Will the environment be the Vietnam government’s downfall?
For years, Tran Thi Nga was subjected to harassment and brutalization by the Vietnamese authorities, the details of which emerged in a fresh Human Rights Watch report published earlier this year. She was finally arrested in January for using the using “the Internet to post a number of video clips and articles to propagandize against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,” as the state media reported it. What she had actually done, in fact, was to participate in a number of environmental protests and show solidarity with fellow activists by meeting with them at their homes and attending their trials. She is not alone. In the space of a few weeks, Vietnamese authorities also rounded up Nguyen Van Oai, a former political prisoner, and Nguyen Van Hoa, a human rights activist who campaigned against the Formosa Steel environmental disaster (more on that later). Months earlier, they had arrested Nguyen Danh Dung; the bloggers Ho Hai and Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh; and a number of indigenous Degar protesters. According to Human Rights Watch, there are at least 112 bloggers and activists currently serving prison sentences for nothing more than speaking their mind.
