Nguyen Lan Thang serving 6-year sentence

For nearly a decade, Nguyen Lan Thang wrote about democracy, human rights and freedoms for the RFA Vietnamese blog.

Police in Hanoi arrested Thang on July 5, 2022. The journalist was held incommunicado for six months, when authorities brought charges against him. After nine months in custody, a closed-door court took just one day to convict the journalist of anti-state charges and sentence him to six years in prison.

Thang was convicted of “creating, storing, disseminating or propagandizing information” against the state. RFA has said that the charges are related to 12 interviews that Thang posted to YouTube and his Facebook account, which at the time had 157,000 followers.

In his time reporting for RFA, the network said that Thang always “struck a moderate tone” even when dealing with difficult issues including land disputes and freedom of religion.

The U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has said that Thang’s imprisonment follows “a familiar pattern of arrest that does not comply with international norms.” Among the issues the group cited were a lengthy pre-trial detention period, being held incommunicado, lack of access to judicial review and limited access to legal counsel.

The journalist is subjected to physiological abuse in prison, according to the Vietnam-focused rights group Project 88. Thang regularly shares a small cell with two to three inmates who have mental health issues. Human Rights Watch has said that Vietnam uses “so-called trustee prisoners to terrorize political prisoners” in part because “the prison officials will then claim they are not responsible.”

Thang has long been harassed for his reporting, videos and photos. He was briefly detained at an airport in October 2013 after returning from a six-month civil society study program where he also met with U.N. human rights officials. In 2014, he was prevented from traveling to the U.S. for World Press Freedom Day events, and in 2015 his family were threatened at their home and Thang and his wife were attacked when picking up their child from daycare.

Following his conviction, the head of RFA described the case as “a miscarriage of justice and an assault on free expression in Vietnam.”

“The outrageous harassment he has endured and his sentencing … demonstrates the extent to which Vietnamese authorities will go to silence independent journalists and voices,” the statement read.

Amnesty International in a statement said, “For more than a decade, Nguyen Lan Thang has carried out crucial work documenting protests and human rights abuses in Vietnam despite a worsening climate of retribution aimed at those who criticize the state. His peaceful activism and reporting should be welcomed as part of legitimate public debate, but instead, he is facing years in prison.”

Last updated February 27, 2026