Overview
The government of Vietnam continues to severely restrict almost all civil and political rights, in violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which Vietnam ratified in 1982. The Communist Party of Vietnam maintains a monopoly on political power through strict repression of free speech and assembly and by prohibiting independent rights groups, labor unions, media, many religious groups, and any organizations operating outside government control. Human rights advocates, activists, writers, and social media users who criticize the government or advocate for reform are punished with threats, harassment, fines, restrictions on movement, arbitrary arrests and detention, prosecutions under vague or overbroad laws, and long prison sentences imposed after unfair trials. The criminal justice system, including the judiciary, lacks independence from the ruling party, and both investigations and trials are carried out without due process protections.
The European Union and Vietnam have engaged in human rights discussions since the 1990s, and have held approximately 20 formal human rights dialogues since 2002.
In this period, however, Vietnam has made almost no progress on the numerous issues raised by EU officials. This is a remarkable indictment of this dialogue as a process aimed at improving human rights, and of the integrity of Vietnam’s commitment to upholding its obligations under international human rights law.
Notably, repression has also intensified since an EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) came into force in 2020. This is why Human Rights Watch and other human rights organizations, anticipating this deterioration in Vietnam’s conduct, repeatedly called for more explicit, timebound and enforceable human rights obligations to be included in the agreement.
Article 1 of the EU-Vietnam Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA), on which the EVFTA was built, identifies respect for human rights as an “essential element” of the agreement, and the EVFTA contains provisions relating to labor rights. But the steps need for Vietnam to comply with the agreement are not timebound. Since 2020, we have repeatedly called on EU officials to utilize provisions in the agreement to incentivize or compel Vietnam to change its behavior, including by suspending provisions in the agreement pending improvements in Vietnam’s record.
Regrettably, the EU remains reluctant to take such steps or otherwise link benefits from the EU-Vietnam trade and political relationship to specific human rights benchmarks. This has contributed to emboldening the Vietnamese government’s sense of impunity, which, as shown below, has in fact grown over time.
As noted above, the Vietnamese government has sharply intensified its repression since the EVFTA came into force. Authorities have increased the number of arrests and prosecutions of dissidents and critics of the government. There are now more than 160 political prisoners in Vietnam, jailed for exercising their right to freedom of expression or for their peaceful activism for human rights and democracy, and charged under draconian laws. Human Rights Watch documented that the Vietnamese authorities are increasingly using a vague, overbroad, and abusive provision of the penal code, article 331, which prohibits the “abuse of democratic freedoms,” both to silence prominent activists and to retaliate against ordinary people who complain about poor services, corruption, land evictions, environmental issues, or police abuse.
Several people have also been arrested and prosecuted in recent years for advocacy for labor rights that should be protected under the EVFTA, and some were arrested and imprisoned specifically for their work related to the EVFTA. The journalist Pham Chi Dung was arrested in 2019 after addressing a message to the European Parliament before the agreement was finalized, and has been behind bars since. Activists Mai Phan Loi and Dang Dinh Bach were arrested as they tried to join the EVFTA’s Domestic Advisor Group, tasked with monitoring implementation of the agreement. (Mai Phan Loi was released in September 2023, and Dang Dinh Bach completed his five-year prison sentence in June 2026.) In 2024, the authorities arrested Nguyen Van Binh and Vu Minh Tien, senior government officials involved in leading the government’s discussions with international organizations on labor reforms and charged them with alleged disclosure of classified information. Vu Minh Tien was released in September 2025.
Meanwhile, the government has made no progress on promised labor rights reforms or ensuring the basic rights of workers to organize and freely operate independent trade unions. No independent labor unions exist in Vietnam, but rather state-run media produces harsh criticisms of the very concept of independent unions outside of government or party control, portraying them essentially as enemies of the state.
We were gravely disappointed that despite these serious issues and Vietnam’s worsening conduct, in January the EU upgraded its bilateral relations with Vietnam.
We urge EU officials to consider new approaches. Current EU policy demonstrates only that there is no cost for increased repression and failure to comply with human rights obligations undertaken in bilateral agreements with the EU.
The EU should communicate to the government of Vietnam that its persistent lack of progress on human rights issues raised during the dialogue will ultimately lead to concrete consequences for bilateral relations.
Possible actions the EU could take include:
- Linking the outcomes of the bilateral human rights dialogue to economic and trade issues under discussion in other forums, including diplomatic meetings involving the EU Trade Directorate;
- Using the threat of suspension or other consequences under the bilateral Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA), and/or of the related Free Trade Agreement, pursuant to article 1 of the PCA, which identifies the “respect for democratic principles and human rights” as an “essential element” of the agreement;
- Adopting targeted sanctions against Vietnamese officials and entities responsible for gross human rights abuses;
- Introducing a resolution on Vietnam at the UN Human Rights Council, to focus more intention on the country’s human rights record.
On substantive areas of concern for the dialogue, Human Rights Watch recommends the EU to focus on three priority areas regarding the dire human rights situation in Vietnam:
- political prisoners and detainees;
- repression of labor rights;
- repression of the right to freely practice religion and belief.
These issues should be thoroughly articulated in public statements following the human rights dialogue, along with measures under consideration should Vietnamese authorities once again reject the release of human rights defenders and political prisoners and not commit to reform abusive legislation and open civic and political space.
If Vietnam continues to demonstrate its unwillingness to improve its conduct, this year’s dialogue will – yet again – constitute a box-ticking exercise, in which the EU serves as a bystander to the Vietnam government’s brutal repression of its citizens.
1. Political Prisoners and Detainees
The EU should publicly and privately call on the Vietnamese government to:
- Immediately release all political prisoners and detainees held for exercising their basic civil and political rights (see list below);
- Amend or repeal penal code articles 117 and 331 in conformity with Vietnam's obligations under the ICCPR.
We urge you to raise the following cases of prisoners held for exercising their basic rights. Several are suffering from severe health issues. All those arbitrarily detained should be immediately and unconditionally released.
- Pham Doan Trang, writer and human rights advocate
- Pham Chi Dung, independent journalist
- Le Dinh Luong, democracy campaigner
- Hoang Duc Binh, labor activist
- Nguyen Van Tuc, democracy campaigner
- Nguyen Tuong Thuy, independent journalist
- Tran Anh Kim, democracy campaigner
- Tran Van Bang, democracy campaigner
- Huynh Ngoc Tuan, democracy campaigner
- Nguyen Trung Ton, democracy campaigner
Background
The Vietnamese government frequently uses vaguely worded and loosely interpreted provisions in Vietnam’s penal code and other laws to prosecute and imprison peaceful political and religious activists. These include “undermining the unity policy” (article 116), “making, storing, disseminating or propagandizing information, materials and products that aim to oppose the State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam” (article 117) and “abusing the rights to democracy and freedoms to infringe upon the interests of the State, the legitimate rights and interests of organizations, individuals” (article 331).
Vietnam currently holds more than 160 people in prison for peacefully exercising their basic civil and political rights, including those who voiced grievances against local governments for various issues including land confiscation, corruption, and police brutality. Between June 2025 and June 2026, the authorities imprisoned at least 41 people in such circumstances. In September 2025, a court convicted and sentenced prominent political prisoner Trinh Ba Phuong to an additional 11 years in prison for possessing a sign critical of the Communist Party of Vietnam. In March and April 2026, courts convicted and sentenced former political prisoners Nguyen Van Truong to seven years and Huynh Ngoc Tuan to eight years and six months in prison respectively.
Police also arrested at least 37 other people during the same period and held them in pretrial detention centers under politically motivated charges, including prominent blogger Hoang Thi Hong Thai and former political prisoner Le Anh Hung.
The EU should publicly and privately call on the Vietnamese government to:
- Ratify International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention No. 87 and for the already ratified ILO Convention No. 98, engage with the ILO to ensure that the convention is implemented with laws and regulations consistent with the goals and international standards these agreements are meant to uphold;
- Immediately implement reforms to allow independent labor unions to form and ensure that worker organizers outside government-controlled worker organizations are protected from retaliation.
Background
Vietnam has still not ratified ILO Convention No. 87 on Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise, despite the government’s pledge, in correspondence with the European Parliament and EU officials, to ratify the convention by the end of 2023. The self-imposed deadline is linked to the EVFTA obligation to “make continued and sustained efforts towards ratifying... the fundamental ILO conventions.” Besides missing this deadline, Vietnamese authorities have made almost no progress toward meeting core obligations in conventions they have already ratified, such as ILO Convention No. 98 on the Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining,” or ensuring the basic rights of workers to organize and freely operate independent trade unions.
However, even if the Vietnamese government were to ratify this and other key ILO conventions, there is little indication that they would implement them or undertake the domestic reforms to realize the agreements’ obligations, in particular, those allowing for the creation and existence of independent unions.
The government does not allow independent unions to represent workers, contrary to its claims otherwise, and is not demonstrating any significant inclination to undertake reforms to change that.
The Vietnamese government claims that the Vietnam General Confederation of Labor is a “labor confederation” of enterprise-level unions. But the General Confederation of Labor is not independent nor does it comprise labor unions: its leaders are appointed by the Vietnamese government or the Communist Party of Vietnam, and any “unions” and “federations” that exist under the confederation are almost all led by people appointed by management at the enterprise level.1
The Vietnamese government claims that the 2021 Labor Law provides for independent unions, but this too is inaccurate. New provisions in the Labor Law provide for the creation of “worker organizations” or “worker representative organizations” at the enterprise level. In theory, these could be independent of the Vietnam General Confederation of Labor. But no such organizations are known to exist, nor could they, in practical terms. The government has not promulgated necessary regulations to implement the new labor law or created any legal and bureaucratic mechanisms to facilitate the creation or registration of worker organizations. 2
The absence of any implementing regulations to the labor law, combined with existing provisions in Vietnam’s Trade Union Law, sends a clear message that Vietnam’s government has no intention of allowing independent trade unions to come into being, and instead intends to have all current and future worker representative organizations governed or controlled by the government-controlled VCGL.
The dynamic of state control of the Vietnam General Confederation of Labor is also demonstrated by a Communist Party directive, Directive 24, that orders enhanced scrutiny of labor groups, civil society, and foreign organizations, specifically in the context of Vietnam’s implementation of new trade agreements with other countries and with the ILO.
Numerous articles in state-run media also reflect the Vietnamese government’s hostility to independent labor organizations or unions, calling them “hostile forces” that use “plots and tricks” to “oppose the Party and the State… causing social disorder and hindering the lives of laborers in our country,” or arguing that the purpose of “so-called independent trade unions” is to “form a domestic oppositional political force, proceeding to carry out a ‘color revolution’ or ‘street revolution’ to overthrow the Communist Party and eliminate the political regime in Vietnam.”
In 2025, Vietnam claimed that it has “more than 70,000 associations, many of which operated nationwide,” but failed to note that none of them were independent.
This record of failures of legal reforms, arbitrary arrests of labor reform advocates, and attacks on independent unions, demonstrates that Vietnam’s commitments on human rights and labor rights, including those communicated during the EVFTA negotiations, were unfounded or not made in good faith.
3. Repression of the Right to Freely Practice Religion and Belief
The EU should publicly and privately call on the Vietnamese government to:
- Amend or repeal Law on Belief and Religion in conformity with Vietnam's obligations under the ICCPR;
- Allow all independent religious organizations to freely conduct religious activities and govern themselves. Churches and denominations that do not choose to join one of the officially authorized religious organizations with government-appointed boards should be allowed to operate 20 independently;
- End government harassment, forced denunciations of faith, arrests, prosecutions, imprisonment, and ill-treatment of people because they are followers of disfavored religions, and release anyone currently being held for the peaceful exercise of their rights to freedom of religion, belief, expression, peaceful assembly and association;
- Permit outside observers, including UN agencies, NGOs, and foreign diplomats, to have unhindered and unaccompanied access to the Central Highlands, including specifically to communes and villages inhabited by Montagnards and other marginalized communities. Ensure there is no retribution or retaliation against anyone who speaks to or otherwise communicates with such outside observers.
Background
The Vietnamese government restricts religious practice through legislation, registration requirements, harassment, and surveillance. Religious groups are required to gain approval from and register with the government as well as operate under government-controlled management boards. While authorities allow many government-affiliated churches and pagodas to hold worship services, they regularly ban religious activities they arbitrarily deem to be contrary to the “national interest,” “public order,” or “national unity.” The government labels Dega Protestant, Ha Mon Catholic, Falun Gong, and other religious groups as ta dao (“evil religion”) and harasses those who practice those beliefs.
The police monitor and sometimes violently crack down on religious groups operating outside government-controlled institutions. Unrecognized independent religious groups face constant surveillance, harassment, and intimidation, and their followers are subject to public criticism, forced renunciation of faith, detention, interrogation, torture, and imprisonment.
In October 2025, a court in Lam Dong convicted and sentenced pastor Nguyen Manh Hung to six years in prison for criticizing the government. Also in October, police in Dak Lak arrested pastor Y Nuen Ayun for allegedly associating with an unrecognized religious group and charged him with “undermining unity policy” under article 116 of the penal code.
In March, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom published its 2026 report, in which it recommended that the US government designate Vietnam as a “country of particular concern” for engaging in systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom, as defined by the US International Religious Freedom Act.
A revised Law on Beliefs and Religions in Vietnam was approved by the National Assembly in April, and is scheduled to take effect in January 2027. It will replace the country’s first Law on Beliefs and Religions enacted in 2016. Rather than resolving the many concerns associated with the current law, the new law introduces additional challenges including state surveillance and control over online religious activities.
Footnotes:
- ^Workers in Vietnam General Confederation of Labor (VGCL) entities do not choose leaders or representatives who can bargain to set wages on their behalf and the leaders of enterprise-level “unions” do not have any role in choosing VGCL leaders or representatives. Insofar as the VGCL does bargain with management of companies or at the state-wide level, it does so in the interests of the government and the Communist Party of Vietnam, not on behalf of workers and not in a representative capacity.
- ^Moreover, even if a worker organization could come into existence, it would not be an “independent union” or meet international benchmarks for independent trade unions. Such organizations have limited powers under the labor law and there are no explicit provisions allowing them to affiliate or form federations independent of the VCGL.
