'RSF laureates support jailed Vietnamese journalist Pham Doan Trang', 7 April 2021

As Pham Doan Trang, the Vietnamese recipient of the 2019 Reporters Without Borders (RSF) Press Freedom Prize for Impact, completes her sixth month in detention, RSF asked several other RSF laureates to comment on her case. All of them called for her immediate and unconditional release. We learned of this Vietnamese journalist’s arrest exactly six months ago. Plainclothes policemen arrested her at her Ho Chi Minh City home on the night of 6 October 2020. There has been no news of her since then. She has not been allowed to talk to a lawyer or her family. She is facing up to 20 years in prison under article 117 of the penal code on a charge of “anti-state propaganda.” ... RSF launched an international awareness campaign in support of Trang two months after her arrest. It included a petition for her immediate and unconditional release and a video in which five Vietnamese dissident bloggers and journalists based in Germany, France, Taiwan and the United States took advantage of their exile to express their solidarity with Trang and say what their colleagues still in Vietnam cannot say without risking long jail terms. Vietnam has languished for years near the bottom of RSF's World Press Freedom Index and is ranked 175th out of 180 countries in the 2020 Index.