(Berlin) – A new governmental decree undermines the independence of lawyers in Vietnam and will impede efforts to hold officials accountable, Human Rights Watch said today. The authorities should repeal the decree.
Decree 109/2026, which takes effect May 18, 2026, empowers the police and government officials at the local (commune) level to revoke lawyers’ licenses and impose severe fines for vaguely worded offenses such as “insulting” officials or “obstructing” the functioning of state agencies. The regulation poses new threats in an already hostile environment for the legal profession in Vietnam.
“Decree 109 represents a serious new threat to Vietnam’s already politicized legal system,” said Patricia Gossman, senior associate Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The authorities should immediately repeal the decree and ensure that lawyers can carry out their professional duties without fear of government retaliation.”
Decree 109 applies to civil and criminal proceedings, including land disputes, and includes sanctions for “administrative violations” such as “insulting the honor, dignity, or reputation of persons authorized to conduct legal proceedings.” Other alleged violations include conduct aimed at “delaying, prolonging, or creating difficulties for, or obstructing, the operations of procedural bodies” and acts that “cause harm to the legitimate rights and interests of agencies, organizations, or individuals.” The latter evokes the nearly identical language of article 331 of the Penal Code, which the authorities have used to prosecute citizens who have criticized the government or exposed wrongdoing by officials.
The decree grants local authorities and the police extraordinary authority over lawyers, making any statement by a lawyer deemed “criticism” punishable as an “insult.” If a lawyer were to advise a client to remain silent during police interrogation, that could be interpreted as “creating difficulties for, or obstructing” police operations. Because these provisions would most often be invoked in cases in which local officials and the police are themselves the defendants, they create a direct conflict of interest, putting the authority to punish lawyers in the hands of the very officials those lawyers are trying to hold accountable.
Decree 109 has already resulted in harassment and intimidation of lawyers by local officials. On April 13, soon after Decree 109 was issued but before it takes effect, the People’s Committee of Long Thanh commune in Dong Nai province wrote to the Bar Association of Dong Nai province, urging them “to admonish … organizations and individuals who exploit people’s trust by guiding them to repeatedly submit numerous complaints and denunciations to leaders and authoritative agencies—actions that undermine credibility and pose a risk to local security and public order.”
The decree specifies that advising clients to file “unlawful complaints or denunciations” is also grounds for punishment, but it does not specify what constitutes an “unlawful” complaint. The violations set out in this decree are likely to deter lawyers from taking cases involving land rights activists or whistleblowers as clients.
Local officials under Decree 109 can punish Vietnamese lawyers by revoking their licenses for up to nine months, and those of international lawyers for up to three months and impose fines of up to 40 million VND (US$1,520). Previously, Decree 121/2025 of June 2025 allowed provincial chairpersons to grant and revoke law licenses: a move lawyers then criticized because it bypassed the Ministry of Justice and bodies such as the bar association, which normally grant and revoke licenses.
Decree 109 also states that advising clients to join a protest (“to gather in large numbers to disrupt public order”) may temporarily cost a lawyer their license to practice.
Along with the decree, the government has taken other measures to intimidate lawyers. In April, the Ministry of Public Security published a draft proposal to amend the criminal code to hold lawyers criminally liable for “failing to report a client who is preparing to commit a crime.”
“The Vietnamese government boasts about an era of rising prosperity under the country’s new leadership,” Gossman said. “But by curbing the independence of lawyers and increasing the unchecked power of the police, Vietnam is strengthening its single party authoritarian rule.”
