BBC journalist barred from leaving Vietnam, broadcaster says

The news came as Communist Party chief To Lam departed for London, where he is expected to announce a major diplomatic upgrade with the United Kingdom.

A BBC journalist has been barred from leaving Vietnam and subjected to multiple days of interrogation, the broadcaster has said, as the head of the Communist Party of Vietnam arrived in the U.K. for an official visit.

In a statement, the BBC stated that the journalist, a Vietnamese national, traveled to the country to visit family and renew her passport, but the document and her ID card have been withheld and she has been subjected to “multiple days of questioning.”

“We are deeply concerned about our journalist’s wellbeing and urge the authorities to allow them to leave immediately, providing them with their renewed passport so they can return to work,” it added.

The news came as To Lam, the chief of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), arrived in the U.K. on Tuesday, for a visit during which he and Prime Minister Keir Starmer are expected to sign an agreement establishing a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between the two nations. During a meeting yesterday at 10 Downing Street, Lam and Starmer announced a deal to curb illegal migration of Vietnamese nationals to the U.K. During their meeting they “commended the positive progress of bilateral relations, particularly the efforts of both sides to address existing challenges and seek appropriate solutions in the spirit of cooperation for the common benefit of the two peoples,” Vietnamese state media reported.

According to a report in the U.K.’s Times newspaper, the journalist is a 29-year-old woman who works for the BBC Vietnamese service in Bangkok, Thailand, who does not wish to be named. When she returned to Vietnam to renew her passport in August, she was “detained and questioned for five days.” According to friends, “she was shaken by the grueling interrogation and pressured into signing 18 articles that she had published on the BBC website – a symbolic step that is often a prelude to criminal prosecution,” The Times reported.

It is unclear why the BBC journalist has been prevented from leaving the country, but it is consistent with the intensifying crackdown that the Vietnamese authorities have waged over the past decade. This has seen dozens of independent journalists, political activists, and ordinary social media users arrested for crimes as varied as “abusing democratic freedoms to infringe upon the interests of the state” and spreading “anti-state” content online. Like the late Radio Free Asia, BBC Vietnamese broadcasts into the country (and across the globe) in the Vietnamese language, making it a particular thorn in the CPV’s side. However, the fact that the Vietnamese government is choosing to go after one of its reporters suggests that it is growing more emboldened in its attempts to control the flow of information into and around the country.

Phil Robertson, the director of the advocacy group Asia Human Rights and Labour Advocates, said in a statement that upon arrival in London, Lam “needs to be met with clear and unrelenting demands that this journalist be given her passport, and allowed to immediately fly out to Bangkok to continue the excellent job she’s doing as a journalist for the BBC Vietnamese service.”

A Foreign Office spokesperson told the BBC the UK’s “position and track record defending media freedom is clear.” The spokesperson added, “We remain concerned by reported harassment of NGOs, journalists, and rights activists and communities in Vietnam and continue to raise these concerns directly with our Vietnamese counterpart.” It is unclear if Starmer raised the journalist’s case in his meeting with Lam.

By Sebastian Strangio – The Diplomat – October 30, 2025