Vietnam: End Persecution of Human Rights Activist
Trinh Ba Phuong Faces Further Imprisonment for Criticizing Party
HRW
| 2025-05-10
(Bangkok, May 10, 2025) – The Vietnamese authorities
should immediately release the prominent human rights activist Trinh Ba Phuong
and drop all charges against him, Human Rights Watch said today.
In April 2025, the authorities in Quang Nam province charged
Trinh Ba Phuong under article 117 of
the penal code with anti-state propaganda. He was already serving a 10-year
prison sentence under article 117 for criticizing the Vietnamese government,
when in November 2024 he created signs in prison saying, “Down with the
Communist [Party of] Vietnam for violating human rights (Da dao cong san Viet
Nam vi pham nhan quyen).” He is currently being held incommunicado pending
further investigation.
“Trinh Ba Phuong is already serving an outrageous prison sentence for expressing
views the Vietnamese government doesn’t like,” said Patricia
Gossman, associate Asia
director at Human Rights Watch. “By imposing yet another draconian charge
against him, the Vietnamese authorities are demonstrating the absurd lengths to
which they’ll go to trample on freedom of expression.”
Trinh Ba Phuong,
40, comes from a family of land rights activists. During the first two decades
of the 21st century, he joined his mother, father, and younger
brother in numerous protests and campaigns in support of human rights, land
rights, and environmental protection.
In June 2020, Trinh Ba Phuong was arrested and charged with anti-state
propaganda under article 117, which criminalizes “making, storing, disseminating
or propagandizing information, materials, and products that aim to oppose the
State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.” Prior to his arrest, he was
instrumental in amplifying the voices of farmers in Hanoi’s Dong Tam commune,
where a police raid in January 2020 left an 84-year-old farmer, Le Dinh Kinh,
and three policemen dead. Trinh Ba Phuong was one of the authors of the “Dong
Tam Report,” which shed
light on the
violent land clash.
In December 2021, a court in Hanoi convicted
and sentenced him to 10
years in prison, from which he has continued to advocate for human rights,
including by engaging in hunger strikes to protest the appalling conditions. In
November 2024, he carried out a
hunger strike at An
Diem prison in Quang Nam province for more than 20 days to protest the prison
guards’ confiscation of books, paper, and pens.
Trinh Ba Phuong’s family has endured repeated harassment by the police,
intimidation, house
arrest, and physical
assaults.
Trinh Ba Phuong’s mother, Can
Thi Theu, and younger
brother, Trinh
Ba Tu, are both serving
8-year-prison sentences, also on charges of anti-state propaganda. This is the
third time that Can Thi Theu has served a prison sentence for advocating for
human rights. In March, a
Facebook post said she
told her husband, Trinh Ba Khiem, during a visit that her prison cellmate had
threatened to kill her if she continued to file grievances.
Trinh Ba Khiem is also a former political prisoner. He was convicted and
sentenced to 14 months in prison in 2014 for campaigning for land rights.
In April 2025, police summoned Trinh Ba Khiem and the couple’s daughter Trinh
Thi Thao for interrogation because they have continued to campaign for the
release of their relatives. That month, police put Trinh Ba Phuong’s wife, Do
Thi Thu, under intrusive surveillance prior to and during the commemoration of
the 50th anniversary of the end of the war in Vietnam.
“The Vietnamese authorities for many years have subjected Trinh Ba Phuong’s
entire family to persecution for refusing to stay silent in the face of
injustice,” Gossman said. “Vietnam’s international trade partners and donors
should publicly urge the Vietnamese government to release Trinh Ba Phuong, Trinh
Ba Tu, and Can Thi Theu, and immediately end its abusive campaign against this
family of activists.”
For more Human Rights Watch reporting on Vietnam, please visit:
https://www.hrw.org/asia/vietnam