2023-06-21 16:52:52
The arrest and imprisonment of political opponents is common practice in Vietnam. In this one-party communist regime, before last the Reporters Without Borders press freedom ranking, 197 activists from all walks of life are behind bars. The count is kept by Project 88, an NGO defending freedom of expression and the fundamental rights of Vietnamese activists, based in Bangkok (Thailand) to get away from repression. Hoang Thi Minh Hong, an environmental activist, has been one of them since her arrest in late May.
“She is one of the most important climate activists in Vietnam”, explains Ben Swanton, co-director of the NGO. Hoang Thi Minh Hong has been fighting environmental damage for several decades in a country that is one of the ten biggest polluters of the oceans and 50% of whose electricity is produced using coal. On May 31, in Ho Chi Minh City, “15 members or former members of his NGO were arrested, narrator Ben Swanton. They were all in different places. » Hong, arrested with her husband, is charged with “tax evasion”. “A political arrest”according to Project 88 which, along with 65 other NGOs, denounces “false accusations”.
Regular intimidation against opponents
For Ben Swanton, the Vietnamese authorities “have made a weapon of the legal vagueness on the financing of NGOs and their tax status”. Non-governmental organizations have to go through a complex process to pay their taxes and receive donations. A practical lack of clarity for the authorities. For two years, four other environmental activists were imprisoned for the same reasons.
Fatalist, Ben Swanton hopes nothing of the legal consequences. “She won’t get a fair trial.Since this is a political arrest, we expect a long pre-trial detention and then a prison sentence. » She faces a maximum sentence of seven years in prison. Last year, Dang Dinh Bach, an environmental lawyer accused of the same offense but for a lower sum, was sentenced to five years in prison. “With Hong’s arrest, the entire leadership of climate activists is behind bars and the entire movement is being silenced,” he sighs.
Mobilization of its supporters
Since her arrest, Hoang Thi Minh Hong has been locked up in Chí Hòa prison, the most secure in the country. “It’s telling enough about the level of criminalization of Hong”, judge Alice Barbe, co-founder of the NGO Singa and creator of the Academy of Future Leaders. After twenty days of detention, she had very little contact with her relatives or her lawyer.
Alice Barbe knows Hoang Thi Minh Hong well, having rubbed shoulders with her in the 2018-2019 class of Obama Scholars. A program funded by former US President Barack Obama’s foundation to train future leaders. It describes a person “always optimistic and humorous, but above all pragmatic. She loves the planet and wants us to preserve it. » Despite the intimidation she received from the Vietnamese authorities, “she had never considered exile”.
In October 2022, by dint of receiving threats, she had to close Change VN, the environmental defense organization she had created in 2013. Project 88 and the other NGOs demanding her release hope get the attention of Barack Obama on the subject so that he “speak up publicly to ask the Vietnamese government to release her”. The US state departmentTHE United Nationsl’columbia university et Europe Ecology-The Greens have already spoken on the subject.
Pressure on the European Union
In France, “we mobilized our networks as soon as he was arrested”, says Alice Barbe, who hopes that a more visible support campaign will soon be put in place. Above all, his supporters in France want to put pressure on an agreement in preparation between several States, including those of the EU, and Vietnam to finance the transition of this country of more than 100 million inhabitants. In early June, just seven days after Hoang Thi Minh Hong’s arrest, the Vietnamese foreign minister was on a visit to Paris, in particular to discuss the 15 billion euro aid plan. Radio silence on the subject on the French side.
It is in the terms of this agreement that the supporters of the activist hope to find a lever to have her released. The signing of this partnership for an energy transition just in Vietnam must include consultations with civil society. A consultation which, behind bars, in isolation and without the right to speak, seems more than compromised. Supporters of Hoang Thi Minh Hong demand that the payment of aid promised to Vietnam be conditional on his release.
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