Incident Group: Activists harassed during US-Vietnam Human Rights Dialogue on May 12, 2019

Human rights dialogues (between several foreign states) are important events to show to the world that Vietnam is taking its international commitments seriously. Yet, the US - Vietnam human rights dialogue hosted in May 2019 shows that Vietnam never meant to implement that to which they have agreed.

On May 12, 2019, both Le Cong Dinh - a prominent lawyer and one of the most famous political dissenters in Vietnam, who served five years of imprisonment and three years of probation for peacefully practicing freedom of expression - and religious leader Hua Phi were arbitrarily blocked from leaving their houses, even though they were invited by the delegation from the US Department of State.