1 month ago
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BANGKOK: Three prominent critics of Vietnam's government have been arrested, a
rights group
said Wednesday, days after the
Southeast Asian nation
said it would run for another term on the United Nations Human Rights Council.
Influential rights campaigner and YouTuber Nguyen Chi Tuyen, and Nguyen Vu Binh -- a political activist who served almost five years in jail in the early 2000s -- were arrested last Thursday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a statement.
Hoang Viet Khanh was arrested the following day. All three were accused of conducting propaganda against the state, HRW said.
A
crackdown on dissent
has been escalating in recent years in Vietnam, a one-party state.
Critics of the communist government face intimidation, harassment, restricted movement, arbitrary arrest and detention, as well as imprisonment after unfair trials, and there are reports of police torture to extract confessions, HRW says.
Forty-nine-year-old Tuyen, who is also known as Anh Chi, helped found the prominent independent civil society group No-U, which protests China's territorial claims in the South China era.
One of his YouTube channels, Anh Chi Rau Den, has produced 1,600 videos and is followed by 98,000 subscribers.
Binh, 55, worked as a journalist at the official Communist Party of Vietnam's journal for almost 10 years before he resigned and attempted to form an independent political party. He was sentenced to seven years in jail for espionage in 2003.
The arrest of Khanh, a citizen journalist, was reported in Vietnamese state media. Authorities have not confirmed the arrests of any of the three.
The arrests came just days after Vietnam's foreign minister Bui Thanh Son called on countries to support its bid for re-election as a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council for the 2026-2028 tenure.
There are currently 175 activists in jail in Vietnam, according to The 88 Project, a Vietnam-focused human rights organisation.
Last week the group said Vietnam's leaders had issued a secret directive that would frame almost all international commerce and cooperation as a threat to national security, adding that it would further entrench "systematic" human rights violations.
Directive 24, as it is called, was issued in July 2023 just two months before US President Joe Biden visited Hanoi as Washington seeks a reliable alternative trading partner to China.
English (US)