Pham Minh Vu

Pham Minh Vu was born and raised in Quang Tri province. He is a former political prisoner and a well-known blogger with more than 89,000 Facebook followers.

Profile photo: Pham Minh Vu was at the Security Investigation Agency of Dong Nai province in November 2014, six months after his arrest. Source: Pham Minh Vu Facebook (Sep Pham) page

Like Do Nam Trung, Pham Minh Vu has a long history of activism. He was arrested and jailed in the same trial with Do Nam Trung in 2014 at the height of protests opposing China's actions in the South China Sea. After his release in 2015, Pham Minh Vu continued his work as a blogger, focusing on topics of sovereignty, freedom of expression, democracy, police brutality, and anti-corruption. Vu is one of the active authors who published on the page Quyền Được Biết (The Right to Know), a daily news site fighting for a non-communist Vietnam. 

Because of his straight-forward articles criticizing public officials , especially Nguyen Phu Trong, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, Pham Minh Vu has received dozens of death threats. As a result, Vu has had no choice but to move around various provinces in Vietnam since 2016. As Vu wrote “I’m in exile in my own country," playing hide and seek with the local authorities and Vietnamese police.