over the weekend to expel ethnic Khmer Krom monk Thach Chanh Da Ra after authorities accused him of being “uncooperative,” state media reported.

Thach, 33, is the abbot of the Dai Tho Pagoda, which is also known as the Tro Nom Sek Pagoda in Khmer, in Vinh Long Province, in southern Vietnam.

According to state media, when a task force from the Tam Binh District People’s Committee came to the pagoda for “working purposes” on Nov. 22, the monk refused task force members entry to the pagoda and filmed their visit to “defame local authorities and divide national unity.”

The state-owned newspaper Giac Ngo Online has since accused Thach of “seriously violating Buddhist law” and the charter of the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha by carrying out “propaganda against the state” and refusing to obey the regulations of the VBS.

However, Khmer Krom Buddhists in the region claim that neither Thach nor Dai Tho Pagoda have violated Vietnamese law.

The Khmer Kampuchea Krom Federation said the Nov. 22 “task force” visit cited in the state media report was actually a planned attack on Dai Tho Pagoda by more than 50 members of the VBS. Three monks were injured in the altercation.

The advocacy group said the Dec. 3 order to expel Ra is the Vietnamese state’s way of punishing the monk for defending the pagoda.

The nearly 1.3-million strong Khmer Krom live in a part of Vietnam that was once southeastern Cambodia. They have faced serious restrictions on freedom of expression, assembly and movement.

Furthermore, they point out that Thach was never even registered with the VBS to begin with, as he felt that affiliating his pagoda with the state-controlled sangha would threaten the preservation of the Khmer Krom minority’s cultural and religious autonomy.

In protest, more than 20 Khmer Krom villagers have begun a sit-in at the pagoda to guard Thach Chanh Da Ra from being removed or arrested by Vietnamese authorities.

Khmer Krom activist Thach Nga told RFA that the monk has only disobeyed local authorities when attempting to protect Khmer Krom cultural heritage.

For example, the monk once directed the pagoda’s inhabitants to prevent local police from cutting down a 700-year-old Koki tree inside the pagoda. Thach Nga explained that this tree has special cultural significance to the Khmer Krom.

Thach Chanh Da Ra has also gone against local authorities’ wishes by hosting Khmer Krom activists such as Duong Khai at Dai Tho pagoda.

The monk told RFA that he fears for the safety of Khmer Krom Buddhists in Vinh Long Province.

“I am very worried for the well-being and safety of the monks and Buddhist followers,” he said. “I am very worried about Khmer Krom Buddhism, especially at Dai Tho Pagoda. I do not know how the future of Buddhism and our Khmer Krom indigenous culture will [turn out].”

He has since called on the Cambodian government as well as international human rights organizations to intervene on behalf of the Khmer Krom minority.

As of Dec. 4, RFA has not been able to obtain a comment from the Vietnamese embassy in Cambodia or from the Cambodian government’s official spokesperson Pen Bona.

Prison authorities of Prison No. 6, Nghe An Province, reportedly cut short the visit of prisoner of conscience Dang Dinh Bach's visitation with his wife, Tran Phuong Thao, on Nov. 28 after Bach told her that the prison administration had not resolved his complaint that his cellmates had assaulted him.

According to Thao, their conversation was interrupted when she came to visit him on Nov. 15. Bach told her that he had previously sent two complaint letters, on Aug. 26 and Sept. 16, respectively, to the People's Procuracy of Nghe An to report the assaults he endured in prison, but the incidents had not been resolved. Although Bach had not finished speaking, the phone was disconnected, and three supervisory officers asked them to stop the visit immediately.

Thao said that as prison officials dragged her husband out of the visiting room, he shouted that an inmate named Nguyen Doan Anh had allegedly kicked him in the back of his head, resulting in a bruise. Previously, Bach told his wife that a group of inmates at Prison No. 6 also stormed into the living quarters of political prisoners, threatening to take their lives. However, the prison administration denied his allegations.

Dang Dinh Bach has rejected food rations from the prison since Sept. 4 and only used food sent by his family. Bach also had to soak dried food for a long time before he could eat it because the prison did not provide him with boiling water. The prison guards also confiscated Bach’s items, such as his reading lamp, watch, essential oils to treat his asthma, razor, and a diary. The family is also not allowed to send him some items, even though they are not prohibited.

Poet Nguyen Thi Phuong, pen name Chieu Anh, reported to Project88 that she has twice been “invited” by Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) police to answer questions about her active support for political prisoners. At the first session on June 21, 2023, Phuong was asked about her middleman role of receiving money and then forwarding it to the families of prisoners. They also questioned her about a motorcycle she donated to the wife of political prisoner Huynh Truong Ca. Phuong told Project88 the police tried to frame her action as receiving funds sent from abroad as “support for terrorism.”

At the second meeting on October 5, she was once again grilled regarding what the police called “terrorism support funds.” Additionally, they asked about her sharing articles by RFA and former political prisoner Pham Thanh Nghien, who emigrated to the United States earlier this year. The police wanted Chieu Anh to sign a note promising not to repost content that has not been cleared by state censors, but she refused. Phuong was fined 7.5M dong ($300) for unspecified “violations of the cybersecurity law,” but she refused to pay, saying she did not violate any regulations. Watch our short interview with Chieu Anh from 2019 here.

On Nov. 9, pro-democracy activist Truong Van Dung was transferred from An Diem Prison in Nghe An Province (northern Vietnam) to Gia Trung Prison in Gia Lai Province (the Central Highlands) hundreds of miles away. It is not clear why he was moved and whether his family had been notified ahead of time. Punitive prison transfers are often used as a means to further isolate prisoners from their support networks or to punish them for speaking up for their rights or the rights of other prisoners.

On Nov. 6, former political prisoner Tran Hoang Phuc reported to his probation officer as part of the supervised release order. He was questioned for three hours about his online activities and his taking online courses from Hoa Sen University in Business Management and International Law. Phuc told Project88 he felt intimidated and that the officers in charge, who were not in uniform, treated him in a very condescending and threatening manner.

On Nov. 12, Hoang Duc Binh’s mother and younger brother visited him at An Diem Prison. By law the meeting was supposed to last one hour, but it was abruptly cut off after 35 minutes by a Lt Lê Văn Hiếu. When the family protested, Hieu told them the reason was because they were overloaded with visit requests. The prison guards also told the family Binh was not allowed to receive any rice they sent him via the post and told them to take back the 3kg they sent last month. No reason was given. Binh is a labor and environmental activist serving 14 years in prison.

Hundreds of police officers broke up a construction site protest in northern Vietnam Tuesday by beating several demonstrators with batons and arresting about a dozen of them, the protesters told Radio Free Asia.

The US$30 million 15-hectare (37-acre) Long Son Container Port Project would build a 250-meter (820-foot) dock to be operational by 2025 in the Hai Ha commune in the northern province of Thanh Hoa, home to nearly 3,000 households, about 400 of which rely on fishing to make a living.

Tuesday’s arrests came after several consecutive days of protests of the project, with residents taking to the streets and occupying the beach to stop Long Son from working. The residents say they want satisfactory compensation and resettlement plans.

Videos of the protest taken by residents show that the police were equipped with batons and shields. At least one man sustained a head injury, and his clothes were stained with blood.

“At around 4 a.m., hundreds of police officers were sent to the scene and they pushed us away from the beach,” a Hai Ha resident who wished to remain anonymous for security reasons told RFA Vietnamese. “When we did not leave, they used batons to hit us. Many got injuries on their heads and limbs. They also arrested many people and took them away.”

More than 10 people were beaten to the point that they sustained minor injuries, another resident, who was also present at the scene, told RFA on condition of anonymity.

“Also, 16 people were arrested and taken to the Nghi Son Town Police Station,” the second resident said. “We were about to go there to demand the release of our people but were blocked by the police right at the edge of our village.”

Since the protest was broken up, leveling work has been started, the second resident said. “We have lost in the struggle to protect our livelihoods.”

Suppressing images

A third resident said that authorities had jammed mobile phone signals to prevent residents from spreading the images and videos of the suppression. The police also prohibited residents from filming the incident, this person said.

To verify the information provided by residents, RFA contacted the Nghi Son Town police and the Thanh Hoa provincial police. However, staff who answered the phone declined to respond to questions and requested that RFA go to their headquarters with the necessary letters of introduction to be provided with information.

A report of the incident in the provincial government’s mouthpiece, the Thanh Hoa online newspaper, said that the provincial police and the authorities of Nghi Son town and Hai Ha commune had jointly “implemented a plan to ensure the construction of Dock No. 3 of the Long Son Container Port so that the construction contractor can carry out the project on schedule.”

The report also said that because “a number of Hai Ha residents continued obstructing the construction,” responsible forces had to “temporarily put some people in custody to investigate, verify and handle the case in accordance with the law.”

The report did not specify how many residents had been arrested and put into custody, nor did it mention any injuries caused by the police crackdown.

Week-long protests

The protests started on the morning of Oct. 23, when around 300 residents from Hai Ha commune took to the streets to oppose the construction project, which, according to them, will adversely affect their livelihood and living environment.

On the afternoon of the same day, Nghi Son Town Police issued a decision to launch a criminal case against those who had obstructed traffic, causing serious traffic congestion for about one kilometer (0.6 miles).

Despite the announcement many residents continued to gather at the Hai Ha commune beach to prevent construction work, although the police had summoned some people and forced them to pledge in writing not to gather at the construction site.

Dozens of residents from a fishing area in north-central Vietnam this week have protested the building of a port project, despite police launching a criminal investigation of them for disturbing public order, demonstrators said.

On Wednesday, Thanh Hoa provincial authorities mobilized dozens of police officers to force protesting fisherfolk — mostly women — to leave the construction site where a dock is being built, one of the sources said. Though they stayed, police did not take any measures against them and left the area at noon.

About 300 residents of Hai Ha commune first took to the streets on the morning of Oct. 23 with banners and placards to show their opposition to the Long Son Container Port project, which they say will adversely affect their livelihoods and living environment.

“We don’t want the Long Son Container Port project because it is located in the coastal area we inherited from our ancestors, and it has been passed down from generation to generation,” said a villager on Wednesday who declined to be named out of fear of reprisal by authorities.

Fishing provides the only income to cover her family’s expenditures, including her children’s education expenses, she said.

“If the port is built, residents like us will be adversely affected by pollution, and there will be no places for our boats to anchor and no places for us to trade seafood,” she said.

Generating income

Long Son Ltd. Co. is investing more than US$30 million to build the 15-hectare (37-acre) project, which will have a 250-meter (820-foot) dock. It is expected to be operational in 2025.

The project will play a crucial role in the development of the first dedicated container port area at Nghi Son Port, according to state-run Vietnam News Agency. Once Dock No. 3 is built, it will serve as a dike against waves and winds and create a 10-hectare (33-foot) water area for local fishermen to safely anchor their boats.

The port is expected to generate revenue and jobs in Thanh Hoa province, including Hai Ha commune.

State media reported that Thanh Hoa provincial authorities conducted thorough studies and environmental assessments as well as consulted local people on the project. But the woman said representatives of the authorities only went around to people’s homes to try to persuade them not to oppose the project and its implementation.

The protest on Oct. 23 prompted Nghi Son town police to file charges against them for obstructing traffic and causing a kilometer-long (0.6 mile) vehicle backup.

Police at the scene took photos of the protesters, recorded videos and collected other information, some villagers involved in the demonstration said.

Police also issued an order requiring Hai Ha residents to adhere to the law and not to gather in groups to disrupt public order, incite others, or be enticed to obstruct the construction of Dock No. 3 of the Long Son Container Port project.

Threatened with arrest

Police threatened them with arrest for disrupting public order — which carries a sentence of up to seven years in prison — if they continued.

Hai Ha commune includes nearly 3,000 households with about 11,000 inhabitants, most of whom rely on fishing to make a living. The villagers say they fear that port officials will cut off their access to the waters where they fish and prohibit them from anchoring their boats.

Villagers ignored the police order and continued their protest on Tuesday and Wednesday, hoping to prevent the dock’s construction.

The woman quoted above said that the villagers are not afraid of going to jail because they don’t want to lose their home beach.

But if they have to relocate as a result of a loss of livelihoods, villagers will expect satisfactory compensation and a new living area with spaces to safely anchor their boats, she said.

“We staged a march and did not offend anyone or did not cause any harm,” she said. “None of us offended the police. We followed the traffic law, [and] we walked on the roadside and stayed in rows.”

The port will join four other industrial projects surrounding the 1,200-hectare (2,965-acre) commune. The others are a cement factory, a port for coal transportation in the north, a thermal power plant in the west, and a steel factory in the south.

Though the projects have created jobs for locals, they have also created serious environmental pollution, negatively affecting residents’ lives, a second woman said.

Human rights activist Tran Van Bang, also known as Tran Bang, has reportedly experienced a severe decline in health due to the harsh conditions of his detention at the Bo La Detention Center in Phu Giao District, Binh Duong Province.

Tran Bang, 62, was arrested on March 1, 2022, on charges of spreading "anti-state propaganda" under Article 117 of the Penal Code. In mid-May this year, he received a sentence of eight years in prison and three years of probation for his advocacy of democracy and human rights.

After an unsuccessful appeal in late August, he was transferred to Bo La Prison on Sept. 27, where he faced challenging conditions.

Two days after his transfer to Bo La, Tran Bang's family visited him to provide essential supplies and support. According to a family member's text message to Radio Free Asia (RFA) on Oct. 26, Bang described his living conditions, stating that he was held in a crowded room with 90 other individuals. The tight space, where each person had only 60 cm of width, made it difficult for him to sleep. Moreover, the need to keep the windows open throughout the night in the overcrowded room led to exposure to cold temperatures, resulting in a severe sore throat and sinusitis.

During a subsequent visit on Oct. 17, his family noticed a significant deterioration in Tran Bang's health. They observed that he had lost approximately 10 pounds and appeared visibly older.

Despite Bang's deteriorating health and multiple ailments, the prison authorities did not provide any medical treatment.

Efforts to verify the family's claims by contacting Bo La Prison were unsuccessful.

Tran Bang, a veteran of the border war with China in the early 1980s, is a dedicated human rights activist known for his efforts to protest China's encroachment on Vietnam's territorial waters in the East Sea. He is one of seven activists and freelance journalists convicted of disseminating "anti-state propaganda" in the early part of the year. The remaining individuals include Nguyen Lan Thang, a blogger for RFA, and music lecturer Dang Dang Phuoc.

Before his trial and appeal, various international organizations, including Human Rights Watch, called for his immediate release, arguing that he was exercising his right to freedom of speech as stipulated in the Vietnamese Constitution and international human rights conventions that Vietnam has signed.

Authorities in Vietnam on Tuesday sentenced a Facebook user to three and a half years in prison for his live-streamed videos that were critical of the government, state media reported.

Le Thach Giang, 66, of the southern coastal province of Ninh Thuan, was found guilty of violating Article 331 of Vietnam’s penal code for “abusing democratic freedoms to violate the State’s interests, legitimate rights and interests of organizations and individuals.”

Rights groups have said that Article 331 is a vaguely written law that is often used by the government to silence dissenting voices and repress the people.

According to the indictment, between Aug. 29 and Nov. 25, 2022, Giang had livestreamed several videos containing information about local authorities in Ninh Thuan on his Facebook account, which was titled “The Brutal Authorities.” He also criticized the Communist Party of Vietnam and late president and revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh.

The videos were allegedly unverified, slanderous and offensive to government agencies and defamatory to the Communist Party of Vietnam and the late president.

State media also said that Giang had been previously sentenced to another three and a half years for “intentionally damaging assets” and “disrupting public order,” but did not specify what these charges were for or when he was sentenced.

Two Vietnamese prisoners of conscience, Trinh Ba Phuong and Phan Cong Hai, faced physical assault and shackling after protesting against the harsh treatment and human rights violations in An Diem Prison in Quang Nam Province. This distressing revelation was conveyed to Radio Free Asia (RFA) by Phuong's younger sister, Trinh Thu Thao, on Oct. 13, immediately after the family visit.

The incident happened on Sept. 9, 2023, around 8 a.m., when Phuong and others staged a peaceful protest, displaying a banner denouncing human rights violations at the prison center. Prison guards swiftly intervened, forcibly seizing the banners and violently disciplining the protestors.

Phuong and Hai, both part of the peaceful demonstration, endured harsh punishment. They were shackled for ten days. Phuong later wrote a petition to protest the disciplinary action he faced and sent it to the People’s Procuracy Office of Quang Nam Province. However, his petition did not receive any response.

The two political prisoners also held another peaceful protest on Sept. 2, 2023, to protest against China's aggressive actions in the South China Sea. They received a different response - the authorities confiscated the banners without resorting to violence or discipline.

This distressing episode highlighted the need for immediate attention and action to ensure all prisoners are treated fairly, particularly those unjustly detained for their beliefs and advocacy for human rights and democracy in Vietnam.

Police in Vietnam have released four independent Protestants who were detained for five days after inviting President Vo Van Thuong to observe one of their religious services.

Y Nuer Buon Dap, Y Thinh Nie, Y Cung Nie and his son Y Salemon Eban returned home on Saturday.

The first three were arrested on Oct. 31 and taken to the headquarters of Cu M'gar District Police. Another man, Y Phuc Nie, was arrested the same day, but he was released on Nov. 2.

Y Salemon Eban was arrested on Nov. 3 while his mother, H Tuyen Eban was interrogated by district police on Nov. 2.

“The police forced us to work all day, from 7:30 a.m. until 11:00 p.m. before going to bed, but we were not beaten. We were well fed during the days of our arrest," one of the arrested men told Radio Free Asia, asking to remain anonymous for legal reasons.

He said the police questioned them about their views on religious freedom and civil society.

Before releasing the Protestants, the police told them to stop practicing religion independently and not to study civil society, saying its aim was to oppose the government.

They were also told not to participate in the Aug. 22 International Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief and the Dec. 10 International Human Rights Day.

“We cannot accept restrictions on the exercise of freedom of religion and freedom of movement . We will continue to practice religion in our family,” said one of the Protestants.

“What 's wrong with studying civil society? We study according to Vietnamese law and international law and have no intention of opposing the government.”

RFA Vietnamese called Cu M'gar District Police to verify the information, but the person who answered asked the reporter to go to the agency's headquarters and speak to the person in charge.

Many Montagnard families in Dak Lak and some provinces in the Central Highlands follow Protestantism but are not in a state-approved religious organization.

They have no leaders, no organizational structure, everyone in the group has equal rights and equality with each other. Pastors are just trusted representatives of their group.

Since the beginning of 2023, independent Protestant groups have sent four invitations to local authorities and President Vo Van Thuong to attend religious activities to prove that they have no intention of opposing state-approved religions or the government.

Tran Huynh Duy Thuc’s lawyer was not allowed to see him during his family’s visit to him on Oct. 3. The family said that Thuc’s health has worsened and that he looked gaunt and fatigued. They said further that he reported that he was not allowed to have his monthly call to his family in September because prison officials did not want him to “complain and accuse” them of wrongdoings. Thuc and his fellow inmates have stopped eating prison food to demand fairer food rationing for the entire unit A. Thuc has not been able to buy food at the canteen since Sept. 14, and he’s had to ask his cellmates to buy food for him. He’s no longer given hot water to make ramen, so he has to use cold water. Thuc has resorted to picking and eating wild vegetation to supplement his diet. The prison authorities have confiscated Thuc’s razor and nail clipper without any explanation.

Vietnamese authorities recently prevented Ms. Ngo Thi Oanh Phuong from leaving the country. She is widely known on social networks through her Facebook account named Phuong Ngo because she often speaks out against many social issues and has enthusiastically fought against negativity for many years.

According to VOA's own source, Tan Son Nhat International Airport Border Gate Police did not let Ms. Phuong leave the country early on the morning of October 5 after she had a boarding pass to fly from Ho Chi Minh City to Ho Chi Minh City. Narita airport of the Japanese capital.

Two representatives of the border police and a representative of Japan Airlines made a record of "temporary exit" for Ms. Phuong, the source said. The minutes that VOA saw read that she was not allowed to leave Vietnam "for national defense and security reasons" based on an article in the law on the entry and exit of Vietnamese citizens issued in 2019. 2019.

The minutes did not say in more detail why Ms. Phuong was not allowed to leave the country. VOA tried to contact Ms. Phuong and the relevant police agency to learn more but could not connect.

Ms. Phuong, 42 years old, permanently residing in Ho Chi Minh City, has been famous on social networks for many years due to her active criticism, fight against injustice and many volunteer activities, of which she especially stands out. combat road toll booths located in unreasonable locations and provide relief to those in need due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to VOA's research, Article No. 36 of Vietnam's 2019 law on entry and exit sets out regulations on 9 cases of temporary exit, including "people whom the authorities have grounds to believe that the Their exit affects national defense and security" stated in section 9.

Other cases temporarily banned from leaving the country are suspects and defendants; People involved in prison sentences are on probation; person with civil court obligations ; person who must fulfill tax obligations, etc.

Before the case of Ms. Ngo Thi Oanh Phuong, the Vietnamese government banned many other activists, activists, dissidents and critics from leaving the country such as Dr. Nguyen Quang A and lawyer Vo An Don. , Cao Dai follower Nguyen Xuan Mai, Protestant follower Doctor Eban, priest Truong Hoang Vu.

A court in Vietnam’s Gia Lai province sentenced a Christian to eight years in prison and three years probation for “undermining the unity policy” under Article 116 of the criminal code.

The Gia Lai online newspaper said that Rian Thih’s trial on Sept. 28 lasted for several hours and the defendant, also known as Ama Philip, “honestly testified and admitted the crime.” The newspaper did not specify whether he had a defense lawyer.

Vietnam often uses the allegation of undermining the solidarity policy to suppress activists for religious freedom in ethnic minority communities in the Central Highlands or the northern mountainous areas, according to an activist on religious freedom speaking to Radio Free Asia on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“The targets of repression are religious leaders of unregistered independent religious groups, often in contact with civil society organizations abroad or international human rights organizations to report violations of religious freedom in the country,” the activist said.

“Such people are often persecuted under Article 116 with heavy sentences of up to 20 years in prison, or at least convicted under Article 331 – abusing democratic freedoms – with a sentence of four to five years in prison.”

The activist said in the Central Highlands there are many Protestant groups registered with the state and with legal status. Many of them have committed actions that, according to the activist, “caused division between ethnicities and between religions” but they were not charged with undermining the unity policy.

Vu Quoc Dung, executive director of the human rights organization VETO! The Human Rights Defenders Network, based in Germany, told RFA via text:

“In some previous cases of ethnic minorities engaging in religious activities that we know well, the fact that they were convicted of ‘undermining the policy of national unity’ only shows that they follow independent religious organizations and refuse to join a state-recognized organization. In a few other cases, the government accused the victims of abandoning tradition or not respecting local customs.

“Accusing them of undermining the policy of national unity violates the right to freedom of religious practice under Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the right to observe and practice their own religion of minority groups according to Article 27 of the ICCPR, to which Vietnam is a party.”

Rlan Thih, 43, was arrested on Dec. 19, 2022. According to the indictment, from 2008 until his arrest, Rlan Thih was directed by FULRO (the United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races) exiles abroad to secretly persuade ethnic minorities in Ia Glai commune to join a meeting group that was a variation of “Dega Protestantism,” with a plot to establish a “separate state for ethnic minorities in the Central Highlands.”

The Vietnamese government says that Christians who belong to unregistered house churches outside the control of the official Southern Evangelical Church of Vietnam are “Dega Protestants,” which authorities allege is not a legitimate religious group but a cover for a Montagnard independence movement.

Montagnards are a mainly Christian indigenous minority from the Central Highland provinces who are pressing for religious freedom and land rights. The government now claims there are no Montagnards in the Central Highlands.

The Gia Lai newspaper said that Rlan Thih participated in violent protests in Gia Lai in 2001 and 2004 and “remained stubborn, refusing to stop trying to sabotage the party and state, affecting national unity and local security” but did not specify what these acts were.

Rlan Thih is one of many religious freedom activists in the Central Highlands who was arrested recently.

In April, authorities in Dak Lak arrested preacher Y Krec Ba of the Central Highlands Evangelical Church of Christ on charges of “undermining the unity policy.” A month later, Nay Y Blang was arrested on charges of “abusing democratic freedoms.”

According to RFA statistics, there are currently nearly 60 ethnic minorities imprisoned on charges of “undermining the solidarity policy” with sentences ranging from four to 20 years.

Vietnamese human rights lawyer Vo An Don and his family were stopped by police in Ho Chi Minh City this week from boarding a flight to New York, where they had hoped to apply for political asylum in the US, the well-known rights lawyer told RFA on Wednesday.

Don and other family members were barred from leaving Vietnam by police at Tan Son Nhat Airport at around 9:42 p.m. on Sept. 27, Don said, calling the action taken against him by authorities arbitrary and vindictive.

Don added that airport police told him he would need to contact immigration authorities in his home province of Phu Yen, on Vietnam’s south-central coast, for an explanation of the order barring his travel overseas.

He and his family were now on their way back to Phu Yen, Don said.

“I’ll work with the Phu Yen police tomorrow to find out why my departure was temporarily suspended,” Don said, saying that airport police had cited “security reasons” for blocking his departure in accordance with Article 36 of the Law on Entry and Exit for Vietnamese citizens.

According to Vietnamese law, citizens of the country have the right to travel domestically and overseas, Don said. “I’ll take legal action against them and file a request for compensation if they fail to give legitimate reasons for what they did,” he added.

“In the past, I used to work as a defense lawyer for ordinary, common people,” said Don, whose license to practice law was revoked in 2017 after he successfully defended the right to benefits of the surviving family members of a person who died in police custody.

“Since then I have only stayed at home and worked as a farmer. I have not been involved in any other cases or broken the law, and there is therefore no reason to say that I have been a threat to national security,” he said.

Don said he and his family had decided to seek asylum in the US because they were suffering harassment by Phu Yen authorities and economic hardship since he could no longer work as a lawyer.

The Washington-based International Organization for Migration (IOM) had secured advance funding for the family’s airfare, which was returned to the IOM when the family could no longer fly.

Don had taken his children out of school and given away many of his family’s belongings before trying to leave, and now has to buy many household appliances again, he said. He hopes his children’s schools will now allow them to return to class, he added.

'Prestige of the Party'

Requests for comment sent to the US Embassy, IOM offices in Vietnam and the Vietnam Immigration Department received no responses this week.

A Sept. 28 article in the Ministry of Public Security’s Public Security Newsletter said however that Don during his work as a lawyer had “damaged the prestige” of the ruling Vietnamese Communist Party and government by posting stories on social media and speaking to members of the foreign press.

Speaking to RFA, Truong Minh Tam — a Vietnamese lawyer and human rights activist now living in Illinois — said that Phu Yen police had abused their authority by ordering the suspension of Don’s right to travel abroad.

“According to Article 37 of the Law on Exit and Entry of Vietnamese Citizens, only the Minister of Defense and the Minister of Public Security have that authority,” Tam said.

Also speaking to RFA, Vietnamese musician and political observer Tuan Khanh noted that Don had successfully brought a suit in 2014 against five Phu Yen police officers who caused the death of a citizen, Ngo Thanh Kieu, held in their custody.

This had likely made Don a target for provincial authorities’ revenge, Khanh said.

In a statement issued late on Wednesday, Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for New York-based Human Rights Watch said that the Vietnamese government's efforts to block Don's travel to the U.S. are yet another example of how it restricts the freedom of movement of activists based on what he called "vague claims" of national security.

"The reality is Hanoi doesn’t want Vo An Don traveling overseas where he could speak freely about the litany of harassment, discrimination and abuse he’s suffered because of his choices to represent politically sensitive clients in Vietnam’s kangaroo courts,” Robertson said.

“Vietnam has forced Vo An Don to run a gauntlet of constant abuses, including harassment, threats, and legal retaliation ... This travel ban against Vo An Don and his family shows how the Vietnam government is prepared to use every dirty, abusive trick to silence the very few lawyers left in the country who dare stand up for the principle that everyone deserves legal representation.”

A leading Vietnamese climate activist has been jailed for tax evasion, the latest environmentalist put behind bars by the country’s communist government.

A court in Ho Chi Minh City sentenced Hoang Thi Minh Hong to three years in prison for dodging $275,000 in taxes related to her environmental campaign group Change, her lawyer, Nguyen Van Tu, said.

The 50-year-old is at least the fifth environmental campaigner to be jailed on tax evasion charges in the last two years as Vietnam’s authoritarian government steps up a crackdown on activists.

Her husband, Hoang Vinh Nam, said he was “disappointed” at the verdict.

“The sentence given to Hong today was too heavy,” he said. “I think it was unfair to Hong. The defence lawyer did his best but his arguments were not considered properly.”

State media said the charges related to revenue generated by Change from 2012 to 2022. Hong admitted the charges and along with her family paid the state 3.5bn dong ($145,000) in return for leniency, state media said.

Hong founded Change to mobilise Vietnamese, particularly young people, to take action on environmental issues including climate change, the illegal wildlife trade and pollution. But she abruptly shut down the group last year after four environmental and human rights activists were jailed for tax evasion.

“This conviction is a total fraud, nobody should be fooled by it,” said Ben Swanton, the co-director of The 88 Project, which advocates for human rights in Vietnam. “This is yet another example of the law being weaponised to persecute climate activists who are fighting to save the planet.”

Earlier this month Hanoi police detained the director of the Vietnam Initiative for Energy Transition, an independent energy policy thinktank.

Ngo Thi To Nhien, who has worked with the EU, World Bank and UN, was reportedly working on the implementation plan for Vietnam’s Just Energy Transition Partnership, a $15bn G7-funded project to help wean Vietnam off fossil fuels.

No official information on Nhien’s accusation has been made public.

Hong has been recognised internationally for her work: she joined the Obama Foundation Scholars program in New York in 2018 and was listed by Forbes among the 50 most influential Vietnamese women in 2019.

When she was detained in May, the UN’s human rights body was among many international groups to voice concern, warning of the “chilling effect” of tax cases against civil society groups.

Among the four green activists jailed last year was Nguy Thi Khanh, a globally recognised climate and energy campaigner who won the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2018. She spent nearly a year in jail before she was released last month.

In an appeal that only lasted two hours, the High People’s Court in Vietnam’s Dak Lak province on Tuesday upheld an eight-year prison sentence for music lecturer Dang Dang Phuoc, his wife Le Thi Ha told Radio Free Asia.

The 61-year-old instructor at Dak Lak College of Pedagogy was convicted on June 6 this year of "making, storing, spreading or propagating information, documents and items aimed at opposing the State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.”

He was prosecuted under the penal code’s controversial Article 117, which rights groups say is frequently used to suppress free speech.

Police arrested him on Sept. 8 last year after he posted on Facebook in support of activist Bui Tuan Lam, known as “Onion Bae.”

His wife was also questioned about songs he sang and posted on social media, including one by a former political prisoner and another with lyrics about the problems faced by Vietnam under the Communist Party.

Speaking to RFA Vietnamese on Tuesday Le Thi Ha called the appeal a sham.

"There is nothing different from the first-instance hearing,” she said.

“The examiners of the province’s Department of Information and Communication continued to be absent while the court panel did not respect the defenses of my husband and his lawyers."

Ha said her husband planned to appeal to a higher court.

Under Vietnamese law, Phuoc has the right to appeal to the Supreme People's Court. However, in most political cases, the decision of the regional high court is usually the final word.

Over the past 10 years Phuoc campaigned against corruption and for better protection for civil and political rights. He signed pro-democracy petitions and called for changes to Vietnam’s constitution, which grants the Communist Party a monopoly on power.

“Dang Dang Phuoc shouldn’t be in prison for simply calling for better treatment and justice for the poor and vulnerable Vietnamese, and demanding the government provide better social services and a cleaner environment for all,” said Human Rights Watch Deputy Asia Director Phil Robertson, ahead of the appeal.

“If the Vietnamese government cared at all about the welfare of the people, they would be listening to principled activists like Dang Dang Phuoc, not imprisoning him.”

According to RFA statistics, Phuoc is the 11th activist convicted this year and the sixth person convicted of "propaganda against the state" under Article 117.

Many countries have called on Vietnam to amend or remove Article 117 from the penal code to be compatible with international human rights conventions that Vietnam has signed.

A 60-year old Vietnamese activist was sentenced to six years in prison for making a short drunken tirade video that cursed the Communist Party and revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh, the country’s first leader, his lawyer told Radio Free Asia.

The Hanoi People’s Court handed down the punishment Friday to Nguyen Minh Son, saying that the video he made on Dec. 31, 2021, was “anti-state propaganda.”

In the live-streamed video, Son stood outside the same court, reacting the trial of activist and citizen journalist Le Trong Hung, who that day had gotten five years for violating Article 117, a vaguely-written law that is frequently used by authorities to stifle peaceful critics of the country’s one-party communist government.

Almost 10 months later, Son found himself under arrest under the same charge.

His lawyer, Ngo Anh Tuan, said that Son was drunk at the time and admitted that he had acknowledged making mistakes.

“Mr. Son admitted all his acts, saying that he had made mistakes,” Tuan told RFA Vietnamese. “He was accused of making a video clip, only one clip, which he live-streamed and disseminated online.”

Tuan said the jail term was too harsh considering that his client had only made one video.

He said that he had tried to help lower the penalty for his client by requesting the judging panel to look at his case from another angle, but his request was rejected.

“I presented my analysis and judgment, recommending that his act be handled in a more appropriate way, and it could be an administrative penalty,” Tuan said.

Pleading for mercy

Son had been an active participant in many demonstrations in Hanoi between 2011 and 2018 over issues ranging from China’s claims to territories in the South China Sea, to the Hanoi city government cutting down ancient trees located downtown. He also frequently expressed his views on Vietnam’s social issues using his Facebook account.

According to Son’s friend, his arrest on Sept. 28, 2022, was surprising because so much time had passed since he had been involved in any protests.

When Son was allowed to say a few words at the end of the trial, he apologized, expressing his regret and requesting for a penalty mitigation, Tuan said, adding that he was not sure whether Son would make an appeal or not.

Son’s wife Nguyen Thi Phuoc told RFA that she was prevented from attending the trial. Security guards would not allow her to enter the courtroom until nearly noon after the trial had ended, she said. She only saw her husband the moment the police were escorting him to leave the courtroom.

No freedom of speech

Vietnam is a one-party Communist state that clamps down harshly on those who criticize the government.

In another similar case, police on Friday in the southern province of Binh Duong detained Tran Dac Than on charges of using his social media accounts to create posts and share articles that “abused democratic freedoms to violate the state’s interests or the legitimate rights and interests of organizations and individuals,” in violation of Article 331 of Vietnam’s penal code.

Rights groups have said that Article 331, like Article 117, is often employed by the government to silence dissenting voices and repress the people.

According to state media reports that cited the police, the government had summoned Than to warn him about similar acts in 2013.

Vietnam has arrested at least 18 people and convicted nine for violating Article 331 since January this year, according to RFA’s statistics.

Authorities in Vietnam arrested the director of an independent energy policy think-tank, in its latest crackdown on experts from the field of environment and ecology in recent years.

Ngo Thi To Nhien, director of the Vietnam Initiative for Energy Transition Social Enterprise, was arrested for allegedly appropriating internal documents relating to state-owned firm Electricity of Vietnam, according to the state media reports.

She was detained on 20 September, spokesperson for the ministry of public security To An Xo, confirmed on Monday.

The official denied that the grounds for arresting Ms Nhien were related to “environmental activism”.

Earlier reports claimed that the think-tank’s top official was detained on 15 September.

“The security investigation agency of Hanoi city police issued an arrest warrant to Ngo Thi To Nhien,” Mr Xo said at a press conference late on Saturday.

If charged, Ms Nhien faced up to five years in prison, according to Vietnam’s criminal code.

According to a rights group, she was detained without any official confirmation.

Ms Nhien is a prominent researcher in Vietnam and has worked with a number of international organisations, including the World Bank, the European Union, the United Nations and the Asian Development Bank. She was reportedly working on an implementation plan for the country’s just energy transition partnership (JETP) at the time of her arrest.

The $15bn project will push Vietnam to wean off fossil fuels and is funded by the G7.

While the immediate reasons for her arrests are not clear, Vietnam is one of the few remaining communist single-party states that tolerate no dissent, including on environmental issues.

Human rights advocacy group The 88 Project have claimed that she has been arrested for “unknown reasons”.

In 2022, Human Rights Watch said that more than 170 activists had been put under house arrest, blocked from travelling or in some cases assaulted by agents of the Vietnamese government in a little-noticed campaign to silence its critics.

Ms Nhien’s arrest comes just days after a Vietnamese climate activist was sentenced to three years in prison on charges of tax fraud.

Hoang Thi Minh Hong, 50, who headed the environmental advocacy group Change, which works on environment and climate issues, was also fined 100 million Vietnamese dong ($4,100) by a court in Ho Chi Minh City, the state-owned Viet Nam News reported.

Le Thi Thap, the wife of Luu Van Vinh, told Project 88 that she was summoned by police from Binh Tan District in HCMC to appear for questioning on Sept. 8.. When she appeared, she was advised to persuade her husband to plead guilty in order for him to be released early. Then they asked her whether any representatives from the U.S. consulate had visited her husband and if she had signed any petition letter to the president of the United States. She answered that since her husband was in jail, they should know whether or not anyone had visited him. They also told her that if her family had a desire to emigrate to the United States, they would help her fill out the paperwork. She just told them to give her the forms. After that, she was allowed to go home safely. Vinh was arrested in 2016 and is serving a 15-year sentence for “attempted subversion” for belonging to the group Vietnam National Self-Determination Coalition.

Prisoner of conscience Bui Tuan Lam, known as ‘Onion Bae,’ is being punished after unsuccessfully appealing his five year sentence, his wife told Radio Free Asia.

Lam was convicted of spreading ‘propaganda against the state’ and his sentence was upheld in an appeal last month.

His wife, Le Thanh Lam, told RFA Vietnamese that when she visited Lam last week, detention center officials told her all family meetings must be supervised and would therefore take time to arrange.

However, following multiple calls to arrange a visit, his wife was told family visits had been suspended because Lam was being disciplined.

“I asked them why my husband was disciplined, how long he would be disciplined and when my family would be able to see him again,” she said.

“They did not provide any more information.”

RFA called a police officer named Phong at the Da Nang detention center where Lam is being held. He refused to answer any questions.

“I’m very worried and confused,” his wife said.

“I don’t know whether he will be shackled and what the punishment will be like.

This is the second disciplinary action since the trial. In just a few months he was disciplined twice [and made to wear] leg shackles.”

Ms Lam said the family had no information about her husband’s health because he was denied access to lawyers before his appeal.

Lawyer Le Dinh Viet told her that during the appeal hearing the court denied him any form of communication with his client, even eye contact.

Lam is one of dozens of activists imprisoned on charges of ‘anti-state propaganda’ in recent years. Few of the other prisoners have been disciplined and denied family visits.

Lam, 39, campaigned for human rights in Vietnam at the U.N. headquarters in Geneva in 2014. He is a member of the No-U movement, which challenges China’s ‘Nine Dash Line’ territorial claims in the South China Sea.

He earned the nickname ‘Onion Bae’ after posting a video mocking Minister of Public Security To Lam, who ate a US$1,800 steak at a restaurant owned by celebrity chef ‘Salt Bae.’

In Lam’s video, which went viral, he copies the chef’s gesture of dramatically sprinkling salt, instead sprinkling spring onions on a bowl of noodles.

Before his trial and appeal, Human Rights Watch called for all charges to be dropped and Lam’s immediate release.

Detained Vietnamese blogger and YouTuber Duong Van Thai is still in prison almost three weeks after his temporary detention was supposed to have expired, his family told Radio Free Asia.

Thai, 41, was living in Thailand when he disappeared on April 13 in what many believe was an abduction.

Vietnam has neither confirmed nor denied that he was abducted and taken back to Vietnam, but shortly after his disappearance, authorities announced that they had apprehended him for trying to sneak into the country illegally.

They did not confirm to his family that he was under arrest on official charges until July, when they sent a letter saying he was being held in a detention center in Hanoi, that he was charged with “anti-state propaganda,” and that the temporary detention would end on Aug. 12.

According to Vietnamese law, the maximum temporary detention time, which applies to extremely serious offenses, is four months. In complex cases that require more time, this period can be extended, but only if the investigating agency sends a written request to the judicial authorities.

Thai’s 70-year-old mother, Duong Thi Lu, told RFA Vietnamese that she tried to visit her son in the detention center, but she was not allowed to meet him.

“I’ve been there twice,” she said. “On my first trip, because I went there on a Saturday, they did not receive me. The next time was on a Friday. They received me at the front gate and allowed me to send in some supplies but did not let me in.”

She said that the detention center staff told her she would not be allowed to see her son until the investigation ends. She also said she intends to return next week to give him more supplies.

Lu also said that because of her advanced age, she was not capable nor alert enough to hire a defense lawyer for her son, and she plans to rely on support from her son’s friends.

RFA made repeated phone calls to the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security via the two official telephone numbers posted on its website but no one answered.

Critical posts

Duong Van Thai had fled to Thailand in late 2018 or early 2019, fearing political persecution for his many posts and videos that criticized the Vietnamese government and leaders of the Communist Party on Facebook and YouTube.

He had been granted refugee status by the United Nations refugee agency’s office in Bangkok. He was interviewed to resettle in a third country right before his disappearance near his rental home in central Thailand’s Pathum Thani province.

Organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders, and the Committee to Protect Journalists have accused Vietnam’s security agents of kidnapping Duong Van Thai and bringing him back to Vietnam in a manner similar to how they abducted RFA-affiliated blogger Truong Duy Nhat in Bangkok in 2019 or former oil company CEO Trinh Xuan Thanh in Berlin in 2017.

Ahead of Bui Tuan Lam’s appeal trial scheduled for Aug. 30, his family told Project 88 that security police have posted guards around their home since Aug. 28 and have been taking pictures and videos of their movements and activities.

Political prisoner Dang Dinh Bach has been assaulted by policemen after telling his family he’d been threatened by other inmates, according to fellow inmate Tran Huynh Duy Thuc who was visited by his family this week.

Bach and Thuc both called their families last Thursday to say people dressed as prisoners had entered their cells, threatening them. Thuc said the inmates who entered his cell had a knife.

On Tuesday, Thuc’s family visited him at Prison No.6 in Nghe An province.

Thuc asked his family to record the names and numbers of 7-8 policemen standing around them, saying they were “those who oppressed and made it difficult for him in the camp,” Thuc’s younger brother Tran Huynh Duy Tan told Radio Free Asia.

“Thuc waited until the end of the visit to say the last word to his family, because he knew that when he said this, he would be stopped,” Tan said.

“In the last sentence, shouting loudly to the family, he said, ‘the day Bach called his family on August 31, he was severely assaulted by police officers.’”

The family had previously sent an urgent request for help to Tran Ba Toan -- head of Prison No. 6 – and the People’s Procuracy of Nghe An Province to request immediate implementation of measures to protect life and ensure the safety of the four political prisoners who had been threatened.

After finishing their visit Tuesday, Thuc’s relatives requested to meet Toan to discuss the case but were told he was on a business trip.

Bach suffered a head injury

Dang Dinh Bach is a lawyer and director of the environmental group, the Center for Legal Studies & Policy for Sustainable Development.

He was arrested in July 2021 and later sentenced to five years in prison for tax evasion.

His wife, Tran Phuong Thao, met with him on Tuesday. Thao said her husband was prevented from bringing a notebook to record their conversation.

“Bach showed me his hand. I saw three cuts on the wrist and hand, each about 2-3 centimeters,” she said.

“I asked him what's wrong? Bach said that I have to understand there are many things he cannot say, but he believes I can understand what is going on in here.”

She said Bachh told her he had a bruise on the back of his neck about 7 cm wide and still has a headache, but the staff refused to examine it.

“On August 31, right after the call home, he was hit in the head from behind,” she said.

RFA’s reporter tried to call Prison No. 6 to verify the information, but nobody answered.

Tran Huynh Duy Thuc told his family in a short phone call that men armed with knives entered his cell. Thuc said his belongings and physical health were under threat. He was supposed to be allowed a 10-minute phone call but the line was abruptly cut after only three minutes. However, in that short span, Thuc was able to give his sister the names of two prison officials who presumably are responsible for his well being: Phạm Văn Luyến (#559-846) and Nguyễn Văn Hiệu (#569-921).

A court in Vietnam on Wednesday upheld the five and a half year prison sentence for activist Bui Tuan Lam, known as “Onion Bae,” his wife Le Than Lam told Radio Free Asia.

On May 25, Bui was convicted of propaganda under Article 117 of the country’s Penal Code, after being found guilty of criticizing the government online.

Le told RFA Vietnamese she was not allowed to attend Wednesday’s three-hour hearing at the Higher People’s Court in Danang. but his lawyer Le Dinh Viet was permitted to represent him there.

However, the lawyer was not allowed to meet his client on Tuesday at the detention center where Bui is being held so they were unable to prepare for the appeal.

Le Than Lam said hundreds of policemen in uniform and plain clothes were deployed outside the court, filming her and others who had gathered there to wait for the outcome. She told RFA everyone stayed calm when the appeal was rejected, so the police had no reason to arrest them.

Bui, 39, ran a beef noodle stall in Danang. He achieved notoriety in 2021 after posting an online video mimicking the Turkish celebrity chef Nusret Gökçe, known as “Salt Bae.”

The video, which went viral on social media, was seen as poking fun at To Lam, Vietnam’s minister of public security. To was caught on film being hand-fed a GBP1,450 (U.S.$1,830) gold-encrusted steak by Salt Bae at his London restaurant.

In Bui’s video clip, he dramatically sprinkles spring onions into a bowl of soup, mimicking the signature move of the celebrity chef.

Bui was summoned by Danang police for questioning and arrested and charged in September 2022.

Danang People’s Procuracy claimed Bui posted articles on Facebook and YouTube, including content that was “distorting, defaming people’s government” and “fabricating and causing confusion among people.”

Article 117 of the country’s Penal Code criminalizes “making, storing, distributing or disseminating information, documents and items against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.” It is frequently used by authorities to restrict freedom of expression and opinions deemed critical of the government.

On Tuesday, a court upheld the eight-year jail sentence of democracy activist Tran Van Bang, who was also convicted under Article 117.

He is among six activists and journalists who have been convicted on charges of anti-state propaganda by the Vietnamese government since January.

Vietnam has convicted at least 60 people under Article 117, according to human rights groups.

A court in Vietnam on Tuesday upheld the eight-year jail sentence of democracy activist Tran Van Bang for anti-state propaganda during a brief hearing in which authorities dismissed the arguments of the defense and “read the old verdict,” according to family members.

Bang’s conviction is the latest in Hanoi’s ongoing campaign to silence bloggers and activists. Vietnam has convicted at least 60 such people for “making, storing and disseminating materials against the State” under the same Article 117 of Vietnam’s Penal Code, according to rights groups.

He is among six activists and journalists who have been convicted on charges of anti-state propaganda by the Vietnamese government since January.

The Superior People’s Court in Ho Chi Minh City on Tuesday sided with the court of first instance, which in May sentenced Bang, 62, to eight years in prison and three years probation.

The decision prompted Western governments and international NGOs to call for his release, saying he was denied his right to freedom of speech.

One of Bang’s siblings told RFA Vietnamese that Bang and his defense lawyer presented their argument for his innocence, saying his posts to social media were his own views and not intended to oppose the government.

“However, [at the end] the Procuracy’s representative read the old verdict and immediately made a conclusion, saying that they did not accept the arguments of either the defense lawyer or Tran Bang,” said the sibling, who spoke on condition of anonymity citing fear of reprisal.

Authorities only allowed family members to view the proceedings on a closed circuit camera feed broadcast to a nearby room. Diplomatic representatives from foreign governments were also permitted to view the feed on Tuesday, after being barred from Bang’s last trial.

Bang’s sibling told RFA his family was surprised by how quickly Tuesday’s proceedings took place and said Bang was not allowed to make a closing statement.

“The judge read out the decision, saying my brother no longer had the right to appeal, and then tasked the police to execute the judgment.” they said. “Right after that, they took my brother away. Our family quickly ran out [of the room] to see him but couldn’t make it in time.”

Repeated calls by RFA to the Superior People’s Court in Ho Chi Minh City for comment on the decision went unanswered Tuesday.

Problematic posts

Tran Van Bang, better known as Tran Bang, is a war veteran who fought during the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War. He had regularly participated in demonstrations against China for its controversial claims over territories in the South China Sea.

He was arrested in March 2022 for what was initially determined to be 31 Facebook posts between March 2016 and August 2021.

After a subsequent investigation, authorities found that he wrote 39 problematic posts between three Facebook accounts that that were seen as “distorting, defaming and speaking badly of the people’s government; providing false information, causing confusion among the people; and expressing hate and discontent towards the authorities, Party, State, and country’s leaders,” the Tuoi Tre newspaper reported at the time, citing the indictment.

Prior to Tuesday’s hearing, Bang’s defense lawyer Tran Dinh Dung told RFA that his client had been suffering from a tumor in his groin that had not been determined benign or malignant, and that an operation to remove the growth had been delayed by red tape at his detention center. The state of Bang’s health situation was not immediately clear.

An activist who has organized numerous petition drives in coastal Ha Tinh province has been arrested under Vietnam’s Article 331, the statute commonly used by authorities to silence those speaking out for human rights.

Hoang Van Luan, 35, was arrested on Wednesday and charged with “abusing democratic freedoms,” according to a statement issued by Ky Anh district police to state media.

At least 15 people across Vietnam have been arrested this year and charged under Article 331, according to a Radio Free Asia tally. The statute has been widely criticized by international communities as being vague.

The arrests under Article 331 are a part of Vietnam’s efforts in recent years to stifle political dissent. Activists are also commonly charged with distributing propaganda against the state under Article 117 of the 2015 Penal Code.

Since 2018, Luan has led petition drives for 18 groups on issues presented to officials at the village, district and provincial levels, as well as at central government offices in Hanoi, Ky Anh police said.

The petitions have included the names of 981 people, police said.

In 2019, police in Hanoi’s Ha Dong district imposed an administration penalty with a warning against Luan, saying his group of petitioners were disrupting social order.

This week, the official People’s Police Newspaper ran a photo of Luan and other petitioners who urged authorities to complete a promised water supply project to improve the lives of residents in the Vung Ang Economic Zone in Ky Anh district.

The Vung Ang zone was the site of a devastating toxic waste spill in 2016. The spill by Taiwan-owned Formosa Plastics Group’s steel plant killed an estimated 115 tons of fish and left fishermen jobless in four coastal provinces, including Ha Tinh.

Luan has also organized petitions in the province that have nothing to do with his family interests, such as the North-South Highway, Ky Anh police said on Wednesday. The petitions have led to delays in land clearance for the project, police said.

Tran Huynh Duy Thuc’s family visited him on August 16 but was told he refused to meet them. They left the food and supplies they brought for him, including medication he had requested, with prison officials. After they had left, they were called to return and take everything back because he refused to accept the items after finding out that necessity items like medicine were crossed off the list by the warden. The family believe this was an act of protest against prison officials and his way of signaling that he’s still being mistreated. Currently one of the longest serving political prisoners in Vietnam, Thuc is 14 years into his 16-year sentence.

Relatives of a stand-up comedian said he was detained by police in Ho Chi Minh City, beaten and then fined for videos about social issues that he posted to his popular YouTube account six years ago.

Police arrested Nguyen Phuc Gia Huy on Tuesday and later fined him 7.5 million Vietnamese dong (about US$315) for videos that authorities said carried untruthful content. The content of those videos wasn’t disclosed.

He was also ordered to remove the false information from YouTube, according to the Tuoi Tre newspaper.

Huy, 41, is a stand-up comedian who participated in the “Vietnam’s Got Talent” TV show and has a YouTube channel – where he is known as Cucumber – that has nearly 900,000 subscribers.

His videos have focused on sensitive issues in society, such as border crossings and the recent attacks on local government facilities in Dak Lak province.

"Cucumber was abducted at around 10 a.m. on August 15 while eating alone,” a family member told Radio Free Asia. “Security forces took him away and then brought him to the station for questioning without giving any documents."

The family member added that he was beaten during his interrogation and wasn’t released until 11 p.m. the same day.

Previously, Huy was summoned to a police station in 2016 to discuss a video he posted that said, “Freedom of speech is different from personal humiliation.” Huy declared in the video that “in Vietnam, there is no freedom of speech.”

Huy’s relative noted that in 2022 he sued the Nhan Dan newspaper in what is considered the first lawsuit filed by an individual against a media outlet aligned with Vietnam’s Communist Party Central Committee.

Huy won the lawsuit against Nhan Dan, which agreed to remove articles critical of him. The relative questioned whether this week’s incident with police was related to the lawsuit.

Ms. Tran Phuong Thao is the spouse of the aforementioned environmental human rights defender, and a woman human rights defender in her own right. Since her husband was arrested in June of 2021, she has been a steadfast advocate for the release of Mr. Dang Dinh Bach and has engaged with UN human rights mechanisms in pursuit of this. Furthermore, in her husband’s absence, Ms. Thao has also played a role in assuming some of work that her husband was engaged in before his incarceration. She has taken up the position of director of the LPSD Group Joint Stock Company, a private business that operates independently of LPSD. Ms. Tran Phuong has reportedly been subjected to administrative and judicial harassment. According to the information received: On 18 January 2023, Ms. Tran Phuong Thao received a phone call from a female civil servant who was contacting her on behalf of the General Department of Civil Judgment Enforcement of Hanoi city. She requested Ms. Tran Phuong Thao to pay them VND 1,381,093,134 ($58,237), a sum corresponding to the amount that her husband, Bach, is alleged to have evaded. The officer informed Ms. Thao that if the money was not repaid, then the department would confiscate property belonging to the family in compensation for this. The call from the officer is reported to have caused Ms. Thao a great deal of stress. In an effort to pay back the amount demanded of her, Ms. Thao contacted her husband’s family, to ask him to help her to sell the family car so that she could repay the money. On 7 March 2023, however, Ms. Thao was subsequently contacted by the same person from the Department of Civil Justice Enforcement informing her of the department’s intention to repossess the family car in question, as well as other property belonging to Mr. Bach’s family, to satisfy the sum that Mr. Bach allegedly owes. She also informed Ms. Thao that she was aware Ms. Thao had tried to receive help in selling her husband’s car, although this was private information not publicly known. Furthermore, when Ms. Thao visited Mr. Bach in prison on 17 March 2023, Mr. Bach told her that an officer from the same department had visited him in prison and had informed him that his bank account had been seized. Additionally, on 8 February 2023, Ms. Thao was once again reportedly subjected to administrative harassment. On this occasion, the Dong Da District Tax Department sent a letter to the Policy of Sustainable Development Research Center (LPSD) Group Joint Stock Company, of which Ms. Thao is now the director, alleging that Mr. Bach had incorrectly declared his personal income tax for the year of 2020. As a penalty for this reported breach in protocol, Ms. Thao was instructed to pay a fine on behalf of the company, amounting to VND 25,000,000 ($1,054). The woman human rights defender was also summoned to report to the tax office. Over the two weeks that followed this incident, another officer from the district tax department called Ms. Thao many times, threatening to refer the matter to the police if the instructions of the letter were not adhered to. Following this, on 10 March 2023, Ms. Thao received another letter which again summoned her to appear before the tax department, Thao complied with this and attended the department on 13 March 2023 where, upon her arrival, she submitted a written response in person. In this letter, she explained that Mr. Bach was unable to pay the fine, owing to the fact that he is still in prison, on account of which his bank accounts have been frozen. She expressed that, should the department wish to pursue this further, they should contact her husband to discuss the matter with him instead, stressing that she was not involved in the tax declarations for the year in question. Ms. Thao has otherwise remarked that, since her husband’s arrest, she has been left unable to manage certain financial matters in relation to their home.

Ms. Tran Phuong Thao is the spouse of the aforementioned environmental human rights defender, and a woman human rights defender in her own right. Since her husband was arrested in June of 2021, she has been a steadfast advocate for the release of Mr. Dang Dinh Bach and has engaged with UN human rights mechanisms in pursuit of this. Furthermore, in her husband’s absence, Ms. Thao has also played a role in assuming some of work that her husband was engaged in before his incarceration. She has taken up the position of director of the LPSD Group Joint Stock Company, a private business that operates independently of LPSD. Ms. Tran Phuong has reportedly been subjected to administrative and judicial harassment. According to the information received: On 18 January 2023, Ms. Tran Phuong Thao received a phone call from a female civil servant who was contacting her on behalf of the General Department of Civil Judgment Enforcement of Hanoi city. She requested Ms. Tran Phuong Thao to pay them VND 1,381,093,134 ($58,237), a sum corresponding to the amount that her husband, Bach, is alleged to have evaded. The officer informed Ms. Thao that if the money was not repaid, then the department would confiscate property belonging to the family in compensation for this. The call from the officer is reported to have caused Ms. Thao a great deal of stress. In an effort to pay back the amount demanded of her, Ms. Thao contacted her husband’s family, to ask him to help her to sell the family car so that she could repay the money. On 7 March 2023, however, Ms. Thao was subsequently contacted by the same person from the Department of Civil Justice Enforcement informing her of the department’s intention to repossess the family car in question, as well as other property belonging to Mr. Bach’s family, to satisfy the sum that Mr. Bach allegedly owes. She also informed Ms. Thao that she was aware Ms. Thao had tried to receive help in selling her husband’s car, although this was private information not publicly known. Furthermore, when Ms. Thao visited Mr. Bach in prison on 17 March 2023, Mr. Bach told her that an officer from the same department had visited him in prison and had informed him that his bank account had been seized. Additionally, on 8 February 2023, Ms. Thao was once again reportedly subjected to administrative harassment. On this occasion, the Dong Da District Tax Department sent a letter to the Policy of Sustainable Development Research Center (LPSD) Group Joint Stock Company, of which Ms. Thao is now the director, alleging that Mr. Bach had incorrectly declared his personal income tax for the year of 2020. As a penalty for this reported breach in protocol, Ms. Thao was instructed to pay a fine on behalf of the company, amounting to VND 25,000,000 ($1,054). The woman human rights defender was also summoned to report to the tax office. Over the two weeks that followed this incident, another officer from the district tax department called Ms. Thao many times, threatening to refer the matter to the police if the instructions of the letter were not adhered to. Following this, on 10 March 2023, Ms. Thao received another letter which again summoned her to appear before the tax department, Thao complied with this and attended the department on 13 March 2023 where, upon her arrival, she submitted a written response in person. In this letter, she explained that Mr. Bach was unable to pay the fine, owing to the fact that he is still in prison, on account of which his bank accounts have been frozen. She expressed that, should the department wish to pursue this further, they should contact her husband to discuss the matter with him instead, stressing that she was not involved in the tax declarations for the year in question. Ms. Thao has otherwise remarked that, since her husband’s arrest, she has been left unable to manage certain financial matters in relation to their home.

Phan Tat Thanh’s family told Project 88 that the police asked him and his brother to come to the police station on July 5 to sign paperwork regarding a traffic accident involving Thanh’s brother. When they arrived, however, both men were detained. Thanh’s brother was later released, but Thanh was kept there for a week against his will. Thanh then managed to escape. Afterwards, his brother and mother reported that they faced threats and intimidation from the police. Thanh was re-apprehended on July 13. On July 15, the police went to search his house without a warrant. His family was told verbally that he was being charged with disseminating “anti-state propaganda” but no warrant was presented.”

Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security (MPS), the state police, officially charged Duong Van Thai, a Vietnamese blogger who lived in exile in Thailand, with “distributing anti-State propaganda,” a purported violation of Article 117 in the Penal Code. According to an announcement letter dated July 5 that was sent to Duong Thi Lu, the mother of Thai, the police also extended the detention of the Vietnamese blogger until August 12. The letter said he was detained at MPS Detention Center B14 in Thanh Tri District, Hanoi City.

Lu said the police letter was delivered to her home on July 14, three months after state-sponsored agents allegedly kidnaped Thai.

Duong Van Thai, 41, owned a Youtube channel called “Thái Văn Đường” and specialized in reporting on infighting within the Vietnamese Communist Party. All videos and live streams published on the channel disappeared shortly after he went missing. Thai had been a political refugee in Thailand since early 2019 and was granted refugee status by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Bangkok in the same year.

On April 13, he was reported missing after leaving his home in Pathum Thani Province, Thailand. Three days later, on April 16, the Ha Tinh Provincial Police in Vietnam said they found a man named Duong Van Thai who “illegally crossed the border to enter Vietnam from Laos.” Vietnamese activists and those close to Thai believed he had been kidnapped by Vietnamese security agents in Bangkok and forcibly transported back to Vietnam.

The alleged abduction of Duong Van Thai worried Vietnamese dissidents and human rights activists living in Thailand, who feared that Vietnam’s security apparatus has become increasingly bold in its repression of foreign-based critics.

In a Facebook posting on July 20, attorney Dang Dinh Manh, a human rights lawyer in the United States, said that the Vietnamese police inadvertently admitted their operations to kidnap Duong Van Thai in their announcement of indicting him.

Manh wrote that according to Vietnam’s criminal procedure law, the limit for the first temporary detention is four months. This coincides with the unconfirmed information that Thai was kidnapped on April 13 in Thailand, while his temporary custody will conclude on August 12. The attorney believes that the Vietnamese police planned the abduction of the blogger in Thailand’s territory in advance.

Moreover, Manh added that the police security investigation agency officially charged Duong Van Thai with violating Article 117 of the Penal Code instead of punishing him for an illegal border crossing, which the Ha Tinh Police initially alleged.

Three members of Vietnam’s Khmer Krom minority group who are suspected of distributing books about indigenous peoples’ rights were arrested on Monday in the Mekong Delta region, authorities told local media.

One of the three men was To Hoang Chuong of Tra Vinh province. Radio Free Asia’s Vietnamese Service reported last month that he was beaten by local policemen in June while visiting a friend in neighboring Soc Trang province.

On June 25, the U.S.-based Union of Khmers Kampuchea Krom issued a statement condemning the Soc Trang Provincial Police for the “brutal and inhuman treatment” of Chuong.

The other two men arrested on Monday were Danh Minh Quang of Soc Trang province and Thach Cuong of Tra Vinh province.

Police in both provinces told local media that local residents reported that the men had been passing out copies of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which states that indigenous peoples have the right to maintain and develop their political, economic and social systems or institutions.

The nearly 1.3-million strong Khmer Krom live in a part of Vietnam that was once southeastern Cambodia. They have faced serious restrictions on freedom of expression, assembly and movement.

The three men have been charged with “abusing democratic freedoms” under Article 331 of the Penal Code, a statute used by Vietnamese authorities to silence those speaking out for human rights.

Homes surrounded

Additionally, Soc Trang provincial authorities arrested two other Khmer Krom activists on Monday and surrounded the home of another two activists, one of the activists told RFA’s Khmer Service.

The siege of the two homes was an attempt by plainclothes police to intimidate, Lim Vong told RFA Khmer.

“I appeal to the United Nations to help stop Vietnamese authorities from excessively abusing the rights of the Khmer Krom people. I have done nothing wrong in Vietnam,” he said.

“I only distributed the United Nations’ textbooks about human rights and the rights to self-determination,” he told RFA. “I neither demand back the territory of Kampuchea Krom nor demand the separation of the Khmer Krom from Vietnam.”

Some activists have also been harassed recently by police for wearing T-shirts that show the Khmer Kampuchea Krom flag, according to Son Chumchoun, secretary general of the Phnom Penh-based Khmer Kampuchea Krom Association for Human Rights and Development.

The Vietnamese government has banned its human rights publications and has tightly controlled the practice of Theravada Buddhism by the group, which sees the religion as a foundation of their distinct culture and ethnic identity.

Last year, seven special U.N. rapporteurs sent a 16-page letter to Vietnam’s government about the country’s alleged failure to recognize the right to self-determination of the Khmer Krom.

A former religious prisoner of conscience in Vietnam has been arrested on an anti-state charge related to his social media activity, just two years after his release from prison following a conviction for “disturbing public order,” local media reported.

Nguyen Hoang Nam, a member of a dissident Hoa Hao Buddhist Church in An Giang province, is accused of posting documents, images, videos and live broadcasts that oppose authorities and undermine the policy of religious and national unity, according to Vietnamese state media, which cited government investigators.

Nam is charged under Article 117 of Vietnam’s penal code, a vaguely written set of rules that rights groups say is Hanoi’s favorite tool for silencing dissenting bloggers and journalists.

The church’s deputy chief secretary, Nguyen Ngoc Tan, told Radio Free Asia that he was shocked by the arrest.

“I don’t see those videos (against the government), but only videos of Hoang Nam doing social charity work.” he said, referring to Nam’s Facebook account.

Nam and his family cook free meals for poor people about twice a month, according to church member Vo Van Buu, who added that Nam also sometimes reposts articles on Facebook written by people who criticize the government.

Previous arrest

Nam was arrested in 2017 on the “disturbing public order” charge while traveling to the house of another church member to join in worship services, sources told RFA at the time. Nam was sentenced the following year to a four-year prison term and was released in 2021.

Vietnam’s government officially recognizes the Hoa Hao religion, which has some 2 million followers across the country, but imposes harsh controls on dissenting Hoa Hao groups – including the sect in An Giang – that do not follow the state-sanctioned branch.

Rights groups say that An Giang authorities routinely harass followers of the unapproved groups, prohibiting public readings of the Hoa Hao founder’s writings and discouraging worshipers from visiting Hoa Hao pagodas in An Giang and other provinces.

Online newspaper Vietnam Plus reported on Friday that An Giang police coordinated with the Ministry of Public Security’s Department of Cybersecurity and High-Tech Crime Prevention and Control in arresting Nam in Chau Doc city on July 24.

Authorities searched his home and seized seven mobile phones, two USB sticks, a laptop, 307 pages of documents and 10 videos allegedly containing “propaganda against the Party and the state,” Vietnam Plus reported.

The arrest is another attack by the Vietnamese government on freedom of speech, as well as freedom of religion and belief, according to Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch.

“By arresting Nguyen Hoang Nam, the government shows how it is doubling down on its campaign to silence outspoken advocates of religious freedom,” he told RFA in an email. “The previous accusations and prosecution of Nguyen Hoang Nam are bogus, and so is this latest arrest.”

Thong Nhat district court, Dong Nai province, sentenced Mr Vuong to 5 years jail in a hearing on 18 April 2023, for abuse democratic freedoms.

He had no legal representation, his family was not notified of the hearing.

He was arrested on 3 Jan 2023. One day after, Thong Nhat district police gave his family a document titled 'Notification about the temporary detention' of Mr Vuong, stating he would be detained for 2 months, but didn't provide the reason.

'That was the only document our family received from local authorities about Vuong's situation', one of Mr Vuong's relatives told RFA Viet 7 Aug, on condition of anonymity.

'At beginning of May [2023], police at temporary detention centre B5, Dong Nai province, rang our family and informed that Vuong was jailed there, and we could visit him,' this relative said.

When they visited him, Mr Vuong told them he had been sentenced to 5 years jail for abuse democratic freedoms in a hearing without legal representation on 18 April.

Facebooker Le Xuan Dieu for two consecutive days was beaten and interrogated by Ho Chi Minh City police for articles criticizing the regime on his personal page.

A relative of Mr. Dieu said that officers from the Security Investigation Agency - Ho Chi Minh City Police are investigating him about two Facebook accounts, Dieu Le and Deo Lu, which are believed to be his.

This person told Radio Free Asia (RFA) on the morning of August 2 on condition of anonymity for security reasons:

Mr. Dieu was taken to the headquarters of the City's Investigation Security Agency on the morning of July 31 by the police after refusing to go to the police station after being summoned three times to work on social media posts. Facebook association.

Four policemen burst into the house and escorted him away without a warrant. The police did not search his house ."

This person said that on the first day, Mr. Dieu was kept at the police station all day and was only able to return home late in the evening, with a dilapidated body and many bruises on his face. The results of medical examination and radiograph showed that he had multiple soft tissue injuries and fractured rib number 4.

During the interrogation of Facebook posts on July 31, Dieu was beaten every 30 minutes by 7-8 policemen, relatives said.

Mr. Dieu, 46, was forced to go to the police station in the morning and afternoon of August 1 to work with the same content, but he was no longer beaten as on the first day.

He was only allowed to return home late in the afternoon, the police did not make any further appointments. Now his phone, social media accounts, and even his bank account have been controlled by security.

Relatives said that now Mr. Dieu was in pain all over his body and had to stay at home to recuperate.

The reporter called Mr. Dieu directly to ask about the case, but he refused to answer the interview because he was very tired after working with the police for two days.

The reporter also called the hotline of the Ho Chi Minh City Police to ask about this case, but the person on the phone refused to provide information, asking the reporter to come to the agency to work with the staff or the leadership of the city police.

Mr. Dieu is one of the active dissidents in Ho Chi Minh City and Vietnam. He used to participate in a number of protests against China's infringement on Vietnam's sovereignty over sea and islands in the East Sea.

On Facebook Dieu Le and Deo Lu have many posts criticizing the regime on issues such as human rights violations, systemic corruption, economic mismanagement, ubiquitous environmental pollution, and sovereignty. Many leaders including Ho Chi Minh, the founder of the regime, were also alluded to in many articles.

In recent times, Vietnamese security forces have stepped up online repression. Two activists Phan Tat Thanh and Duong Tuan Ngoc were recently arrested and prosecuted for "conducting propaganda against the state" after many days of being interrogated by the police. Mr. Thanh is said to be the former admin of the Diary of Patriotism and Mr. Ngoc has many articles and videos criticizing the regime and leader Ho Chi Minh on Facebook and Youtube.

On July 31, three Khmer activists, Danh Minh Quang in Soc Trang and Thach Cuong and To Hoang Chuong in Tra Vinh were arrested for allegedly "abusing democratic freedoms" for their rights-claiming activities. local person.

Since the beginning of this year, at least 12 people have been arrested and prosecuted and seven have been sentenced to between five and eight years in prison for either of these crimes, according to RFA statistics.

Many activists in Hanoi told RFA that they were called by city security to work and asked not to write or share articles with "sensitive" content or participate in civic activities, including peaceful protest.

Officer of Prison No. 6 (Thanh Chuong, Nghe An) confiscated the belongings of prisoner of conscience (TNLT) Tran Huynh Duy Thuc, he suspected that he was persecuted for speaking out for justice for himself.

Mr. Thuc, a businessman and information technology engineer is serving the 14th year of a 16-year prison sentence for "activities aimed at overthrowing the government," having his personal medical equipment confiscated by prison guards. after he wrote a response to the Supreme People's Court on Document No. 253 of the same agency .

In this document, the Supreme People's Court affirmed that Mr. Thuc was convicted under Clause 1 of Article 79 of the Criminal Code 1999 "in the case of completed crime, not in the case of preparation to commit a crime under Clause 3 of Article 109. 2015 Penal Code."

Therefore, he is not subject to favorable terms as prescribed in Resolution No. 41 of 2017 of the National Assembly to consider exempting the remaining penalty.

Tran Huynh Duy Tan said his family received information from his brother in an unusual call on July 30. He told Radio Free Asia (RFA) about his brother's recent situation in prison.

" Last July 20, the prison (supervisor) they entered his cell and they took all the things that are very necessary for his daily life such as reading lights, blood pressure monitors, glucose meters . blood vessels, and battery-operated fans .

Those are the things that he desperately needs in the weather (as hot as today-PV) as well as a health check in his current condition i. They asked me to go check it out but I haven't returned it for a whole week . "

According to Mr. Thuc narrated to his family, on July 22, people from the Security Department entered the cell to check all remaining personal belongings. He attributed this to his response to Document 253, and asserted that " this is certainly retaliation for him fighting for that sentence."

The prison also did not allow Mr. Thuc to continue sending letters home as usual.

Reporters on July 31 called Prison No. 6 to verify the information provided by Mr. Thuc's family, but no one answered the phone.

According to the family of this famous prisoner of conscience, he will refuse to visit his family from next month to protest the actions of the warden and prison guards of Detention Center No. Foreign diplomatic missions in Vietnam knew about his discrimination, and he also wanted to meet with the international diplomatic representative to talk about his case.

If not, he will deny the right to call home, the family said. Mr. Thuc also stated that he did not wear the prison uniform provided by the prison, according to the regulations that prisoners would have to wear every time they met their relatives.

Thuc is one of many prisoners of conscience who have attracted the attention of many Western national governments and international human rights organizations since his arrest in 2009.

He went on hunger strike several times in the prison to protest his inhuman treatment and demand his release.

Police in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City have arrested activist Phan Tat Thanh, accusing him for criticizing the government’s response to “Chinese aggression” in the South China Sea, his father told Radio Free Asia.

Thanh, 37, also known as “Black Aaron,” often posted online about the contentious area in the sea where Hanoi, Beijing and others have competing territorial claims.

Netizens told Thanh’s father, who requested anonymity for security reasons, that Thanh had gone missing on July 5.

The police issued a prosecution document on July 13, and on July 15 they searched his home and copied data from his computer.

In 2010, Thanh staged a protest in front of China’s Embassy in Bangkok because anti-China demonstrations in Vietnam by that time were being suppressed.

In addition to anti-China posts, Thanh had written posts and comments about human rights violations, environmental pollution, systematic corruption, and issues of major concern in Vietnam.

A court in Hanoi on July 26 held a trial for Nguyen Son Lo, former director of the Institute of Technology Research and Development (SENA), sentencing him to five years in prison on the combined charges of “abusing democratic freedoms” under Article 331 and “abusing authoritative position and power while on official duty” under Article 356. Vietnam’s state media released the news on the same day of his arrest.

Lo, 75, who ran the independent think tank SENA, received three years of imprisonment for allegedly violating Article 331 and another two years under Article 356. He was arrested on February 2 this year, six months after the police investigation agency charged him under Article 331.

State media reported that SENA was formerly named the Institute of Engineering Research and Urban Development under the management of the Vietnam Union of Science and Technology Associations (VUSTA). Lo has been the director of this think tank since it was first established in 1992.

According to state media, the Vietnam People’s Procuracy accused the SENA director of having distributed five documents, consisting of more than 1,000 pages, and three complaints containing content that “infringes upon the interests of the state and the legitimate rights of other organizations and individuals.” Lo is alleged to have composed the documents, designed their cover pages, and then emailed them to the staff of SENA to be printed and sent by post to 529 people. The court did not declare the content of these documents.

The judging panel also announced that the SENA Institute had rented a state-owned building for its headquarters. But since 2005, the Institute has allegedly not paid the rent and not declared the usage of this facility to the government. The panel deemed Lo’s rental of this building illegal. It alleged that the rent “violated the administrative management regulation on housing and land, thus obstructing the state’s right to manage, arrange, and lease this facility.” Nguyen Son Lo’s purported illegal rental of this building led to the alleged violation of the law on “abusing authoritative position and power while on official duty.”

It was reported that in the court, Lo admitted to the alleged activities but said that he did not consider it a violation of the law. Other employees of the SENA Institute were not prosecuted because they “did not know that the documents assigned to them contained illegal content,” according to the investigation agency.

Police of Ba Ria - Vung Tau province requested TMV Thich Vinh Phuoc, abbot of Phuoc Buu temple (Phuoc Thuan village, Xuyen Moc district), not to post articles critical of local authorities and other social issues on Facebook.

The request was given to the abbot in a working session on 13 July at the district police office. Three times the police issued their invitation to the abbot to turn up for working sessions with them, 'about saying things that show sign of violating the law on cyberspace'.

TMV Thich Vinh Phuoc, of the independent Unified Buddhist Church, told RFA Viet on 14 July:

'In the working session, [the police of Ba Ria Vung Tau province and Xuyen Moc district] gave me a document which looks like a written pledge that they wanted me to [agree to], that from now on, I won't write articles and post them on Facebook to criticise this and that. They said I must use my time for religious worshipping, I shouldn't speak up on social issues that affect the nation...'

As a member of Vietnam Interfaith Council - which advocates for religious freedom, TMV Thich Vinh Phuoc said he refused the police request and will continue to exercise his freedom of expression on social media.

'I have the rights as a citizen, I have the right to express by views on absolutely anything, writing of Facebook is my human right.' He said.

He said, like Thien Quang pagoda, Phuoc Buu Temple has also been subject to authorities' harassment, the temple has not been allowed to build a number of construction for worshipping purposes.

Vietnamese authorities have detained a former health teacher Duong Tuan Ngoc for posts he made on social media about education, health, and social issues that criticized the government, police reports and family members said.

Ngoc, 38, was once a nutrition teacher in the southern province of Lam Dong. The Lam Dong police summoned him on July 10, and he was detained the next day, his wife Bui Thanh Diem Ngoc, told Radio Free Asia’s Vietnamese Service.

The police said the detention is for an investigation on charges of anti-state propaganda in connection with videos he posted to Facebook and YouTube.

The exact law he is charged with violating is the vaguely written Article 117, which Amnesty International has described as being “commonly used to suppress legitimate dissent in Vietnam” and “a favored tool of the authorities to arbitrarily imprison journalists, bloggers and others who express views that do not align with the interests of the Communist Party of Vietnam.”

So far this year, at least six other activists, independent journalists and Facebook users have been arrested under Article 117 with prison terms ranging from five years and six months to eight years in prison, according to RFA statistics.

Mrs. Ngoc said her husband was called in on July 10 when police received an anonymous accusation that Mr. Ngoc was selling drug-related products on his Facebook account. At the police station, Mr. Ngoc was asked to admit that an offending account belonged to him.

“He said that he did not do anything wrong,” Mrs. Ngoc said. “The next day, we were asked to appear at the police station again without any stated reason.”

On their second visit, the husband and wife were put in separate rooms for interrogation. Later that night, police searched their house and confiscated phones, laptops, computers and cameras.

Mrs. Ngoc said that she was allowed to keep three of her own phones, and was let go after two days of interrogation, during which she was asked if she had helped her husband edit his online posts.

She has not seen her husband since the 11th, nor has she been allowed to send him clothes or anything else he might need. On Sunday, she received the written police notice of her husband’s emergency detention.

Long list of accusations

Signed by Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Thai Thanh on July 15, the notice accused Ngoc of a litany of alleged crimes, including attacking socialism, distorting history, denying revolutionary achievements, slandering the socialist regime, defaming national founder Ho Chi Minh and infringing upon the lawful rights and interests of the state – all in violation of Article 117.

However, the police did not specify which social media posts or videos broke the law, she said.

RFA attempted to contact the Lam Dong police for an explanation, but the person who answered the phone said responses to inquiries could only be given in person.

Mr. Ngoc’s most recent Facebook post, on July 10, praised a lifestyle close to nature in Vietnam’s countryside. His personal page has more than 45,000 followers and has an introductory description declaring, “I have rights as a citizen. You have rights as citizens. Citizens are the rightful owners of the country.”

His YouTube account “Freelance Education” was established in July 2019, and he has around 34,000 followers and hundreds of videos about health, medicine, and life in the countryside.

Ngoc’s wife said that the couple had previously lived in Ho Chi Minh City, southern Vietnam’s economic hub, but they recently moved to Lam Ha in March 2022.

They both graduated from Ho Chi Minh University of Economics and hold master’s degrees.

Mr. Ngoc taught college students online. He has made more than 684 videos and posted thousands of articles on medicine, health, education, economy, and many other social issues.

Prior to Mr. Ngoc’s detention, the couple sold a variety of organic and medicinal agricultural products. Since moving to Lam Ha, they have focused on gardening and producing organic goods, and selling them on social media.

Authorities targeted Mr. Ngoc because he was a champion of raising awareness of human values, an activist from Ho Chi Minh City told RFA on condition of anonymity for safety reasons.

“The teacher aims at human values, truth and liberal education in the clips he makes,” the activist said. “I feel that he only wants to contribute to the community with a correct view about the country's situation. Besides that, I don't see any sense in the charges they put in the detention notice.”

The activist said that in Ngoc’s videos, he never mentioned any specific part of the government or any named person, so the charges don’t make sense.

Le Quoc Quan, a former prisoner of conscience-turned-lawyer, told RFA that she has been following Ngoc’s videos for a long time.

“I am very impressed and have sympathy for Mr. Duong Tuan Ngoc because I think his presentations on social issues are very interesting, humorous, and very true,” she said. “After all, I find that Duong Tuan Ngoc is a talented person, and what he reflects is true and humorous. He deserves to be applauded instead of being arrested.”

Quan said what Ngoc said was true, even if it was sometimes sarcastic and humorous.

She described application of Article 117 as “a net dredging up everything so that anyone can be attributed with slander or libel.”

An online news site operated by a Vietnamese NGO will be suspended for three months as of Friday in accordance with a government decision as the publication focuses on “overcoming and thoroughly correcting shortcomings” to implement a government press directive.

The Ministry of Information and Communications concluded in an inspection report that Zing News, also known as Zing News Online Knowledge magazine, had to stop its online service, though the publication did not cite a specific reason in a notice to its readers on Thursday.

The site, which covers economic, culture and political news in Vietnam, is run by the Vietnam Publishing Association, an entity that does not receive funding from the government or the Vietnamese Communist Party, but still must obey its orders.

Zing’s announcement said it would focus on implementing a prime ministerial decision issued on April 3, 2019, for a master plan on press development and management nationwide through 2025.

The government’s plan states that “the press is a means of information, a tool for propaganda, and a weapon” that is “important ideological fuel” for the party and the state. It also calls for continuous efforts to complete legislation for the government’s management and organization of the media and to eliminate the “overlapping situation” by reducing the number of newspapers.

Though Zing did not state what the shortcomings are, it said it would continue to innovate content to ensure the implementation of the principles and purposes specified in its license and to promote an identity of “prestige information, impressive images” that better serves readers.

Vietnam ranks near the bottom of Reporters Without Borders’ 2023 Press Freedom Index – 178 out of 180 nations – for quashing dissent, controlling the public’s access to social media and prosecuting journalists on contentious charges, such as “distributing anti-state propaganda” and “abusing democratic freedoms.”

As of May 2022, Vietnam had 815 news outlets, including 138 newspapers and 677 magazines, of which 29 operate only in electronic format, according to the Ministry of Information and Communications.

To implement the government’s plan, the online Tri Tri online newspaper (Zing.vn) of the Vietnam Publishing Association converted to an e-magazine model on April 1, 2020.

In 2022, the government suspended publication of two other websites for three months, Vietnam Law newspaper and the e-magazine Vietnam Business and Border Trade Journal.

The ministry determined that Vietnam Law Newspaper had 13 violations and was fined 325 million dong (US$13,720). The other publication, operated under the auspices of the Vietnam Association of Border Traders, was fined 70 million dong (US$2,960) for an administrative violation.

A court in Hanoi on July 7 sentenced Phan Thi Huong Thuy, a lawyer who was a former member of the Hanoi Bar Association, to 12 months in prison on allegations of “abusing democratic freedoms to infringe upon the legitimate rights and interests of the State and individuals” under Article 331 of the Penal Code.

Thuy, 64, was prosecuted in September 2022 for allegedly publishing three articles on her social media that allegedly defamed Nguyen Van Chien, the former Chairman of the Hanoi Bar Association and former Vice President of the Vietnam Bar Federation. Thuy told RFA that the prosecution resulted from her earlier accusation that Chien did not have a university degree. Chien, a former Vietnam National Assembly member, considered it an insult.

However, Thuy again stated that she did not intend to insult Chien and that her purpose was to ensure that those elected to the Executive Board of the Hanoi Bar Association must meet the required criteria for a university degree. In October 2020, Chien sent an application to the Internal Political Security Department of the Ministry of Public Security, requesting that they investigate whether Thuy was the owner of the Facebook account “Huong Thuy Phan” where the defaming articles were published.

The authorities later determined that between September 15, 2020, and October 2, 2020, Thuy used the “Huong Thuy Phan” Facebook account to publish eight articles defaming Chien. In addition, Thuy was also ordered to compensate Nguyen Van Chien 9 million dong and pay a court fee of 200,000 dong. According to state media, the defendant, lawyer Phan Thi Huong Thuy, and the victim, lawyer Nguyen Van Chien, were absent during the trial.

Vu Thi Kim Hoang, the wife of Nguyen Thai Hung, a Vietnamese Youtube user, will serve her two-and-a-half-year prison sentence starting on June 1. She was found guilty of "abusing democratic freedoms" under Article 331 of the Penal Code, according to her interview with VOA Vietnamese on May 30. Last November, a court in Dong Nai sentenced Hung, 53, to four years and Hoang, 45, to two and a half years in prison.

Nguyen Thai Hung owned a Youtube channel called “Nói bằng thực TV” (Telling by Truth Television), where he often live-streamed and hosted talk shows discussing social and economic issues in Vietnam. The channel was reportedly established in 2020, gaining nearly 40,000 subscribers. The couple was arrested in January 2021 under Article 331, although Hoang did not directly participate in the live streaming. She was later released on bail.

Hoang publicly announced on her personal Facebook page, Kim Vu, on May 30 that she would be sent to the Tan Phu Detention Center in Dong Nai Province on June 1. Hoang told VOA News that she would be transferred to the B5 Camp of Dong Nai Provincial Prison. “[I] always hope that Vietnam will have freedom of speech,” she added. “That's the priority my husband and I hope for.”

Vietnam on Monday sentenced activist Phan Son Tung to six years in prison for advocating the formation of an opposition to the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam, his lawyer told Radio Free Asia.

Tung, 39, was arrested in August 2022 on anti-state propaganda charges for calling for the formation of the Prosperous Vietnam Party, which would work toward eliminating inequality in political power by removing communist party leadership.

Also related to his charges were his demand for citizens to have the freedom to establish associations and political organizations, and his social media content, which authorities said was “anti-state.”

According to the indictment, Phan Son Tung created and managed three YouTube channels, namely “For a prosperous Vietnam,” Phan Son Tung and Son Tung TV, and a Facebook page under the name David Phan. He had posted around 1,000 video clips on these channels, generating more than 148 million views with 530,000 followers.

The indictment also accused him of creating and disseminating 16 video clips with fabricated and confusion-creating content, six of which contained information promoting psychological warfare. Another 17 pieces of content distorted, slandered or insulted the prestige of organizations or the honor and dignity of individuals.

The indictment also acknowledged that he had been remorseful, cooperative and sincere in his confessions, and had paid a fine of 27 million dong (US$1,149), the total revenue generated from advertising income and from selling merchandise emblazoned with the words “For a Prosperous Vietnam.”

‘Full of social evils’

According to a Facebook post by attorney Le Van Luan, Tung used to work on the Project Management Board of Vietel Real Estate Firm but then moved out to establish his own company.

It was then that he learned that Vietnam is a society “full of social evils,” and he began to advocate for a stronger Vietnam with a “clean government” that is free of corruption, with each person playing their role.

During Monday’s trial, which began at 8:30 a.m. and ended at noon, Tung acknowledged every action he was accused of. But he maintained that none of those were crimes, his lawyer Ngo Anh Tuan told RFA’s Vietnamese Service.

"He reaffirmed that his acts were not unlawful and the defense lawyers also proved this,” Tuan said. “However, the prosecutors still stuck with their viewpoint.”

Tuan said he was expecting a shorter sentence because during the trial the prosecution did not demonstrate how his actions deserved a greater sentence. But because he had multiple violations, the judge decided to hand down the minimum sentence proposed by the prosecution, said Tuan.

Tung has become the sixth activist charged with “anti-state” propaganda under Article 117 since January 2023.

Amnesty International has described the law as a means to suppress legitimate dissent and “a favored tool of the authorities to arbitrarily imprison journalists, bloggers and others who express views that do not align with the interests of the communist party.”

Nguyen Lan Thang has chosen to not appeal his conviction for “anti-state propaganda” and has begun serving his five-year sentence, according to his wife. Le Bich Vuong went to visit her husband at the pre-trial detention center on June 15 only to learn that he had been transferred to Thanh Hoa Prison No. 5 earlier that morning. She said Thang decided not to appeal in order to “lessen the pressure on the family” and because “appeals never change the result but only lengthen the time he has to suffer the terrible conditions” at the detention center. Thang also told her that he viewed his prison term as “a long trip away from home about equal to the time he spent in college.”

His wife, Mrs Le Bich Vuong, told RFA Viet 20 June:

'On 15 June I went to Hoa Lo prison (temporary detention centre no. 1, Hanoi) as part of a regular timetable, to send in supplies for him, only then I was told he has been sent to prison 5 (Thanh Hoa province) that morning.'

The fact that he has been sent to prison to serve his 6 years sentence means he has waived his right to appeal. Mrs Vuong said her husband had explained to her his decision:

'First, to reduce the pressure that his family and people outside is subject to; second, appeals in [sensitive] cases like his don't change anything, while conditions in the temporary detention centre is appalling.'

Mrs Vuong added, as Mr Thang didn't plead guilty [for anti-state propaganda under sec 117], he had no hope his sentence will be reduced on appeal. So he accepts the punishment, seeing his imprisonment as a long journey or a new course of study, of similar duration as his past university course.

The Investigative Police Agency of Ninh Thuan Province on June 28 arrested a social media user in Phan Rang - Thap Cham City and charged him with “abusing democratic freedoms to infringe upon the interests of the State” under Article 331 of the Penal Code, state-run media reported.

Le Thach Giang, 66, was accused by the police of setting up an account on a social network called Bọn cường quyền (The Despots) from August 2022 to host live streams and publish articles regarding coercion and confiscation of lands by local authorities. The police also claimed that Giang had called on local people to read websites containing “toxic content” and that he had shared unverified information to distort and defame the Communist Party.

Article 331 is a controversial legal provision in Vietnam’s Penal Code due to its vague and broad definitions. Multiple petitions have been filed to urge the Vietnamese government to abolish this law. According to Radio Free Asia (RFA), Vietnam has arrested at least 10 people this year for their alleged violation of Article 331.

Dung participated in protests in Hanoi, including demonstrations against China’s occupation of the Paracel Islands – an island group in the South China Sea also claimed by Vietnam – and protests against the Taiwan-owned Formosa Company for polluting the coastline of four central Vietnamese provinces in 2016.

Public protests even over perceived harm to Vietnam’s interests are considered threats to its political stability and are routinely suppressed by the police.

“Truong Van Dung has experienced years of government harassment and intimidation, including police interrogations, house arrest, a travel ban and physical assaults,” said Human Rights Watch Deputy Asia Director Phil Robertson ahead of the appeal.

He accused Hanoi of “inexorably adding peaceful activists to the growing list of more than 150 Vietnamese political prisoners,” thereby violating human rights laws and betraying its duty to protect people’s rights as a member of the U.N. Human Rights Council.

“Every time the authorities throw an activist like Truong Van Dung behind bars, respect for human rights in Vietnam takes a hard knock,” Robertson said.

“Donors and international trade partners should be clear that if Vietnam wants growing trade and investment, its leaders need to recognize that people speaking their minds are part of the solution that strengthens, not weakens, the country.”

Truong Van Dung was arrested at the end of May 2022 and held incommunicado for nine months before his trial.

Amnesty International joined calls for Vietnamese authorities to drop all charges against him and spoke out against the country’s judicial system.

“The Vietnamese authorities are yet again misusing the criminal justice system to suppress dissent. Arrested for giving interviews to foreign media, Truong Van Dung should have never been put in prison in the first place,” Amnesty’s Deputy Regional Director of Campaigns Ming Yu Hah said.

Amnesty said Dung’s appeal came as Vietnam cracked down on a growing number of people whose views differ from that of the government, and against independent civil society organizations.

“The unfair charges and inhumane prison conditions [show] the Vietnamese authorities’ willingness to systematically silence dissent in direct violation of international human rights law,” Hah said, calling Vietnam’s ratification of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment and its their seat on the UN Human Rights Council “no more than empty gestures.”

The Khmers Kampuchea-Krom Federation (KKF) vehemently condemns the brutal and inhumane treatment inflicted upon Khmer-Krom activist Mr. To Hoang Chuong by the police of Soc Trang province. This reprehensible incident took place on June 23, 2023, when Mr. Chuong and his fellow activists from Tra Vinh province visited Mr. Lam Vong, who had endured arrest, detention, and torture by the Soc Trang police before his release on June 20, following 33 hours of unjust captivity.

During their visit to Mr. Vong, they proceeded to meet with another Khmer-Krom activist, Mr. Danh Minh Quang. However, on their way to Mr. Quang's residence, their vehicle was forcefully halted by the police, who subsequently apprehended them and took them into custody at the local police station. Around 1 pm, Mr. To Hoang Chuong was explicitly targeted by the police, triggering a series of regrettable events.

Upon entering the interrogation room, Mr. To Hoang Chuong was immediately subjected to physical abuse. Without any provocation or questioning, one of the officers ruthlessly struck him with a direct blow to his forehead, resulting in significant swelling and excruciating pain. The subsequent interrogation involved multiple officers asking him various questions regarding his advocacy work. Each time Mr. Chuong maintained his innocence and asserted that the distribution of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) was not a criminal act, he was met with further violence and menacing threats. He was forced to sign the confession to be released at 6:30 pm after five and half hours of facing interrogation and torture.

This incident starkly illustrates the flagrant use of torture and intimidation by the Vietnamese authorities against individuals advocating for the rights of the Khmer-Krom, the indigenous peoples of the Mekong Delta. Such actions unequivocally violate Vietnam's obligations under the UN Convention against Torture, a treaty that the country has ratified.

Three lawyers Nguyen Van Mien, Dao Kim Lan and Dang Dinh Manh defending the defendants in the Bong Lai Pure House case are being tracked by the Long An Provincial Public Security Bureau.

On the morning of June 12, the Investigation Police Agency of Long An Province Police said that this unit has just decided to search for three lawyers, Nguyen Van Mien (57 years old), Dao Kim Lan (56 years old), Dang Dinh Manh (Korea). 55 years old, same in HCMC). These three people participated in the defense of Mr. Le Tung Van and other defendants in the case that occurred in Tinh That Bong Lai.

According to the police of Long An province, based on the notice of the Department of Cybersecurity and High-Tech Crime Prevention (Ministry of Public Security), this unit has had 3 summons to deal with crime reports. but all 3 were absent, no reason for absence was announced.

The police of the ward where the lawyers live said that they were not present in the locality and had not yet determined their temporary residence.

Accordingly, three lawyers are suspected of spreading acts of dissemination on the internet through clips, images, words and articles showing signs of abusing democratic freedoms to infringe upon the interests of the State, the rights and interests of the State. legitimate interests of organizations and individuals.

According to the allegation, the group of people living in Tinh That Bong Lai was directed by Mr. Le Tung Van to post articles and clips on social networks Facebook and Youtube, containing false, fabricated and distorted information. This is to propagate and incite to offend the reputation of the Duc Hoa District Police, to offend Buddhism.

The evidence in the case is 5 clips that have been publicly posted on 2 Youtube channels created, managed and used by a group of people in Tinh That Bong Lai.

On November 3, 2022, the appellate court sentenced the defendants in Bong Lai Tinh That to the first-instance judgment. Accordingly, defendant Le Tung Van (90 years old), who played the role of mastermind, was sentenced to 5 years in prison. The remaining 5 defendants received 3-4 years in prison.

A day ahead of his trial on Tuesday, the wife of a music lecturer arrested in early September on charges of "conducting anti-state propaganda” said he is innocent and called for his release.

Dang Dang Phuoc, 60, an instructor at Dak Lak Pedagogical College in Vietnam’s Central Highlands, often writes on Facebook about educational issues, human rights violations, corrupt officials and social injustice.

Police arrested him on Sept. 8 and charged him with "making, storing, spreading or propagating information, documents and items aimed at opposing the State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.” He faces up to 12 years in prison.

His case has drawn international attention, including from Human Rights Watch, which also urged Vietnam’s government to release him Monday.

In a statement, the rights group slammed authorities for targeting those who highlight corruption in the Southeast Asian nation, despite claims that they are working to eradicate graft.

Speaking to RFA’s Vietnamese Service, Phuoc’s wife Le Thi Ha said that her husband’s arrest had caused her family to lose its “primary pillar” and left them in a state of shock.

“In Vietnam, whomever [the authorities] arrest, when the arrests take place, and how many years in prison the arrestees are sentenced to ... all are in their hands,” she said. “However, to me, my husband is innocent. My wish is that my husband be released unconditionally.”

Anti-corruption advocate

During the past decade, Phuoc has campaigned against corruption and advocated for better protections for civil and political rights. He has signed several pro-democracy petitions and called for changes to Vietnam’s constitution, which grants the Communist Party a monopoly on power.

After Phuoc’s arrest, police summoned Ha for interrogation at least twice and threatened to have her fired if she shared information about his case on social media.

According to an indictment obtained by RFA, the Dak Lak Provincial Police’s Investigation Security Agency examined a recent recording of Phuoc’s and found it to “slander the government in order to reduce people's trust in management and administration of the government and the state.”

On Monday, Ha said that her family and close friends plan to attend his trial on Tuesday, but questioned whether the court will allow it.

“Although the authorities said the trial would be open to the public, there are many precedents in Vietnam that show that even family members were not allowed to attend trials for political dissidents and activists,” she said. “I don’t know how my husband’s trial will go.”

Home under surveillance

In the meantime, she said, police have kept a close watch on her household, sending plainclothes officers to document the activities of her family members over the weekend.

“Their people are still stationed at the road leading to my house,” she told RFA. “Being aware of many previous cases in which family members of prisoners of conscience received invitations but were still prevented from attending the related trials, I have left my home to increase the chance of being able to attend my husband’s trial.”

On Monday, Phuoc’s defense lawyers met with him and said that he has been “well-treated” in detention, describing him as “optimistic, positive, healthy, and showing no signs of depression or psychological crisis at all.”

“Of course he admitted to the act, but as for the crime, he said he was exercising his right to speak the truth,” lawyer Le Van Luan said. “For tomorrow, he prepared the content of his defense. Basically, the defense is strong, covering the entirety of his case.”

In a statement on Monday, Human Rights Watch Deputy Asia Director Phil Robertson echoed Ha’s call to set Phuoc free.

“The Vietnam government makes use of its abusive and overly broad laws to prosecute people who call for reforms,” said Robertson. “The authorities should immediately drop the charges against Dang Dang Phuoc and other activists who play a critical role in rooting out the malfeasance and corruption that the government claims to oppose.”

He slammed the government for its contempt for freedom of expression, noting that it is extended “even to activists who sing a few songs criticizing them.”

“The European Union, which concluded a free trade agreement with Vietnam containing human rights conditionality, and other trade partners, should call out the government for its unrelenting rights violations,” he said.

A court in Vietnam’s Dak Lak province has sentenced music lecturer Dang Dang Phuoc to eight years in prison and four years of probation for allegedly "conducting anti-state propaganda,” his wife and one of his lawyers told RFA Tuesday.

The 60-year-old instructor at Dak Lak Pedagogical College in Vietnam’s Central Highland, frequently posted on Facebook about educational issues, human rights violations, corrupt officials and social injustice.

Police arrested him on Sept. 8 last year, and charged him with "making, storing, spreading or propagating information, documents and items aimed at opposing the State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,” which carries a maximum 12-year prison term. Even though Phuoc didn’t receive the maximum sentence, lawyer Le Van Luan said the court should have been more lenient towards his client.

"With the circumstances of the case, that sentence is too heavy compared to what Mr. Phuoc did," he said.

Phuoc’s case has drawn international attention, including from Human Rights Watch, who's deputy Asia director Phil Robertson described the sentence as “outrageous and unacceptable.”

“What it reveals is the Vietnamese government’s total intolerance for ordinary citizens pointing out corruption, speaking out against injustice, and calling for accountability by local officials,” he said on hearing the verdict.

“Those were precisely the things that Dang Dang Phuoc did in Dak Lak, and now the government claims such whistle-blowing actions are propaganda against the state.”

During the past decade, Phuoc has campaigned against corruption and advocated for better protections for civil and political rights. He has signed several pro-democracy petitions and called for changes to Vietnam’s constitution, which grants the Communist Party a monopoly on power.

“This unjust prison sentence reveals General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong’s anti-corruption campaign is a sham game that is really more about holding on to power, and marginalizing political rivals, but does not care to address the Communist Party of Vietnam’s widespread malfeasance in its ranks,” said Robertson, comparing Trong with China’s authoritarian leader Xi Jinping.

Police kept a close watch on Phuoc’s wife, Le Thi Ha, ahead of the trial, warning her she would lose her job if she talked about the case on social media.

She was allowed to attend the trial, along with Phuoc’s four lawyers.

Ha told RFA her husband plans to appeal the verdict.

Last week, Facebook users observed that Save Tam Dao, a fan page, was missing from the platform for a period of two days. On May 28, 2023, the page reappeared, confirming that it had indeed been shut down during those two days. Its administrators do not know the reasons behind the sudden suspension.

Save Tam Dao is a fan page dedicated to an environmental protection organization in Vietnam. The page serves as a platform for sharing updates on the unlawful activities of large corporations that harm the country's natural resources. Unfortunately, the volunteers associated with this organization have been subjected to harassment and even physical abuse by unidentified individuals. Moreover, the fan page on social media, particularly Facebook, faces frequent instances of online abuse. Furthermore, it is sometimes deactivated without prior notice to its administrators.

Many unregistered civil society groups like Save Tam Dao routinely experience this treatment on Facebook.

Vietnam has arrested well-known environmentalist Hoang Thi Minh Hong for tax evasion, a government official said Thursday in the latest example of the Vietnamese government’s routine use of financial charges to imprison green activists.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ deputy spokesperson Nguyen Duc Thang confirmed on Thursday to reporters that Hong, her husband, and two staff members were arrested the day before.

Hoang Thi Minh Hong is known for her activities in the fight against climate change, including bringing the Earth Hour initiative from Australia to Vietnam.

She is also famous for being the first Vietnamese woman to set foot in Antarctica in 1997, and in 2019, she was listed by Forbes magazine as one of the 50 most influential women in Vietnam.

Hong is the founder and executive director of CHANGE – a non-profit organization with the mission of inspiring the community and raising environmental awareness with the aim of protecting nature and wild animals, combating climate change, and promoting sustainable development.

Based on her activism, climateheroes.org included her in their 2015 “Climate Heroes” list. Four years later, in 2019, she was voted among the Top 5 Ambassadors of Inspiration at the 2019 WeChoice Awards and was named the Green Warrior of the Year at the Elle Style Awards.

Hoang Thi Minh Hong is the fifth activist in Vietnam to have been arrested on the charge of tax evasion.

International organizations and foreign governments have criticized Vietnam for targeting and detaining environmental activists and urged the Southeast Asian nation to release those who had been arrested on tax evasion charges.

Hong’s arrest came a week after a U.N. working group of independent human rights experts called on Vietnam to immediately release a detained climate activist serving a five-year prison term for tax evasion, saying he had been arrested arbitrarily and tried unfairly.

Lawyer and environmentalist Dang Dinh Bach, 44, who had campaigned to reduce Vietnam’s reliance on coal was arrested June 2021 and then sentenced to five years in jail.

On May 18, police in Phu Yen Province arrested Nay Y Blang for “abusing democratic freedoms.” Blang, an ethnic minority Protestant from Ea Lam village, met with a representative from the U.S. Consulate in August last year. The following month, he was scheduled to meet a group of U.S. State Department officials in charge of religious issues. According to RFA, the meeting never took place because Blang was detained by police at a bus station in Tuy Hoa Province. From then until the time of his arrest, Blang and his family have been continually harassed by local police, who accused him of spreading falsehoods about religious repression.

A court in the central Vietnamese city of Danang sentenced activist Bui Tuan Lam – known as “Onion Bae” – to five years and six months in prison Thursday, along with four years of probation, one of his lawyers Le Dinh Viet told RFA.

He was convicted of propaganda under Article 117 of the country’s Penal Code, which carries a minimum sentence of five years and a maximum of 12, after being found guilty of criticizing the government online.

Bui, 39, who ran a beef noodle stall in Danang, achieved notoriety in 2021 after posting an online video mimicking the Turkish chef Nusret Gökçe, known as “Salt Bae.”

The video was widely seen as a mockery of Vietnam’s minister of public security, To Lam, who was caught on film being hand-fed one of Salt Bae’s gold-encrusted steaks by the chef at his London restaurant at a cost of 1,450 pounds (U.S.$1,790).

The minister was in the U.K. as part of a Vietnamese government delegation which attended the COP26 climate change conference in Scotland.

Critics wondered how the official could afford the extravagant meal on a monthly salary of $660.

In Bui’s video clip, he calls himself “Onion Bae” and dramatically sprinkles spring onions into a bowl of soup, mimicking the signature move of the celebrity chef.

Bui was later summoned by Danang police for questioning and arrested and charged in September 2022.

Article 117 of the country’s Penal Code criminalizes “making, storing, distributing or disseminating information, documents and items against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.” It is frequently used by authorities to restrict freedom of expression and opinions deemed critical of the government.

According to Danang People’s Procuracy’s indictment, Bui posted 19 articles on his Facebook account and 25 videos and articles on his YouTube account from April 17, 2020, to July 26, 2022. The articles and videos included content that it claimed were “distorting, defaming people’s government” and “fabricating and causing confusion among people.”

“The Vietnamese authorities deem just about anything as ‘propaganda against the state’ to crack down on activists and dissidents,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch ahead of the verdict.

“The Vietnamese government should abolish rights-abusing article 117 of the penal code and stop prosecuting Bui Tuan Lam and others for criticizing the Vietnamese Communist Party.”

Bui is a seasoned activist, spending many years speaking out against China’s territorial claims in parts of the South China Sea claimed by Vietnam and also campaigning to protect the environment. He received threats from the Danang police after providing food to local people during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

After his “Onion Bae” video went viral the police ordered him to close his noodle stall, which he did for a short while ahead of his arrest.

“The authorities have hounded him for his posts and videos, showing the length that Vietnamese authorities can go to deny people the enjoyment of their right to freedom of expression, no matter how benign, satirical or light-hearted,” said Amnesty International Interim Deputy Regional Director for Research Montse Ferrer before the verdict was handed down.

“Satire is not a crime,” she added.

Authorities prevented Bui Tuan Lam’s lawyers from meeting with him ahead of the trial, claiming last month that he refused representation. After his wife Le Than Lam demanded to meet with Bui to find out the truth the People’s Procuracy of Danang issued a notice allowing lawyers to represent him.

The court approved Le Dinh Viet’s registration to be Bui Tuan Lam’s lawyer for the trial. But when Viet went to Danang Police’s detention facility where Bui Tuan Lam was being held, he said staff didn’t allow him to see his client, claiming the judge hadn’t had time to review the investigation report.

Lawyers Le Dinh Viet and Ngo Anh Tuan were allowed to represent Bui in court on Thursday but the latter was removed from the court after requesting a fair debate between defense lawyers and prosecutors, Le Dinh Viet told RFA.

“Today's trial I feel is similar to the political cases that I have been involved in. Law enforcement itself was not sufficiently exercised during the hearing of the case,” he said, criticizing the so-called “expert conclusions” given by members of Danang’s Department of Information and Communication during Thursday’s trial.

“Those assessment conclusions have many violations, including violations of expertise authority, violations of the roles of experts, even some which violate the basic principles of the law on judicial expertise."

"In my opinion, given the circumstances and developments of today's trial, the issuance of the judgment does not guarantee the objectivity nor guarantee the legal rights of defendant Bui Tuan Lam."

Bui pleaded “not guilty” plea, saying he exercised the right to freedom of expression. His lawyers said he would appeal the verdict.

Bui’s wife and family were not allowed to attend the trial. Le Dinh Viet said they had been detained by the police.

Mrs Le Thanh Lam's account of what happened to her post trial, Vietnam Times 28 May https://vietnamthoibao.org/vntb-phien-toa-xu-bui-tuan-lam-qua-kinh-khung/

Mr Lam was sentenced to 5 years 6 months jail, plus 4 years probation for anti-state propaganda. Many believe this was Police Minister To Lam's revenge on him, for his video post imitating celebrated chef Salt Bae, who was filmed feeding Mr To Lam a piece of gold-encrusted steak.

Mr Tuan Lam's trial ended at around 12pm 25 May. His wife, Le Thanh Lam, told BBC Viet 26 May, what happened after:

After the sentencing, two prison vans arrived to transport Mr Lam. Mrs Lam and her family were not allowed to attend the trial. After waiting for over 5 hours outside, family members ran after the vans, hoping to see Mr Lam.

We cried 'Bui Tuan Lam is innocent'. Right after that, a policeman kept me in a neck hold. Many members of the police also lunged at me, brutally dragged me away like a pig, manhandled me, pushed me into their vehicle. [Photo showed Mrs Lam's large scrapes on both knees.]

            I saw by two brothers-in-law being repeatedly bashed amidst the cry of a ward police: 'Bash these two louts, till they die!'

I asked them, why they treated me that way. A policeman said, 'I did it! So what!' My two brothers-in-law were also taken away forcefully to Hoa Cuong Bac, Hai Chau area. They were released at around 2pm, but I was still detained.

The police forced her to hand over her mobile phone and signed a document acknowledging having to pay a fine, for taking photos at the court precinct.

During her detention, nasty insults and sinister statements about her husband and her children were thrown at her.

I told them, my phone is my private possession which must not be violated. At that, many more police rushed into the room to intimidate me and behave forcefully against me. Some who had monitored my family since the morning, now saying they were ordinary citizens who witnessed I had filmed and taken photos of the court precinct.

                            A policeman swore to no one in particular: 'Not sticking to selling noodles to feed the kids, doing silly things instead.' I asked him: 'You're talking about whom?' He pointed his index finger at me: 'I talked about you, silly cow.'



            More policemen came into the room. One insulted me: 'Silly cow, don't you have any shame... You think you are something special... What a disgrace...'

Another one threatened me: 'You and your kids, just wait to see if you will be able to live in peace.'

A group of men threatened a mother with 3 young kids. They must be very proud of themselves???

The policewomen body searched me, including private and sensitive areas, to check for recording and electronic devices. They checked everything in my possession, including my lipstick, my cards...

At that time, I realised I was no longer considered a human being, I couldn't believe what was happening to me.

I have never been insulted and physically violated in such an immoral way. Not having my password, they wetted my phone.

The family's hope to at least see Mr Lam's face was destroyed.

They didn't spare even a tiny space so we could see his face, in a trial that was supposed to be open.

                            What made them feel so afraid of a patriotic man in white T-shirt, wearing a rosary around his neck?

State media reported on Mr Lam's trial using his old photos. Photos inside and outside the court on the day of the trial 25 May were totally absent.

            --

Defence lawyer Mr Ngo Anh Tuan evicted from court room

Lawyers Messrs Ngo Anh Tuan and Le Dinh Viet represented Mr Lam. During the trial, Mr Tuan asked the prosecutor side to clarify their points of argument. A judge - who was not the chief judge - told him not to repeat what he had previously said.

Mr Tuan told him, according to the law, he could continue to present his argument. However this judge ordered him to leave the court chamber, even though he didn't raise his voice or behave in an aggressive manner.

Nevertheless, he agreed to leave the court room, 'not wanting to make the court's atmosphere any heavier'.

Mr Tuan then went to a room in the court building to sit down. Here, a group of people who didn't introduce their names came to work with him.

'They filmed and prepared a report not reflecting what really happened. Without my colleague Le Dinh Viet as my witness, I won't have any chance to prove my innocence... I have participated in many political cases, but I had never been evicted from the court room in such an unjust and absurd way like today.

'It seems for some people, they can do whatever they like with political prisoners, same with their lawyers... The idea that [political prisoners are a sub-class] led them to behave outside their authority.'

In a letter, Tran Phuong Thao provides an update on her husband Dang Dinh Bach‘s conditions in prison and the ongoing harassment of their family, including forcible seizure of their assets and potentially their home. Bach is currently on a partial hunger strike to protest his unjust imprisonment and has vowed to begin a full hunger strike to the death starting on June 24, the second anniversary of his arrest. An NGO leader and climate activist, Bach is currently serving five years in prison on charges of tax evasion, which we have argued are politically-motivated.

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At 9 am on April 28, my husband called home to talk to me and his parents. When I asked about his health, my husband said he was still on a hunger strike. Since starting his hunger strike on March 17, he has lost 4kg. His weight then was 50kg (he has lost more than 10kg since he was arrested). At about 10 am on the same day, when I was out of the house, suddenly a group of four people came to my house, without an appointment. At that time, only Bach’s parents were at home to witness. They said that the people were from the Hanoi Civil Judgment Enforcement Bureau and the police in the area where I live. They listed all valuable assets in the house and forced my father to sign the list; my family could not view or keep any documents.

A court in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City on Friday sentenced war veteran and democracy activist Tran Van Bang to eight years in prison and three years probation for Facebook posts that were deemed to be anti-state propaganda in a trial that lasted less than three hours.

Tran Van Bang, better known as Tran Bang, is a 62-year-old war veteran who fought during the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War. He had regularly participated in demonstrations against China for its controversial claims over territories in the South China Sea.

He was arrested in March 2022 for what was initially determined to be 31 Facebook posts between March 2016 and August 2021.

After a subsequent investigation, authorities found that he wrote 39 problematic posts between three Facebook accounts that that were seen as “distorting, defaming and speaking badly of the people’s government; providing false information, causing confusion among the people; and expressing hate and discontent towards the authorities, Party, State, and country’s leaders,” the Tuoi Tre newspaper reported, citing the indictment.

The posts were in violation of article 117 of the penal code, a vague law that the government has often used to silence dissent.

It was the latest conviction in Hanoi’s ongoing campaign to silence bloggers and activists. Vietnam has convicted at least 60 such people under the same article and sentenced them between four and 15 years in prison, and 13 others to between four and 12 years under the older article 88, because it was the law when the alleged crime occurred, New York-based Human Rights Watch reported.

During Friday’s trial, Bang claimed that his Facebook accounts had been hacked and he hadn’t used them in a very long time.

But the Procuracy rejected the explanation, and used the posts on the accounts to convict him.

Tran Dinh Dung, Bang’s defense lawyer, told RFA’s Vietnamese Service following the trial that freedom of speech is guaranteed in Article 25 of Vietnam’s constitution, and Article 117 does not explain anti-state propaganda.

“The current law fails to clarify what freedom of speech is and what anti-state propaganda is,” said Dung. “In addition, there are some electronic documents and evidence missing, so I requested that the file of the case should be returned to the procuracy and a verdict should only be made when everything was clarified.”

Closed trial

Two diplomats, from the U.S. and France, were barred from attending the proceedings. They were made to wait in the courtyard until the trial’s conclusion.

Family members, meanwhile, were allowed only to watch the proceedings on a television screen from another room in the courthouse.

Bang’s brother, who declined to be named, told RFA that the audio of the broadcast was cut several times when the defense lawyer was speaking and was turned very low when Bang spoke in his own defense.

“The lawyer requested an additional investigation as some assessments of the investigator about the Facebook stories, which were the ground for accusations, were wrong,” Bang’s brother said.

“The lawyer also said that the accusation grounds were just the investigator’s viewpoint, and with another viewpoint, other people may find my brother innocent.”

According to Dung, his client will appeal the verdict. He told the judging panel that Bang was suffering from a serious health issue as he had a tumor in the groin area, which had not been determined benign or malignant. The verdict noted this information but also said that it needed to wait for the opinion of Bang’s detention center clinics, Dung said.

“On May 10, I had a working session with the detention center, and they told me that their clinic had recommended removing the tumor,” said Dung, adding that red tape is preventing the operation. “If the tumor is malignant, i.e. cancer, it would be a very serious health issue.”

Human Rights Watch on Thursday issued a media release calling on the Vietnamese government to drop all charges against Bang and immediately release him.

Ticket in hand, Vietnamese scholar Nguyen Quang A stepped up to the immigration counter at Hanoi’s Noi Bai International Airport.

He planned to catch a flight to Thailand, and continue onward to the European Union, where he had planned to tour several countries.

But he was stopped by police and prevented from boarding the plane.

“I told them that it was no problem and asked them to create a record about the incident, explaining why I was banned from traveling abroad,” the former director of the now-dissolved Institute of Development Studies told Radio Free Asia.

A’s grounding is one of hundreds of documented cases of the Vietnamese government preventing social activists, political dissidents or religious freedom activists from leaving the country.

The incident report did not explain exactly why A was stopped at the airport, only saying it was on the request of the Ministry of Public Security’s Immigration Department and “related to security issues,” per Clause 9, Article 36 of Vietnam’s 2019 Law on Entry and Exit of Vietnamese Citizens.

The report said he could inquire with the department for more information.

Prior to receiving the incident report, A had been approached by two police officers from the Ministry of Public Security, he said.

“[They] told me that the Hanoi police summoned me in late 2021 and that issue hasn’t been resolved,” said A. “I told them that I had no idea about [any summons], and that they should know more about it because they are from the same ministry. I never received any notices or summons.”

A also said he was not aware that he was in any legal trouble prior to trying to leave the country.

The police later returned his passport and gave him a copy of the record, but they tore his boarding pass, making it impossible to request a refund from Vietnam Airlines.

The police returned his passport and gave him a copy of the incident record. However, they tore his boarding pass, making it impossible for him to request Vietnam Airlines for a refund.

“I don’t understand why they did that,” he said. “I could ask for a refund if it was still intact. In fact, I wasn’t even in the boarding area yet.”

A said he would consider asking the Immigration Department to clearly explain the reason his exit was denied, but said an inquiry might be in vain, because the laws are so vague that they could say whatever they want.

RFA attempted to contact the Immigration Department for an explanation but telephone calls and emails went unanswered.

Targeting scholars, lawyers and activists

A said he was deeply concerned about the human rights situation in Vietnam because several scholars like himself have been arrested, and the attorneys representing them have been harassed.

In 2022, the Vietnamese government arrested two senior scholars: Hoang Ngoc Giao, the director of the Institute for Policies, Law and Development under the Vietnam Union of Science and Technology Associations for “tax evasion,” and Nguyen Son, former director of the SENA Institute of Technology Research and Development for “abusing democratic freedoms.”

Over the past few months, the police summoned the five attorneys defending Peng Lei Buddhist Church members for alleged violations of Article 331 of the Penal Code – an article widely criticized by international communities as being vague and used to stifle dissenting voices.

In October 2018, A participated in a human rights hearing at the EU Parliament, just before the regional bloc ratified the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement. At the hearing, he requested the EU to pressure Vietnam to sign three international labor conventions, including Convention 87 which gives workers the freedom of association and to organize into independent trade unions.

Monday’s incident was not the first time he had been stopped at Noi Bai Airport.

On Sept. 1, 2015, police at the airport took him into temporary custody after a trip to the United States, where he had participated in talks about the role of civil society in the democratization of Vietnam. He had also taken part in a summer conference in Berlin with other Vietnamese intellectuals that year.

According to a February 2022 report by New York-based Human Rights Watch, Vietnamese authorities systematically prevented more than 170 activists, bloggers, dissidents, and their families from traveling within Vietnam or overseas. Their tactics included stopping them at airports or border gates, rejecting their applications for a passport or other travel papers.

Nguyen Quang A is a human rights defender and a prominent member of Vietnamese civil society. In 2007, he co-founded the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), an independent, non-profit think-tank, since closed, that frequently questioned the government's policies. In 2013, he co-founded the Civil Society Forum in response to Decree 72, a party document that limits online expression. The forum has, among other activities, organised protests against environmental damage and promoted the participation of independent candidates for Parliament elections. Lately, Nguyen Quang A has been extremely vocal regarding the 2016 Formosa spill, an industrial disaster which caused tens of thousands of fishermen to lose their source of livelihood.

The defense lawyer for ‘Onion Leaf Bae,” an activist whose online video mimicked a Turkish chef in apparent mockery of a senior government official, said he was kept from seeing his client this week.

Bui Tuan Lam, who runs a beef noodle stall in Danang, achieved some notoriety in 2021 when a video that went viral showing him imitating the Turkish chef known as Salt Bae.

The video was widely seen as a mockery of Vietnam’s minister of public security, To Lam, who was caught on film being hand-fed one of Salt Bae’s gold-encrusted steaks – by the chef himself – at a cost of 1,450 pounds (U.S.$1,975).

Critics wondered how the official could afford the extravagant meal on a monthly salary of $660.

In Bui’s video clip, he refers to himself as “Onion Leaf Bae” and dramatically sprinkles spring onions into a bowl of soup at his noodle stand, mimicking the signature move of the celebrity chef.

Bui was later summoned by Danang police for questioning and was arrested in September 2022. He has since been charged for violating Article 117 of the country’s Penal Code, frequently used by authorities to restrict freedom of expression and opinions deemed critical of the government.

The Danang People’s Court on Monday approved Le Dinh Viet’s registration to be Bui Tuan Lam’s lawyer for the upcoming first-instance trial.

Viet said he then went to Danang Police’s detention facility where Bui Tuan Lam was being held, but staff didn’t allow him to see his client, saying the judge hadn’t had time to review the recently completed investigation report.

Monitoring meetings?

He said he was told to “advise the court of the timing” of any proposed meetings with the defendant in the future so that the court could arrange for the meeting to be monitored.

The 2015 Criminal Procedure Code and the 2015 Law on Temporary Custody and Detention doesn’t have any provisions requiring prosecuting agencies to monitor meetings between defense lawyers and their clients, Viet said.

But an interagency circular from 2018 and another circular issued in 2019 by the Ministry of Public Security said prosecuting agencies can assign staff members to supervise meetings between defense lawyers and their clients if needed, he said.

Over the past 10 years of professional practice, Viet has participated in four cases related to national security. Bui’s case was the first time he was prevented from seeing a client, he said.

According to Danang People’s Procuracy’s indictment, Bui posted 19 articles on his Facebook account and 25 videos and articles on his YouTube account from April 17, 2020, to July 26, 2022. The articles and videos included content “distorting, defaming people’s government” and “fabricating and causing confusion among people.”

The link to the Facebook account alleged in the indictment to have contained the 19 articles no longer functions. There are only three videos currently on the YouTube channel allegedly used by the activist – all three were posted recently. The channel doesn’t contain the videos and posts listed in the indictment.

If convicted, Bui could receive a prison term of five to 12 years.

Vietnamese police have been harassing a former prisoner of conscience released from jail in December 2022 after serving most of a five-year sentence on charges of distributing materials against the state and participating in protests against the government.

Nguyen Thi Ngoc Suong, 55, told Radio Free Asia on Friday, that the harassment began after she attended the appeals trial of activists Nguyen Thai Hung and his spouse, Vu Thi Kim Hoang, at the People’s Court in the southern province of Dong Nai on March 29. Authorities asked her to leave the courtroom.

On Friday, Dinh Quan district police summoned her and warned her not to attend other trials. They also said policemen would check on her often.

“Recently, the police have watched me very closely,” Suong told Radio Free Asia after she met with police. “They came to see me right after I returned home [from the trial]. They said I was not allowed to do this.”

At the end of the meeting, a police officer told her: “I’ll visit you every couple of days.”

Suong said she did not remember the officer’s name because he was not wearing a name badge.

When RFA contacted Dinh Quan district police to verify the information, a staffer asked for the name of the officer for verification.

Suong, who said her health has been deteriorating since her release, was convicted in May 2019 under Article 117 of Vietnam’s penal code. The article, which criminalizes “making, storing, distributing or disseminating information, documents and items” against the state. Violators can be sentenced to from five to 20 years in prison.

Suong was freed last Dec. 13 in poor health, 10 months before her jail term ended.

Health issues while detained

While in prison, Suong had several physical ailments, including liver and kidney swelling, elevated liver enzymes, a bacterial infection in her stomach and thyroid issues.

The only treatment she received was the medicine that prison officials gave to all inmates to treat various diseases.

“When I took them, my condition got worse,” Suong said. “I remember one time I could not speak because my body was swollen from top to toe, including my mouth and tongue.”

Suong said she believes her health deteriorated because she had been subjected to forced labor at Dong Nai police’s B5 temporary detention facility where she was held during the investigation period, and later at An Phuoc Prison, where she was held after an appeals trial. She produced votive paper offerings without protective gear.

Suong also said she had not been paid for her labor, though Vietnamese law stipulates that inmates should receive some compensation for labor they perform in jail.

While she was at the temporary detention facility from October 2018 to early December 2019, Suong's family had to bribe staffers so they could get supplies to her, though she never received them after the payments were made, she said.

When Suong had a medical check after she was released, her doctor said she was very weak and it would be difficult for her to improve her physical condition because she took too much pain reliever in previous years.

RFA could not reach officials at Dong Nai police or An Phuoc Prison for comment.

Arrested and charged in 2018

Suong was arrested along with activist Vu Thi Dung in October 2018, and they were both brought to court in the same case for using different Facebook accounts to watch videos and read articles containing anti-state content.

They both allegedly called for protests against draft laws on the creation of new special economic zones and cybersecurity, and were said to have incited locals people to take to the streets.

The indictment also said that Dung had produced anti-state leaflets and asked Suong to distribute them at four different places in Dinh Quan town of Dong Nai province.

Dung was sentenced to six years in prison and will complete her jail term this month.

Suong received the Tran Van Ba Award for 2021-2022 along with four other Vietnamese activists — Nguyen Thuy Hanh, Huynh Thuc Vy, Vo An Don and Nguyen Thi Ngoc Hanh.

Named for a Vietnamese dissident and freedom fighter executed in 1985 on charges of treason and intent to overthrow the government, the award is given annually to Vietnamese in Vietnam in recognition of their courageous action for freedom, democracy, justice and independence for their country.

Nguyen Thi Hue, mother of political prisoner Huynh Duc Thanh Binh, was summoned by Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) police on March 30 to “discuss issues related to public order and security.” On her Facebook page, Hue said she was perplexed because she had gone into seclusion since her son’s conviction and rarely appeared online or in public, focusing most of her time and energy on practicing Buddhism. Binh was convicted in 2019 on subversion charges and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

On 25 April, Mr Ta Mien Linh, born in 1945, of Vung Tau city, was prosecuted for 'abuse democratic freedoms' under sec 331 of the penal code, in relation to incidents in 2022, in Bac Giang province (North Vietnam).

Bac Giang police issued the prosecution order.

Mr Linh reportedly travelled from Vung Tau (South Vietnam) to Bac Giang from April to Aug 2022 to provide support for a group of residents of Chu Nguyen neighbourhood, Voi town, Lang Giang, Bac Giang province. They had contacted Mr Linh for legal advice, after their land had been forcefully confiscated by authorities. On Youtube, Mr Linh had accused Bac Giang officials of colluding with private businesses to confiscate the land of the people here at cheap prince, subdivided, then resold at much higher price, infringing the law.

Local officials said Mr Linh had engaged in illegal activities and he was not a real lawyer.

Swinging batons and bashing villagers, Vietnamese police dispersed dozens of members of the Ede ethnic group who were attempting to interfere with a drainage project they fear will discharge wastewater into a lake they depend on, sources told Radio Free Asia.

Three villagers were hospitalized and 12 were arrested, they said.

“They hit us, injuring seven people of whom three had to be hospitalized due to the injuries on their heads, mouths, ears and shoulders,” said a protester who requested anonymity for security reasons.

Ea M’ta lake in the southern province of Dak Lak will be the endpoint of a rainwater drainage system project proposed by the province’s Cu Kuin district, the provincial and district governments said.

But residents living nearby fear that in addition to rainwater, the project could also divert wastewater into the lake, which could harm the environment and flood surrounding areas.

Though a local government task force reviewed the project and said that no major damage to the ecosystem or to water resources would result from it, the protesters do not trust the review, they said.

The clash with the police, armed with batons and shields, occurred on Thursday and Friday.

A video filmed by a witness shows several dozen police officers confronting a similar number of residents, mostly women, carrying the Vietnamese flag. They were mostly speaking in the Ede language, but at times they also spoke Vietnamese.

“We are determined to stop the District People’s Committee from discharging wastewater into the lake,” someone in the video said. “We can sacrifice our lives for this.We will resolutely protect [the lake].”

The protester who spoke with RFA said that the police shoved down a woman who was two months pregnant, and broke the shoulder of another protester who passed out shortly afterwards.

Police also knocked down a man and kicked his head repeatedly until his ears and mouth began to bleed.

The three people who were hospitalized returned to their homes on Monday, according to the source. Those who were arrested were all released after signing a paper pledging that they would not return to the protest or face prison.

Radio Free Asia attempted to contact Bui Hong Quy, chief of staff of Dak Lak provincial People's Committee and the Cu Kuin district People's Committee to verify the source’s account, but received no response.

According to state media, the drainage system project with a total investment of nearly 36.7 billion dong (U.S.$1.53 million) was approved by Dak Lak People's Committee in 2019. The nearly 4 kilometer (2.5 mile) drainage canal would begin at the Cu Kuin District Military Command and terminate at the lake.

The Dak Lak People’s Committee’s task force reviewed the project’s impacts on the environment, safety, and living conditions. The review indicated that the project would not negatively affect the environment, land, climate, and water sources serving residents living in the surrounding areas, state media said.

Residents living near the lake, however, said the review did not reflect reality.

Y Quynh Buon Dap, a human rights and religious activist who lives in Thailand as a refugee, said residents were worried because the survey was not thorough and did not include areas that could be affected by the project in the future.

On April 20, authorities stated that they were determined to complete the final component of the project, and that all activities that would prevent its implementation would be seen as unlawful.