Nguyen Tuong Thuy jailed to ‘silence free speech’

For six years, Nguyen Tuong Thuy wrote about civil rights and freedom of speech for Radio Free Asia (RFA). But in May 2020 he was arrested along with VOA contributor Pham Chi Dung and a colleague, Le Huu Minh Tuan, on accusations that the bloggers were “making, storing and disseminating documents and materials for anti-state purposes.”

A court in January 2021 convicted Thuy of defaming the government and sentenced him to 11 years in prison.

The blogger, who is in his 70s, has experienced several health issues while in prison. The rights organization PEN says that Thuy has said he is denied access to specialists and that legal complaints about the case against him are ignored.

Prison authorities in 2021 rejected petitions that requested an investigation into the case against Thuy, saying that the blogger did not have the rights of a citizen because he had been convicted, according to RFA.

In his work for RFA, Thuy reported on land disputes that residents had with developers or the government, civil rights, and for a series that he wrote about a prisoner on death row. In 2014, the blogger traveled to the U.S. and testified about media repression in Vietnam before the House of Representatives.

Thuy was also the vice president of the Vietnam Independent Journalism Association (IJAVN). The two journalists arrested at the same time as Thuy are also members of the organization.

Following his arrest, RFA in a statement condemned the case as “alarming.”

The arrest, “while intended to silence free speech, reinforces the need for independent journalism in Vietnam,” the statement read.

In March 2025, Thuy’s wife, Pham Thi Lan, told the Vietnam-focused rights group Project 88 that her husband still has an injury to his wrist that he says was caused during his arrest. The blogger says that police twisted his arm to force him to reveal his phone password and that the injury has never fully healed.

Even before his arrest, Thuy had long been harassed by authorities. He was attacked by unidentified people in 2015, beaten by plainclothes police in 2018, blocked from leaving his home in 2018, and in 2016 attackers targeted his home overnight with a combination of waste oil, shrimp and dog heads. The journalist’s wife has also been prevented from leaving the country.

Last updated March 12, 2026