Academic Prosecuted After Publication Calling for Reform of Vietnam’s Communist Party

A Vietnamese policeman stands watch outside the Phuoc Co jail on the outskirts of the southern coastal town of Vung Tau in 2006. Hoang Dinh Nam/file/AFP via Getty Images

A Vietnamese academic, who published books detailing his suggestions for the improvement of the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam, was charged with “abusing democratic freedoms” and banned from leaving the country.

Nguyen Son Lo, 74, the former director of the SENA Institute of Technology Research and Development, was prosecuted and placed under house arrest by the Ministry of Public Security on Wednesday.

Authorities issued a search warrant at his house in Hanoi and workplace but provided no explanation for why the investigation was launched against him, a local news agency reported.

His close friend, Nguyen Khac Mai, told Radio Free Asia that Lo produced “a number of books” with suggestions for the country’s economy and culture and formed a think tank to research the cultural issue in Vietnam.

The Central Inspection Commission, which reports to the ruling Communist Party, allegedly asked Lo not to send his publications to provincial party secretaries or National Assembly lawmakers.

“The Central Inspection Commission came to SENA to work with him and confirmed they had not forbidden him from expressing his opinions or making recommendations. They just asked him not to spread them widely,” Mai said.

He claimed that Lo had agreed with the commission’s order to limit the distribution of his publications to internal entities of the ruling party, but that did not stop authorities from prosecuting him.

Mai added that Lo has no intention “to overthrow the regime” but rather wants to contribute to the nation and improve the ruling party.

“No one wants to overthrow the regime, they just want it to be better,” he said. “Less corruption, more humanity, less immoral behavior, no land grabbing but negotiation and proper compensation. That is his wish like mine and others.”

House Arrest ‘Pervasive’ in Vietnam

In February, Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a report documenting the Vietnamese government’s “systematic blocking” of more than 170 rights activists, bloggers, dissidents, and their family members from domestic and international travel from 2004 to 2021.

HRW said the actual number of cases is likely to be higher, given the country’s strict censorship regime and victims’ fear of publicizing their cases.

“The authorities employ rights-abusing tactics such as holding activists in indefinite house arrest, detention when away from home, and bans on leaving the country under fabricated national security grounds,” said Phil Robertson, HRW’s deputy Asia director.

House arrests were carried out with various methods, including stationing plainclothes security agents outside homes, gluing locks, erecting roadblocks and other physical barriers, and mobilizing neighborhood thugs to intimidate people.

The practice is “so pervasive” in the communist-ruled country that rights activists and bloggers adopted a code name for it, calling it “banh canh”; banh is a Vietnamese word for cake or noodles, while canh means either soup or to guard, the rights group said.

While a number of victims have attempted to dispute the legality of their mistreatment in Vietnam, the rights group said that doing so is an “impossible feat” given the country’s communist-controlled judiciary.