Leading climate activist released from Vietnam jail

Prominent climate activist Hoang Thi Minh Hong has been released early from jail, her husband said on Sept 21, hours ahead of a visit by Vietnam’s top leader to the US.

A second high-profile detainee, dissident Tran Huynh Duy Thuc, was also released, his friend and former human rights lawyer Le Cong Dinh said.

The release of Ms Hong and Mr Thuc comes as Communist Party general secretary To Lam, Vietnam’s top leader, departed on Sept 21 for the US for a working visit and to attend the 79th Session of the UN General Assembly.

In September 2023, Ms Hong was sentenced to three years in prison for dodging US$275,000 in taxes related to her environmental campaign group Change.

She was one of five environmentalists jailed for tax evasion in what activists have called a campaign to silence them.

“She has been fully pardoned,” her husband Hoang Vinh Nam told Agence France-Presse. “It was very sudden.”

Mr Nam said they had speculated whether there could be some positive news about Ms Hong ahead of Mr Lam’s US visit, but they had no clear information until Sept 20 about her release from jail in Gia Lai, a mountainous province in Vietnam’s Central Highlands.

“She took a bus home, it took her 12 hours to reach Ho Chi Minh City and I picked her up from the bus station at 5am this morning,” he said. “It’s just amazing. She’s good, she’s healthy and she’s the same person she was when she went in (to prison).”

Ms Hong founded Change to mobilise the Vietnamese, particularly young people, to take action on pressing environmental issues, including climate change, the illegal wildlife trade and pollution.

But the communist government has shown little appetite for dissenting voices on environmental issues.

Internet entrepreneur Thuc was sentenced to 16 years in jail in 2010 for trying to overthrow the regime. Three others, including the lawyer, Mr Dinh, were jailed alongside him, in a case which sparked global concern.

Mr Dinh told AFP that Mr Thuc was released from prison in central Nghe An province on Sept 20 and flew to Ho Chi Minh City, where he was held in a government building close to his house.

At 4am on Sept 21, “he called his sister… and asked all of us to come to the People’s Committee to pick him up. We came and after half an hour they released him”.

“He looked very thin, and his hair is white, but his spirit is very strong,” said Mr Dinh, who was released from jail in 2013.

At their trial, they were found guilty of a well-organised, non-violent campaign in collusion with “overseas exile reactionary organisations”, aimed at overturning the government with the help of the internet.

In the US, Mr Lam will chair an event marking the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations and the first year of a comprehensive strategic partnership between Hanoi and Washington, the state media said.

Agence France Presse – September 21, 2024