Immediate Concerns
February 2025:
The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has ruled that journalist Nguyen Lan Thang's detention and imprisonment are arbitrary. Thang was arrested under Art. 117 in 2022 and later sentenced to six years in prison. The Working Group notes that Thang's was one of many following "a familiar pattern of arrest that does not comply with international norms, lengthy detention pending trial with no access to judicial review, denial of or limited access to legal counsel, incommunicado detention, prosecution under vaguely worded criminal offences for the peaceful exercise of human rights, a brief closed trial at which due process is not observed, disproportionate sentencing and denial of access to the outside world." They further said they are "concerned that this pattern indicates a systemic problem with arbitrary detention in Viet Nam, which, if it continues, may amount to a serious violation of international law."
December 2023:
Political prisoner Nguyen Lan Thang is allegedly being psychologically abused, according to his wife. Le Bich Vuong told RFA, “Since his arrival at Prison No. 5, he has been held in cell block K1. It’s not a solitary confinement area, but he has had to share the cell with two or sometimes three inmates, some of whom showed signs of mental illness.” Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at New York-based Human Rights Watch, told RFA, “Guards’ use of so-called trustee prisoners to terrorize political prisoners is particularly common since the prison officials will then claim they are not responsible.”
Background
Nguyen Lan Thang is the third generation of Nguyen Lan family, one of families in Vietnam that has been known for having a long and prominent traditional fondness for learning. He is the grandson of the prominent scholar Nguyen Lan, whose Dictionary of Vietnamese is widely used. Seven of Nguyen Lan’s eight children have doctorate degrees; several teach at universities. One of them was a delegate in the National Assembly.
Thang was an active leader of the Communist Youth League during high school. Despite graduating from the University of Architecture Hanoi, he soon after quit his job and became an independent journalist from 2011 onwards.
Profile photo source: Vietnamnet
History of Activism
Nguyen Lan Thang is active on civil society development and human rights. Thanks to his talents in photography, he was familiar with netizens for a larger number of updated pictures and videos on issues such as demonstrations or land grabs by the government, on which state-owned media was prohibited from reporting. He is on the blacklist of police and is often harassed.
On October 30, 2013, Thang was detained at Noi Bai airport after returning home from a 6-month trip to the Philippines and Thailand, where he and a group of Vietnamese bloggers attended a study program on civil society and met U.N. Human Rights officials to present Declaration 258, signed by 100 supporters, and to report about human rights violations in Vietnam. He was then released the next day.
In 2014, authorities prevented him from traveling to the US for attending events on the World Press Freedom Day.
In 2015, a group of people went to his private house to threaten his family on October 21. Two days later, Nguyen Lan Thang and his wife, Le Bich Vuong, were attacked at a kindergarten when they were picking up their three year-old child. On October 24, a group of strangers splashed the door of his house with red paint.
In March 2017, Tran Nhat Quang, leading a group of public opinion shapers that was established by the government as polemicists to detect online anti-government sentiments and direct the public opinion, went to Thang's house and made noise by playing music, shouting, and insulting him with a loudspeaker.
