Vietnam: Former IWPR Mentor Receives International Press Freedom Award

Vietnam’s leading independent reporter and activist Pham Doan Trang was this week given the world’s top press freedom prize by the Committee to Project Journalists (CPJ).
 
Currently serving a nine-year sentence in jail in Hanoi for her critical reporting and long-standing work to document state abuses of power, Trang is one of four recipients to be recognised by the New York-based international journalism advocacy and protection group.  
 
Trang was the best-known journalist and activist to be targeted by the authorities in Vietnam in recent years. While the country is celebrated and admired for its natural beauty, history, traditions and culture, Vietnam is far less known internationally for its appalling human rights abuses. The country is consistently placed near the bottom of all international rankings in human rights and press freedoms. Amnesty International claims that Vietnam is behind only China and Iran in the number of people executed each year.          
 
IWPR first met and started working with Trang in 2012 when she was a leading light in a tiny community of a dozen or so independent bloggers, writers and activists committed to promoting international journalism standards and tirelessly seeking to hold the authorities to account.  Based in her home city of Hanoi, Trang acted as IWPR’s main journalism trainer and mentored dozens of young writers in professional and international reporting - despite constant threats from police and state security forces. Training venues were regularly changed and kept secret.  
 
When she was just one of a handful of activists invited to meet President Barack Obama during his state visit to Vietnam in 2016, the authorities intervened. Along with another activist, she was arrested and detained until after Obama left Vietnam.
 
Alongside her training and mentoring, Trang has written and self-published several key and highly regarded books on activism, democracy and elections and primers on international journalism for Vietnamese audiences.
 
Arrested in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), in October 2019 just hours after the Vietnamese and US governments held their annual human rights dialogue in the city, Trang was charged with propagandising against the state – essentially reporting without permission and on any issues the government in Hanoi deems sensitive or illegal.
 
In Trang’s case, it was acting as a constant thorn in the government’s side because of her independent reporting and advocacy that embarrassed them. The final straw came earlier in 2019 when she refused to stop interviewing villagers opposed to a land grab during a deadly government crackdown on Dong Tam commune outside Hanoi.  
 
After being held incommunicado for more than a year, Trang was finally sentenced in December 2020 to nine years jail following a one-day trial. 
 
Trang always knew - and told IWPR and others - that she would ultimately face prison. She watched dozens of colleagues arrested and charged with ludicrous crimes such as supposedly abusing democracy by writing about the need for it in Vietnam.
 
Trang always argued – and continues to argue even from behind bars – that she does not want people to organise or press for her release if based on any kind of deal where she would have to stop working and leave the county. Vietnam is her home, and journalism her work, she has always said.
 
Ironically, when first nominated for an award and international recognition, Trang initially wanted to decline it.  IWPR put her name forward in 2017 for the People In Need Homo Homini Award – and she won, after being persuaded that this did not amount to profiting from the story. “Vietnam is the story, not me” she said.  Trang was also fearful that if she did accept the award and travel in person to Prague, the Vietnamese authorities would not let her back into the country.   
 
Vietnam is Trang’s home and her story, and she will never stop reporting, writing and documenting abuses of power. Like many others, IWPR applauds CPJ’s decision this week. There could be no better, more deserving - and self-depreciating - recipient of its 2022 International Press Freedom Award.