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. The People's Court of Da Nang is scheduled to hear his case on September 27, 2025. If convicted, Trinh Ba Phuong, who is already in prison, faces an additional sentence of up to 12 years.
In April, the authorities in Quang Nam province charged Trinh Ba Phuong with anti-state propaganda under article 117 of the Vietnamese penal code. He was already serving a 10-year sentence under article 117 for criticizing the Vietnamese government, when, in November 2024, he created a sign while in prison that the authorities deemed politically offensive.
"The new charges against Trinh Ba Phuong show that criticizing the Communist Party is just as unlawful inside as well as outside Vietnam's prisons," said Patricia Gossman, associate Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "The Vietnamese government should immediately end its retaliation against Trinh Ba Phuong for his quiet expression of protest."
Article 117 of the penal code broadly prohibits "making, storing, disseminating or propagandizing information, materials and products that aim to oppose the State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam." It does not prohibit people from criticizing political parties.
Based on the indictment, on November 18, 2024, prison guards at An Diem prison searched Trinh Ba Phuong's cell and found a piece of paper stuck under his "sleeping spot" with handwriting in capital letters: "Down with the Communist Party of Vietnam for violating human rights, down with the Communist court for sentencing me unjustly."
The police allegedly sent the paper to the Bureau of Information and Communications of Quang Nam province for evaluation. The bureau concluded that it "satirized, lambasted, maligned, and defamed the government, affecting the reputation of offices and organizations; causing confusion and anxiety and affecting the people's trust in the work of building Socialism in Vietnam, and in the leadership of the Party, the Government, the National Assembly, and the State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam."
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.
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 June 2020, Trinh Ba Phuong was arrested and charged with anti-state propaganda under article 117. 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 prison conditions. In November 2024, he carried out a hunger strike for more than 20 days to protest the prison guards' confiscation of books, paper, and pens.
Trinh Ba Phuong's family has experienced 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 eight-year-prison sentences, also on charges of anti-state propaganda.
Trinh Ba Phuong's father, 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 August, local authorities blocked both entrances to Trinh Ba Khiem's house so that he could not leave during the 80th anniversary of Vietnam's National Day.
In September, Trinh Ba Tu and fellow political prisoners Bui Van Thuan and Dang Dinh Bach at Prison No. 6 in Nghe An province reportedly carried out a hunger strike to demand the "immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners and detained activists in Vietnam" and "urge the State of Vietnam to uphold human rights fully and comprehensively and pave the way for the democratization of the nation."
"The Vietnamese authorities' claims at international forums that they uphold human rights is contradicted by repeated prosecutions of citizens who criticize the Communist Party of Vietnam," Gossman said. "International donors and trade partners of Vietnam should publicly urge the Vietnamese authorities to immediate release Trinh Ba Phuong and others imprisoned for exercising their right to freedom of expression."
