The police have arrested a well known human rights activist and her husband just days before Vietnam celebrates the lunar new year, traditionally a time of amnesty and reconciliation. Tran Thi Nga, who is also known as Thuy Nga, had…
2016 saw the consolidation of power by conservatives in the Communist party leadership and a continuing crackdown on civil society campaigners. A surge of community activism following the mass poisoning of marine life off the central coast – by a…
A journalist was dismissed from his post for criticising Fidel Castro, as the Vietnamese Communist party held a day of national mourning for the Cuban revolutionary and dictator, who died last month. Phung Hieu was removed from his job as…
Vietnam’s call for a day of national mourning for Fidel Castro has exposed ideological divisions in a country that still clings, in name at least, to Marxist-Leninist teaching. For the Communist party, Fidel Castro was a comrade in arms in…
Police in Ho Chi Minh City have swooped on members of a newly formed civil society association, arresting three and charging them under a draconian security law. Police agents seized Luu Van Vinh, the founder of the group, at his…
A member of the National Assembly has accused environmental activists of trying to ignite public disorder over the Formosa disaster, which devastated fish stocks off central provinces. In the latest attack by Communist party officials on a growing environmental movement,…
Hundreds of independent bloggers have signed an online petition calling for the release of the detained activist, Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quyhn, who wrote under the name of Me Nam or Mother Mushroom. She was arrested earlier this month and charged…
The Vietnamese government has been accused of a slow response, and a lack of transparency and accountability, in the first independent report into the environmental disaster that killed millions of fish off the central coast earlier this year. The report…
New legislation designed to regulate associations in Vietnam threatens to deliver a heavy blow to the development of civil society, according to representatives of official and unofficial NGOs. The draft bill on associations is being introduced to the National Assembly…
Coastal provinces worst affected by the marine life disaster earlier this year have been hit by severe flooding, made worse by sudden discharges from local hydro-power reservoirs. At least twenty five people have been killed so far in the floods,…