Vietnam Leading Human Rights Defender Pham Doan Trang Arrested and Charged with
“Conducting Anti-state Propaganda” as Communists Hold Plenum to Prepare for 13th
National Congress
Defend the Defenders | 10-07-2020,
Vietnam’s
security forces have detained prominent human rights defender and democracy
campaigner Pham Doan Trang as the communist government has tightened control to
clear all political opposition while the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV)
is preparing for its 13th National Congress scheduled for early 2021.
Ms. Trang was
arrested in the late night of October 6, few hours after the 24th Annual Human
Rights Dialogue between the US and Vietnam held in Hanoi, when she was in a rent
apartment in Ho Chi Minh City, the southern economic hub she has lived in the
past three years while being chased by the Vietnamese security forces. According
to her landlord, during the arrest, police officers showed the arrest warrant on
which she was charged with “conducting anti-state propaganda” under Article 117
of the Criminal Code with a maximum punishment of 20 years in prison if she is
convicted.
The
state-controlled media has yet covered the arrest. It is expected that the
Ministry of Public Security will announce the information about her detention
soon as she is among high-risk human rights defenders in the Southeast Asian
nation.
Ms. Trang, 42,
is a former journalist for the official streamlined newswire VietnamNet. She
left the outlet and went to study in the US and involved in activism, becoming
one of the leading figures working for human rights and multi-party democracy in
Vietnam.
She is a
prominent and outspoken journalist, activist, and blogger whose writing covers a
wide range of topics including LGBT rights, women’s rights, environmental
issues, the territorial conflict between Vietnam and China, police brutality,
suppression of activists, and law and human rights. Her book, Chính trị Bình dân
(Politics for the Common People), a kind of primer for budding activists, was
published in samizdat form in September 2017. She has produced a number of
political books such as Phản kháng phi bạo lực (Non-violent Resistance),
Politics of Police State, and Cẩm nang nuôi tù (Handbook for Prisoners’
Families). She is one of the authors of Việ Nam & Tranh chấp Biển Đông (Vietnam
and the Conflict on the East Sea), published by Tri Thuc Publishing House in
Vietnam.
On September
25, she and Vietnamese American Willian Nguyen publicized the 3rd edition of
Dong Tam Report, the comprehensive report about the bloody attack of Vietnam’s
security forces in Dong Tam commune, Hanoi on January 9 this year and the
first-instance hearing to try 29 land petitioners who were charged with
“murders” of three police officers and “resisting on-duty state officials”
during the raid. It is worth noting that three out of the five co-authors of the
first and the second editions of Dong Tam Report, former prisoner of conscience
Can Thi Theu and her two sons Trinh Ba Phuong and Trinh Ba Tu were arrested on
June 24, also charged with “conducting anti-state propaganda.”
Trang is also
a street activist who is committed to peaceful protest. She has joined
demonstrations outside police stations and at airports when fellow activists
were detained, participated in nationalist protests about China’s violations of
Vietnam’s sovereignty in the East Sea (South China Sea), and pro-environmental
marches. She has been beaten and detained many times in the past five years.
Trang is the
editor for the website Vietnam Right Now, which aims to distribute “objective,
accurate, and timely information on the current social and political conditions
in Vietnam today.” She is also a co-founder and an editor of the Vietnam Legal
Initiative, a US-based NGO working to promote human rights, civil rights, and
democracy in Vietnam.
Her writing
and activism have addressed a broad human rights agenda, from the rights to
freedom of expression, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of
association, and other rights, including the right to remain silent. As a
journalist and blogger, she also focuses on the role of media in social and
political life and remains especially concerned with freedom of information on
the internet and freedom of the press.
In 2018,
Trang was awarded the Homo Homini Award by the Czech-based human rights
organization People In Need which considers her “one of the leading figures of
the contemporary Vietnamese dissent. She uses plain words to fight the lack of
freedom, corruption, and the despotism of the communist regime.”
Last year,
the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) presented
her with Award For Work to Improve Journalistic Freedom. In March this year, the
Liberal Publishing House under her leadership was honored with Prix Voltaire by
the International Publishers’ Association.
Responding to
her arrest, Phil Robertson, deputy chief of Southeast Asia Office of Human
Rights Watch stated “Vietnam’s scorched earth response to political dissent is
on display for all to see with the arrest of prominent blogger and author Pham
Doan Trang. Despite suffering years of systemic government harassment, including
severe physical attacks, she has remained faithful to her principles of peaceful
advocacy for human rights and democracy. Her thoughtful approach to reforms, and
demands for people’s real participation in their governance, are messages the
Vietnam government should listen to and respect, not repress. Human Rights Watch
strongly condemns Vietnam’s arrest of Pham Doan Trang. Every day she spends
behind bars is a grave injustice that violates Vietnam’s international human
rights commitments and brings dishonor to the government. Governments around the
world and the UN must prioritize her case, speak out loudly and consistently on
her behalf, and demand her immediate and unconditional release.”
The ruling
Communist Party of Vietnam’s Central Committee is conducting the 13th Plenum in
Hanoi on October 5-10 to prepare for the party 13th National Congress slated in
early January. Months ahead of the congress which takes for every five years,
Vietnam’s security forces have tightened social security and intensified
crackdown on political dissidents, social activists, and human rights
defenders.
So far this
year, Vietnam has arrested 25 activists and 29 Dong Tam land petitioners,
raising the number of prisoners of conscience to 258, according to the latest
statistics of Defend the Defenders.
Vietnam Human Rights Network |