(Bangkok) – The Vietnamese government should annul the politically motivated verdict against the democracy activist Duong Van Thai and release him immediately, Human Rights Watch said today. On October 30, 2024, a Hanoi court convicted Duong Van Thai of issuing propaganda against the state under article 117 of the penal code and sentenced him to 12 years in prison.
Duong Van Thai, 42, fled Vietnam in 2019 and was registered in Thailand as a refugee by the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR). While he was awaiting resettlement to a third country, in April 2023, unidentified men abducted him in Bangkok and forcibly took him back to Vietnam.
“Duong Van Thai fled Vietnam out of fear of government persecution,” said Patricia Gossman, associate Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Governments should recognize this democracy activist’s abduction and bogus trial as just the latest example of the Vietnamese government’s thuggish disregard for international law and the rights of its citizens.”
Duong Van Thai was tried in a closed trial that lasted a few hours, along with several other defendants who were reportedly state employees who provided him information. The court convicted him and sentenced him to twelve years in prison, plus three years’ probation. The others received between thirty months and five-and-a-half years in prison.
Duong Van Thai has for years campaigned for democracy and human rights in Vietnam and participated in protests relating to environmental rights. Vietnamese government-controlled media have accused him of association with outlawed “reactionary” groups including the Brotherhood for Democracy, and the Independent Journalists Association of Vietnam. Between February 2019 and his abduction in April 2023, Duong Van Thai posted material on Facebook and YouTube on the political situation in Vietnam.
Duong Van Thai’s abduction occurred during a crackdown on pro-democracy activists under the then-head of the police, To Lam, who in 2024 became head of the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam. Security forces under Lam were implicated in other incidents of repression beyond Vietnam’s borders, including the kidnapping of the former party official Trinh Xuan Thanh from Berlin in July 2017, and the blogger Truong Duy Nhat from Bangkok in January 2019. Both were sentenced to long prison terms.
