On Human Rights Day, [1] Dec. 10, we would like to use the stories of Dang Dinh Bach, Tinh That Bong Lai’s Buddhist practitioners, and Nguyen Van Chuong to wrap up and paint an overall picture of the human rights situation in Vietnam in recent years. Their precarious conditions point towards the country’s shrinking civil society space. At the same time, they exemplify the Communist regime’s hostility to autonomous religious groups and its defective criminal justice system.

In 2021, the Vietnamese government arrested the leaders of several non-profit organizations and accused them of “tax evasion” – the launch of its crackdown on the country’s civil sector. Dang Dinh Bach, a Hanoi-based community lawyer and director of a social advocacy group, was arrested. He is now serving a five-year sentence in prison.