BANGKOK: Vietnam is increasingly using broadly written laws to arrest activists, dissidents and others that authorities consider a threat to the Communist party's rule, according to a new analysis released Monday (June 29) by a human rights group.
The 88 Project, which focuses on rights issues in Vietnam, documented 56 such arrests in 2025, the third consecutive year of increases and double the number in 2022. The report includes only arrests where the defendant could be identified by name and the case tracked, and the actual numbers are believed to be much higher, said Ben Swanton, co-director of the group.
The report says the country under leader To Lam "routinely weaponises criminal law” to quash dissent. To Lam, the country’s former top security official who has served as general secretary of the Communist Party since 2024, was also elected president earlier this year.
The arrests are largely driven by fears of an uprising against the leadership in a so-called "colour revolution,” like the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine, or the 1986 Yellow Revolution in the Philippines, according to the report.
It is a fear shared by the Communist Party in neighbouring China, which has been accused of using similar tactics to stifle critics. Though competing maritime claims have led to confrontations between the two countries and a tense diplomatic relationship at times, China and Vietnam were able to agree earlier this year to together "prioritise political security and enhance efforts to prevent and resist color revolutions,” the Chinese state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.
"With the ascendancy of To Lam, the country has become a literal police state that tolerates no dissent,” Swanton said.
"This represents a serious regression from the period of relative openness in the 2010s when some dissent was tolerated and civil society groups were able to engage in policy activism.”
Vietnam's Foreign Ministry did not respond to requests for comment on the findings of the report.
The report found that authorities are relying increasingly on Article 331 of Vietnam's penal code, which makes it a crime punishable by up to seven years in prison to "abuse democratic freedoms to infringe upon the interests of the state.”
Previously little used, "authorities have enlarged the scope and application of Article 331 so that it reaches further into society, beyond human rights and democracy dissidents... to all those who voice any grievance with state or local Communist Party and government officials,” New York-based Human Rights Watch wrote in a report last year.
"The Vietnamese authorities’ increased use of Article 331 is a little known facet of the government’s expanding crackdown on ordinary people who are seeking to use social media and other peaceful means to publicly raise important social issues, including religious freedom, land rights, rights of Indigenous people and government and Communist Party corruption,” Human Rights Watch wrote.
Among those arrested under Article 331 last year were three men behind the YouTube channel "Nguoi Da Tin' - The Messenger - on allegations that videos they uploaded were ”distorted content" that violated the statute, The 88 Project reported.
The report provides details of every arrest identified as politically related in 2025.
Those also included an activist for the minority Montagnard group who was arrested in Thailand and extradited to Vietnam, a dissident writer accused of spreading "propaganda against the state,” and a man who helped residents of Ha Tinh province file complaints demanding fair compensation for land expropriated for a new highway.
"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 said. - AP
