Vietnam: RSF appalled by 12-year prison sentence handed on journalist kidnapped in Thailand
More than a year after journalist Duong Van Thai was abducted in Thailand, the Vietnamese regime has sentenced him to 12 years in prison for “propaganda against the state.” Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is appalled by this outrageous sentence and calls for his immediate release.
On 30 October 2024, following a closed-door trial in Hanoi, Vietnamese investigative journalist Duong Van Thai was sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment under Article 117.2 of the Vietnamese Penal Code, for charges of “propaganda against the state.”
Known for his investigations into government corruption and power struggles within the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), Duong was abducted on 13 April 2023 from central Thailand, where he had been living as a refugee since 2019. Three days later, the Vietnamese police claimed he had been arrested for a supposed “illegal entry attempt” from Laos.
“By kidnapping Duong Van Thai, a journalist who reported on state corruption, and handing him an outrageously heavy prison sentence, the Vietnamese regime shows the extent of its contempt for press freedom. We call on the international community to step up the pressure on Hanoi to secure his release as well as the release of the 36 other journalists and press freedom defenders currently detained in the country.
Duong Van Thai, who exposed the extensive property holdings of high-ranking Communist Party officials on Facebook, was also a member of the Independent Journalists Association of Vietnam (IJAVN), a group that has faced harsh repression from the regime. Despite gaining refugee status from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in 2020, his family reports that he continued to worry for his safety in Thailand.
This is not the first instance of a foreign-based journalist being forcibly “repatriated” from Thailand, allegedly with the Thai authorities’ complicity. In January 2019, Truong Duy Nhat, a contributor to the Vietnamese-language service of Radio Free Asia, was kidnapped from the heart of Bangkok before being sentenced in 2020 to ten years in prison on trumped-up charges.
In October 2015, Chinese-born Swedish publisher Gui Minhai was similarly kidnapped in Thailand, only to reappear months later on Chinese state television CCTV, where he was coerced into a forced confession. On 24 February 2020, the Chinese regime sentenced him to ten years in prison for “illegally providing intelligence overseas.”
Vietnam ranks 174th out of 180 countries and territories, at the bottom of the 2024 RSF World Press Freedom Index, and is among the world’s worst jailers of journalists.
