December 23, 2021- UN Special Rapporteurs Ms. Irene Khan, Mr. Clément Nyaletsossi Voule, and Ms Mary Lawlor expressed concerns over the arrests and subsequent convictions of human rights defenders and journalists: Do Nam Trung, Trinh Ba Phuong, Nguyen Thi Tam and Pham Doan Trang. The four of them were charged with “distributing anti-state propaganda” under Vietnam’s Penal Code and sentenced to a collective total of 35 years of imprisonment.

These UN human rights experts note that the aforementioned human rights advocates are “only the latest victims of the authorities’ campaign to silence, intimidate and persecute writers, journalists and human rights defenders using vaguely defined propaganda laws” and that their arrest, detention, prosecution, conviction and sentencing is “an arbitrary deprivation of liberty under international human rights law.”