The legal research “Vietnam’s legal framework on religion” was conducted by Legal Initiatives for Vietnam to understand the existing laws and regulations relating to religion, especially how the Vietnamese government views and deals with religious affairs and communities.
The research was reviewed and finalized in September 2020.
LIV as an independent media and research organization has made several efforts in documenting legal and political developments of Vietnam over the years, in addition to our journalistic works.
Coming soon…
Trinh Huu Long, co-director of Legal Initiatives for Vietnam (LIV) is quoted by IPI Contributor Loren Sandoval Arteaga on harassment and jailing of journalists.
“There is no sign that there will be improvements in the coming years”, Trinh Huu Long, the co-director of Legal Initiatives for Vietnam, an advocacy organization for human rights, democracy and law in Vietnam, told IPI. “The man who is largely responsible for the decline of media freedom in Vietnam over the past five years was re-elected to the top seat. The party is sending negative signals, as they elected a former spy chief of the national police to one of the most four powerful positions, and people have started to spread a rum or that he will be the next prime minister.”
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Legal Initiatives for Vietnam‘s (LIV) mission is to build a democratic society in Vietnam through independent journalism, research, and education.
LIV was founded by Trịnh Hữu Long, Trần Quỳnh-Vi, Phạm Đoan Trang and Trương Tự Minh in 2014 as a small legal publication, which has now become its core project called Luật Khoa. Later, it was incorporated as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, nonpartisan organization in California, United States in January 2017. In November 2021, LIV opened its representative office in Taipei, Taiwan.
We believe that independent journalism and an informed citizenry are vital parts of the democratic future we envision for Vietnam. Thus, we invest in building independent media outlets and institutions that are free of censorship and self-censorship. However, these are not enough; we must also invest in quality journalism. These are our main projects:
LIV aims to provide quality resources for journalists, researchers, policy makers, and advocacy groups. Over the years, we have worked on various research projects in internet freedom, religious freedom. Our research interests also go beyond these areas to include democratization, press freedom, and criminal justice.
Some data that we have collected is released here.
LIV’s publications and research educates and informs its audience not only on contemporary issues, but also in the fields of human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. However, other forms of education remain crucial to achieve our goals. We provide:
Co-founder and Executive Director, based in Taipei, Taiwan
She was a litigation lawyer in Menlo Park and San Jose, California before becoming a democracy advocate and journalist in 2015. Apart from being a member of LIV’s leadership, she is in charge of The Vietnamese Magazine, an English publication covering Vietnam’s law and politics, and advocacy.
She specializes in Vietnam’s freedom of expression and criminal justice, and is also a strong advocate for the abolition of the death penalty. In 2021, Vi was accepted as a Democracy and Human Rights Service Fellow at the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy (TFD). She graduated from the master’s program in journalism at Columbia University in 2023.
Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Luật Khoa Magazine, based in Taipei, Taiwan
Aside from being a member of LIV’s leadership, he is in charge of Luật Khoa Magazine, a Vietnamese publication covering Vietnam’s law and politics. He began his career in 2008 as a legal counsel for some companies in Hà Nội and became a democracy advocate and journalist in 2011. He has worked for various media and human rights organizations such as Tia Sáng magazine (2011-2012), Tuổi Trẻ newspaper (2012), and VOICE (2013-2016).
He has a background in law and Asia-Pacific studies, specializing in Vietnam’s constitutional law, freedom of expression, internet freedom, and criminal justice, as well as Taiwan’s democratization. He has written and translated several books in politics and has been an author of the Vietnam Chapter of Freedom House’s Freedom on the Net reports since 2021. He earned a bachelor in law (LL.B) from Hanoi Law University in 2008 and a master’s degree in Asia-Pacific studies from Taiwan’s National Chengchi University in 2024.
Co-founder and editor, based in Vietnam
She is one of the most prominent journalists in Vietnam and has worked for various media outlets such as VnExpress, VietNamNet, and Pháp luật TP. Hồ Chí Minh since 2000. She became a democracy activist in the early 2010s and has been involved in various social movements and educational activities. Aside from working as an editor for LIV, she was also the leading author of the Liberal Publishing House and has written many books on political and legal affairs in Vietnam.
As a result of her excellence and contribution, she has been awarded by People In Need, Reporters Without Borders, Martin Ennals Foundation, US Department of State, the Canadian and the United Kingdom governments, and Committee to Protect Journalists. She was arrested by Vietnamese authorities in October 2020 and was sentenced to nine years of imprisonment for “spreading propaganda against the state.”
She currently serves her sentence in An Phước Prison, Bình Dương province, Vietnam.
And 12 other team members who are editors, staff writers, administrators, and volunteers.
19 March 2021
Today, we release our 2020 Annual Report which includes information about activities, finance, and personnel.
Tiếng Việt:
English:
Female activists have been suffering harassment, arrest and long prison sentences. The Vietnam authorities are notorious for suppression, often times going against basic human rights.
Excerpt:
Just before midnight on October 6, 2020, police raided the boarding house of Pham Doan Trang , a prominent Vietnamese author, journalist, and human-rights activist. They arrested her under Article 88 of the 1999 Penal Code for ‘making, storing, disseminating or propagating information, documents, and articles against the State and Socialist Republic of Vietnam.’ She faces up to 20 years in prison.
Ironically, Pham Doan Trang was arrested just hours after the United States and Vietnam completed their 24th annual Human Rights Dialogue. Trang has been held incommunicado in pretrial detention since her arrest. No one has seen her or heard from her since that day, not even her lawyer.
Unfortunately, Trang’s case is not unique. Despite their internationally acclaimed achievements and important contributions to the human rights, free press, and pro-democracy movement in Vietnam, Trang and other female activists in the country are frequently subjected to harassment, arrest, and long prison sentences.
According to The 88 Project’s records , as of March 2, 2021, there are 83 female activists currently at risk, including 28 in detention for speaking up for human rights and democracy issues. There were nine women arrested in 2020 and four in 2019. In 2020, the number of arrests more than doubled, and most of the women were charged for expressing their opinions on social media.
Vietnam suppresses dissent broadly, often denying political prisoners the right to communicate with their families or lawyers, the right to a fair trial, and adequate health care behind bars.
The targeting of female activists also raises serious concerns about the effects of this treatment on women and their families, especially young children. The arrest and harassment of female activists with young children, has a significant mental impact on both the mothers and the children, as former political prisoner Tran Thi Nga shared in an interview with The 88 Project after her release.
According to Clause 1(b) of Article 67 of the Vietnam’s 2015 Criminal Code , ‘[a] convict who is a pregnant woman or having a child under 36 months of age may have the sentence deferred until the child reaches the age of 36 months.’ However, the Vietnamese government often doesn’t follow its own rules.
The Vietnamese government often uses children as bait to force their mothers to sign a confession. The authorities accuse the women of not fulfilling their responsibilities as mothers.
These women are often transferred to prisons located far away from their home towns, even thousands of kilometers away. By detaining them in places that are far from home, they make it extremely difficult for the young children to visit. The family is only allowed to visit once a month and for less than 30 minutes each visit. Sometimes the families will travel a long distance to the prison camps only to find out that they are not allowed to visit.
The human-rights situation in Vietnam has worsened in the past five years. The government often uses draconian laws to threaten freedom of expression, and it has sentenced dissidents to longer prison terms.
The authorities continue to abuse the basic rights of citizens. They engage in arbitrary arrests and detention, handing down lengthy prison terms, and placing restrictions on freedom of expression, the Internet, the right of peaceful assembly, and freedom of movement, such as by imposing travel bans.
The torture and ill-treatment of political prisoners is also particularly worrisome. And it’s even more difficult for female prisoners detained in such conditions. Former female prisoners have shared their experiences in prison, explaining how they had to fight for sanitary napkins or how the guards would watch them while they were changing their clothes.
The 88 Project interviewed Pham Doan Trang before she was arrested. She shared the struggles and challenges of female activists in Vietnam.
‘In general, Vietnamese women are not respected,’ she said. ‘Not only in democracy activism, female activists disadvantaged because they get attacked no less than male activists. They are beaten and assaulted.
‘The work they do is no less than their male counterparts. But what they often get from other people is pity. I think it is not respect.…
‘In a dictatorship nobody has freedom, but especially not women; their lack of freedom is multiplied many times compared [with] men. Because women are not only victims of the regime in terms of politics, but they are also victims of gender inequality and self-constraint.’
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The prominent dissident Pham Doan Trang was recently arrested for “anti-state propaganda” charges. Her works as a journalist, author and publisher gathered huge following both in the local and international communities making her one of Vietnamese authorities’ biggest critic. Prior to her arrest, she sent a letter to her activist-friend and instructed him to release the letter entitled “Just In Case I Am Imprisoned.”
Excerpt:
The outspoken Vietnamese journalist and activist Pham Doan Trang knew it was only a matter of time before the police came for her.
She wrote a letter last year and gave it to an American friend with instructions to release it upon her arrest. In the letter, she asked that her friends not just campaign for her freedom but use her incarceration to fight for free elections and an end to single-party rule in Vietnam.
“I don’t want freedom for just myself; that’s too easy,” wrote Ms. Pham, 42, who has walked with difficulty since a police beating in 2015. “I want something greater: freedom for Vietnam.”
Shortly before midnight on Oct. 6, the police raided her apartment in Ho Chi Minh City and arrested her on charges of making and disseminating propaganda against the Vietnamese state. She faces up to 20 years in prison.
Ms. Pham is one of the most prominent critics to have been arrested in recent years by Vietnam’s Communist regime, which has long made a practice of harassing, beating and imprisoning outspoken activists.
The widespread use of smartphones and the internet in Vietnam has meant that daring activists and journalists like Ms. Pham can independently publish stories in which they uncover corruption or expose malfeasance. But that also puts a huge target on their backs.
The Communist Party has long feared that free speech would undermine its hold on power, and it has built a large apparatus to stifle dissent. Activists say Ms. Pham’s arrest was likely prompted by the party’s upcoming congress in January, which occurs every five years.
At a time when Vietnam has repositioned itself as a strategic American ally and important global manufacturing hub, the authorities are newly emboldened to crack down on dissent with little fear of repercussions. They have also been invigorated by a United States administration that has widely ignored human rights abuses.
Human Rights Watch estimates that Vietnam has jailed at least 130 political prisoners, more than any other country in Southeast Asia.
Just four years ago, then-President Barack Obama made human rights in Vietnam a priority. During a 2016 visit, he invited Ms. Pham and other dissidents to meet with him publicly. But the police kept her from attending by detaining her.
After Amnesty International, the Committee to Protect Journalists and other groups called for her release, the State Department on Saturday pressed Vietnam to set Ms. Pham free.
“The United States condemns the arrest of writer, democracy, and human rights activist Pham Doan Trang,” Robert A. Destro, the assistant secretary of state for human rights, said in a statement. “We urge the Government of Vietnam to immediately release her and drop all charges.”
Ms. Pham began her career as a journalist, but in a country where most media is state-controlled, she chafed at the restrictions.
In her 2019 book “Politics of a Police State,” she wrote about the continual harassment she had suffered for a decade as a writer and activist.
The police once put glue in her apartment door lock so she could not leave, she wrote. They placed her under house arrest, publicly posted intimate photos taken from her computer and stole her identity cards.
She left the country in 2013, but she was not happy in exile.
“It’s really hard to watch from outside what happens in Vietnam,” she said at the time. “It makes me feel helpless.”
She returned to Vietnam in 2015, and had lived in hiding since 2017.
In a 2016 interview with The New York Times, Ms. Pham predicted that the authorities’ effort to intimidate activists by imprisoning Mother Mushroom would fail.
“She has a lot of supporters,” Ms. Pham said. “Many of them will replace her or follow in her path.”
Perhaps she was already thinking ahead to the likelihood of her own incarceration.
In her letter, titled “Just in case I am imprisoned,” she told friends not to believe the police if they claimed she had confessed.
She asked for a movement not to “free Trang,” but to “free Trang and ensure free and fair elections.”
“No one wants to sit in prison,” she wrote. “But if prison is inevitable for freedom fighters, if prison can serve a predetermined purpose, then we should happily accept it.”
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Legal Initiatives for VIETNAM co-directors Vi Tran and Trinh Huu Long participated in a study on new internet regulations and the how the central and local governments are implementing the regulations.
Excerpt:
The first attempt was unofficially made known to the public in early October 2018 by non-state actors, when the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), the government body in charge of drafting the decree, was in the middle of a process of consulting relevant agencies and companies. [12]
[12] Bộ Công an muốn quản lý số thẻ tín dụng, log chat và quan điểm chính trị của người dùng Internet, Luật Khoa, 2018. Available at: https://www.luatkhoa.org/2018/10/bo-cong-an-muon-quan-ly-so-the-tin-dung-log-chat-va-quandiem-chinh-tri-cua-nguoi-dung-Internet/
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