Vietnam Sees New 'Wave of Repression,' Arrests Spike, Rights Group Says

Project88, a Bangkok-based advocacy group, has documented 56 political arrests in Vietnam in 2025, marking the highest number since 2018 and double that of 2022. Fifteen individuals have already been sentenced, while 41 await trial or are held without one. The report attributes this surge in arrests to the ascendance of To Lam, the former minister of public security, who became general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) in 2024 and was elected president this year. Project88 argues that under Lam, Vietnam has become a "police state" where the government "routinely weaponizes criminal law to arrest and imprison its citizens for exercising their human rights." Among those arrested were dissident writer Huynh Ngoc Tuan, charged under Article 117; Y Quynh Bdap, an activist for the Montagnard minority group who was arrested in Thailand and extradited to Vietnam in December; and Pham Viet Cong, a land rights campaigner who had assisted residents in Ha Tinh province seeking fair compensation for land expropriated for the North–South Expressway project. In June 2025, authorities also arrested three men behind the YouTube channel Nguoi Da Tin (The Messenger), who were charged with publishing videos that "distorted content targeting individuals and organizations within the political system." Project88 contends that this new wave of repression aims to preempt threats of "peaceful evolution" and "color revolution," which the Ministry of Public Security has previously identified as strategies by "hostile forces, led by the U.S. and the West, to overthrow Vietnam’s socialist regime and eliminate the leadership role of the Communist Party of Vietnam." As Project88 has documented previously, the CPV in mid-2023 issued Political Bureau Directive 24, which called on the Party to counter the influence of "hostile and reactionary forces" exploiting the country's growing integration with the outside world. These forces, the directive stated, were taking advantage of this greater openness to "increase their sabotage and internal political transformation activities… forming ‘civil society’ alliances and networks, ‘independent trade unions,’ creating the premise for the formation of domestic political opposition groups." As Project88 noted in its latest report, the promulgation of Directive 24 "marked the intensification of a new wave of repression" and chilled the relatively tolerant climate of the 2010s. "The Vietnamese government has dealt alarmingly severe punishments to longstanding targets like journalists and human rights activists, while displaying an increasing willingness to attack groups previously thought safe, such as political exiles and legal petitioners," the report stated. Another significant trend reported by Project88 was a change in what charges have been used in political cases. Of particular note was the growing use of Article 331, a previously "seldom utilized" provision that makes it a crime to "abuse democratic freedoms to infringe upon the interests of the state." Article 331, which carries a punishment of up to seven years in prison, was invoked in 64 percent of the arrests recorded by Project 88 in 2025, up from 51 percent of arrests in 2024. These included the arrests of Pham Viet Cong and the three men behind The Messenger YouTube channel. The other standby was Article 117, which outlaws the conducting of "propaganda against the state," which was used in a further 14 percent of last year’s arrests, including the case of dissident writer Huynh Ngoc Tuan. As Project88 notes, Articles 117 and 331 are useful weapons against dissidents, in that they "both punish speech, both are deliberately vague, both view the state as the protected party, and neither recognizes truth as a defense."