Nguyen Vu Binh jailed in ‘unjust crackdown on free speech’

On February 29, 2024, Hanoi police summoned Nguyen Vu Binh over his reporting. The journalist was then escorted to his home where police searched the property and then formally arrested Binh.

In September 2024 , the journalist was convicted of propagandizing against the state and sentenced to seven years in prison.

In a joint statement with PEN, RFA said the conviction “is yet another example of Vietnam’s unjust crackdown on free speech and brazen intimidation of journalists and writers.”

When they summoned him in February, police initially questioned Binh over content he produced for TNT Media Live, a YouTube channel that he ran with an exiled lawyer between 2021 and 2022.

The journalist had also contributed more than 300 stories for RFA’s blog since 2015. His coverage for RFA included land rights, police abuse, human rights stories and reporting on corruption. His last piece for RFA, published on February 22, 2024, focused on how the government suppresses pro-democracy activists.

The joint RFA-PEN statement noted that Binh’s “critical work as a blogger made him a two-time recipient of the prestigious Hellman-Hammett writers’ award — a recognition that honors writers under political persecution.”

Binh’s health has suffered during his imprisonment. The Vietnam-focused rights organization Project 88 reports that he has high blood pressure and in his first two weeks in Prison No. 6, Binh was taken to the emergency room four times.

Binh has been imprisoned before for his work on uncovering human rights abuses. In 2002, the journalist was sentenced to seven years in prison for espionage. The charge was linked to written testimony that Binh provided to the U.S. Congress about rights abuses. International pressure in that case resulted in Binh being freed early in June 2007.

Last updated February 27, 2026