(Bangkok) – The Vietnamese government has escalated arrests of perceived dissidents in the weeks before Vietnam’s 14th Communist Party Congress, which is scheduled to begin on January 19, 2026, Human Rights Watch said today. The government should end its intensifying campaign against its critics and release everyone imprisoned for the peaceful expression of their political views.
Most recently, Hanoi police arrested the blogger Hoang Thi Hong Thai on January 7 for comments she made on social media critical of the government, which garnered thousands of views. In late December 2025, courts convicted several other dissidents and imposed severe sentences.
“‘It’s that time again’ for escalating arrests and jailing prominent critics ahead of Vietnam’s Communist Party Congress,” said Patricia Gossman, senior associate Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Not only does the government block citizens from choosing their own leaders, but the authorities gag those they think might complain about the process.”
Vietnam’s party congress, held every five years since 1986, determines the country’s next national leaders. The process is undemocratic and lacks transparency. Citizens who are not party members are prohibited from publicly discussing candidates for the top positions.
Ahead of past party congresses, the police have often intensified arbitrary arrests and home detentions to silence influential critical voices, Human Rights Watch said.
Since the mid-2010s, Hoang Thi Hong Thai, a 45-year-old blogger and businesswoman, has published hundreds of comments on social media focusing on sociopolitical issues and expressing sympathy for rights activists who have suffered repression. As of January 2026, her Meta account had 120,000 followers.
In late April 2025, the police prohibited her from leaving Vietnam, summoned her and interrogated her about her writing, and threatened to arrest her. A few days later, she posted a message on social media apologizing for having no choice but to stop writing as she was being pressured by the police to choose between expressing her views or taking care of her autistic child. “Be a mother, or go to prison.” A few days later, she resumed writing on Meta.
In June, she published an online post criticizing articles 117 and 331 of Vietnam’s penal code for violating the right to freedom of speech enshrined in Vietnam’s constitution, and urged the National Assembly to amend or abolish these laws. Article 117 broadly prohibits “making, storing, disseminating or propagandizing information, materials and products that aim to oppose the State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,” punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Article 331 criminalizes acts deemed to “infringe upon the interests of the state” with up to seven years in prison.
The day before her arrest, Hoang Thi Hong Thai had written about the suffering that she and her children experienced during the 11 years since she began posting on social media: “The price we paid was not insignificant: My family was forced to move eight times. My children had to change schools four times. ‘Masked forces’ came to my house and wielded machetes to intimidate me. I was pepper-sprayed in the street. [Thugs] poured glue into my motorbike’s lock three times. [Unknown men] caused an accident against me and I still have a scar on my back. Police approached my child (who is autistic) at school and told him that his mother was a ‘reactionary.’ My company’s contracts with partners were abruptly terminated. My business was attacked. My family was subjected to economic siege and suffered emotional distress. Yet, during all these years, I never once deviated from [the principles of] justice and human rights in my writing.”
The Vietnamese authorities have also used article 117 to punish at least six other people in recent weeks.
On December 31, a court in Hanoi convicted and sentenced in absentia the prominent human rights lawyer Nguyen Van Dai, 56, to 17 years in prison for criticizing Vietnam’s Communist Party leaders on social media. A former political prisoner who suffered government retaliation for more than two decades, including two prison terms, he was allowed to leave Vietnam for Germany in June 2018 while serving a 15-year prison sentence. He has been living in exile ever since.
Also on December 31, another court in Hanoi convicted and sentenced in absentia the Berlin-based journalist Le Trung Khoa, 54, to 17 years in prison. Le Trung Khoa is the founder and editor-in-chief of Thoibao.de, an online Vietnamese language news outlet that publishes political news and commentary about Vietnam’s leaders. Three of Le Trung Khoa’s alleged “accomplices” include Do Van Nga, a political blogger, Huynh Bao Duc, and Pham Quang Thien, the former director of the Center for Technology and Multimedia Communications of the Government Portal. They were arrested in November and December.
The Vietnamese authorities accused Le Trung Khoa of posting videos and articles “that distorted and slandered the people’s government…and caused confusion.” The police alleged that Do Van Nga wrote nine of the articles and Pham Quang Thien one of them. They accused Huynh Bao Duc of helping edit and insert images into four videos. For these so-called “crimes,” the court sentenced Do Van Nga to seven, Huynh Bao Duc to six-and-a-half, and Pham Quang Thien to five-and-a-half years in prison.
On December 27, an appeal court in Da Nang upheld the 11-year prison sentence of Trinh Ba Phuong for allegedly possessing a sign critical of the Communist Party in his prison cell. His family and defense lawyer said that Trinh Ba Phuong had not been granted access to his original judgment by the time of the appeal trial, as required by law.
“As Vietnam seeks closer economic and security ties with other countries, outside governments should be clear in condemning Vietnam’s intensifying arrests of dissidents,” Gossman said. “The Vietnam government’s unrelenting suppression of dissent needs to be confronted, not ignored.”
