Thai authorities forcibly returned to Vietnam the prominent Montagnard human rights activist Y Quynh Bdap, putting him at risk of torture and other serious abuses, Human Rights Watch said today.
Thai authorities extradited Bdap, 33, on November 28, 2025, two days after Thailand's Court of Appeal upheld a criminal court's 2024 ruling that he could be sent back to Vietnam. Thai immigration police initially arrested Bdap on immigration charges in Bangkok in 2024, after Vietnamese authorities requested his extradition. Bdap had been living in Thailand since 2018 and had been recognized as a refugee by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees; his deportation violates the principle of nonrefoulement, which prohibits countries from returning people to places where they are likely to face persecution.
"The Thai government has blatantly violated the country's anti-torture law and its international legal obligations by returning Y Quynh Bdap to Vietnam, where he faces a prison sentence after an unfair trial and the risk of torture," said Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "The Thai government's willingness to assist Vietnam in repressing human rights activists is appalling."
The Vietnamese government persecuted Bdap for years, Human Rights Watch said. Vietnamese state media have accused him of being from a family with "a tradition" of opposing the Vietnamese Communist Party and accused his grandfather of being "a henchman" for the United States during the Vietnam War. His father was imprisoned for three years for "inciting" a public protest.
In 2016, Bdap traveled to Thailand for a conference on religious freedom. When he returned to Vietnam, the Vietnamese police detained him for seven days and interrogated him about his trip. He was subsequently placed under intrusive surveillance, leading him to flee to Bangkok in 2018.
While in Thailand, Bdap founded the Montagnards Stand for Justice, which sought to protect and promote the right to freedom of religion and other rights of Montagnards in Vietnam's Central Highlands. An Indigenous minority, Montagnards have faced political persecution, forced repudiation of their religious beliefs, shuttering of Christian house churches, and constant monitoring and surveillance by Vietnam security forces.
In June 2023, after an outbreak of violence in Dak Lak province in the Central Highlands, authorities arrested scores of Montagnards and criminally charged them and several others in exile, including Bdap, with "terrorism" and other crimes. During a short mass trial by a "mobile court" in January 2024 involving about 100 defendants, Bdap was convicted in absentia and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
In early March 2024, the Vietnamese government, without providing tangible evidence, labeled the Montagnards Stand for Justice and the Montagnard Support Group as "terrorist" organizations linked to the Dak Lak violence and other anti-state criminal activity.
Days later, Vietnamese police traveled to Thailand and visited two neighborhoods near Bangkok with populations of Montagnard asylum seekers and refugees, questioning dozens about Bdap's whereabouts, intimidating several with accusations of illegally departing Vietnam, and urging them to return to Vietnam or face criminal charges and extradition.
Thai police then arrested Bdap in June on the basis of an extradition request by Vietnamese authorities. He had been in prison during his extradition trial and appeal, up until his forced return to Vietnam on November 28.
In a November 2025 report, Human Rights Watch documented how Vietnam has increasingly engaged in transnational repression in Thailand, targeting especially exiled ethnic minorities with harassment and intimidation. Thai authorities have increasingly participated in these abuses by cooperating with Vietnamese authorities and allowing Vietnamese police to interrogate asylum seekers and refugees. Exiles and immigration lawyers believe the Vietnam government presses Thailand to keep some exiles in immigration detention indefinitely, by denying them bail, to pressure them to cooperate with Vietnamese police.
UN human rights experts have criticized the misuse of terrorism charges in the 2023 mass trial of Montagnards in Vietnam and the reported use of evidence obtained by torture, and have said that targeting Bdap for his association with the Montagnards Stand For Justice is part of the intensifying discrimination and repression against the Montagnard population. Human Rights Watch has no information about Bdap's involvement in the 2023 violence in Dak Lak but considers his trial in Vietnam unfair and is gravely concerned about his safety following his extradition to Vietnam.
Vietnamese authorities have not yet confirmed that they have Bdap in their custody.
Concerned foreign governments should strongly press the Vietnamese government to disclose his whereabouts and request access to him given the high risk of torture and other ill-treatment.
Bdap's extradition violates Thailand's Prevention and Suppression of Torture and Enforced Disappearance Act, which prohibits extradition when there is a substantial risk of torture or ill-treatment upon return.
Thailand is also obligated to respect the international law principle of nonrefoulement, which prohibits countries from returning anyone to a place where they would face a real risk of persecution, torture, or other serious ill-treatment, or a threat to their life. This principle is codified in the Convention Against Torture, to which Thailand is a party, and customary international law.
"The Bdap case demonstrates the Thai government's unwillingness to respect international law and protect foreign human rights advocates who live in Thailand," Pearson said. "Concerned governments should expedite resettlement of Vietnamese and other nationals at risk in Thailand to places where they will be safe."
