Phạm Thị Đoan Trang (born May 27, 1978) is a Vietnamese author, blogger, journalist, and activist. She is the founder of various independent organizations such as Green Trees, Luat Khoa magazine and the Liberal Publishing House. She received numerous prizes in recognition of her work in advocating and defending human rights in Vietnam, including the 2017 Homo Homini Award, the 2019 Press Freedom Award by Reporters Without Borders, the 2022 Martin Ennals Award, and the 2022 CPJ International Press Freedom Awards.
From 2000 until 2013, Trang worked for Vietnamese state media outlets before shifting to human rights advocacy in Vietnam. She has written and published books addressing issues such as LGBTQ+ rights, women's rights, environmental issues, land rights, political prisoners, democracy, and human rights. Because of these activities, she was repeatedly harassed by the authorities and had to live in hiding within Vietnam. She was formally arrested by the Vietnamese authorities in October 2020 and sentenced to nine years in prison in December 2021 on charges of "propaganda against the state" amid protests from international civil society organizations and foreign government agencies.
Life and career Early life and education Phạm Đoan Trang was born on May 27, 1978, in Hanoi in a family of three children. Her parents are high school chemistry teachers, and her brothers work in state institutions in Vietnam. According to Trang, feelings of sadness and grief for her parents were a major motivation for her to become an activist "with the desire to change the country." She finished high school at Hanoi–Amsterdam High School then graduated Foreign Trade University in 2000 majoring in international economics. She also graduated with an MBA from the School of Management, Asian Institute of Technology in Hanoi.
2000–2013: Working in state media In 2000, she started working at the newspaper VnExpress. In 2002, she started working at Vietnam Digital Television Network. In 2006, she created a blog called "Trang the Ridiculous"; originally intended for learning English, she later used the blog to publish stories that would not be widely available in mainstream media. Her blog has covered a wide range of topics such as the environment, corruption, geopolitics, democracy, and human rights. According to People in Need, her blog is visited by approximately 20,000 people a day. According to The Vietnamese, in March 2007, Trang stopped working at VTC and began work at the newspaper VietNamNet as the journalist and editor for the specialty page Vietnam Weekly, where she discusses territorial disputes between Vietnam and China at the South China Sea. In 2008, she and journalist Hoàng Nguyên wrote the book “Bóng” – Tự truyện của một người đồng tính () based on the story by Hoàng Văn Dũng – a member of a Vietnamese group about homosexuality. This is considered the first book on male homosexuality in Vietnam, and was a best seller at the time.
In late August 2009, during her time at VietNamNet, she was arrested for allegedly "violating national security". However, the editor-in-chief of VietNamNet denied her arrest was for her articles in the newspaper. Some of her articles on VietNamNet were also blocked. She was released on September 6 and stopped working for VietNamNet in September. According to Trang, she was detained because the police misunderstood that she was involved in printing T-shirts with messages protesting the Central Highlands Bauxite Project and affirming sovereignty over Hoang Sa and Truong Sa, but she believes this could also be related to her writings on "sensitive political topics."
In February 2010, she started working for the newspaper Pháp luật Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh, where she chose to limit posting her unpublished and pre-censored articles for the newspaper to her blog to maintain good working relations with her editors, which she had done during her time working at VietNamNet. In 2012, she became a journalism trainer for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR). According to IWPR, she had mentored "dozens of young writers in professional and international reporting" and training locations are regularly changed and kept secret. In the same year, she was one of the four candidates for the Outstanding Writer award, organized by her newspaper.
In December 2012, she was detained while reporting on an anti-China protest in Ho Chi Minh City. She was reportedly taken to a rehabilitation camp for commercial sex workers, where she was interrogated by a group of seven officials. After her release, she asked another activist to upload the recording she secretly made while in detention online. The recording was posted on January 13, 2013, and quickly became viral, according to Trang. In the same day, police officials raided her newspaper's office and threatened its editor-in-chief with "national security-related" charges. She fled the country to avoid reprisal and imprisonment from the authorities. Under pressure from the authorities, Pháp Luật Thành Phố Hồ Chí Minh fired her for "leaving work without prior notification". From 2000 to 2013, Trang said that she had worked in at least ten different state newspapers.
2013–2015: In exile In 2013, Trang secretly left Vietnam for the Philippines. In exile, she often wrote for Vietnam Right Now, an English website "dedicated to exposing human rights abuses and press freedom violations in Vietnam", and the blog Dân làm báo. She also worked part-time training journalists with the Vietnamese exile-run nongovernmental organization VOICE. In the same year, she co-founded the Network of Vietnamese Bloggers, and was one of the signatories of the network's Declaration 258, which calls on the government and the United Nations Human Rights Council to “review” provisions of Article 258, which had been criticized for its vagueness and arbitrariness. After Trang participated in handing over the declaration to several international organizations in Bangkok, Thailand, Radio France Internationale reported that the police showed up at her mother's residence under the witness of blogger Le Thien Nhan.
In January 2014, Trang and a few other activists started lobbying for human rights in Vietnam in the United States, Canada, and Switzerland ahead of the second Universal Periodic Review of the United Nations to assess the human rights situation in Vietnam since the first review in 2009. In the same year, she accepted an invitation to study public policy at the University of Southern California under the Feuchtwanger scholarship of Villa Aurora. In November 2014, she co-founded Luat Khoa, an independent magazine which aims to help Vietnamese learn about law, the constitution, and their rights. In 2017, the magazine incorporated as a non-profit in the United States under the name Legal Initiatives for Vietnam and releases the English version of the magazine called The Vietnamese. The non-profit also provides training and resources to journalists in Vietnam to produce their own work.
2015–2020: Continuing activism in Vietnam In 2015, Trang returned to Vietnam after finishing the 10-month course in the United States. Upon return, security forces detained Trang at Tan Son Nhat airport for 15 hours to ask her questions relating to "national security." It is unclear whether she was subjected to an exit ban, as according to Trịnh Hữu Long, co-founder of Luat Khoa, “her passport has not been confiscated, nor has she attempted to leave the country”. In the same year, she was one of the founders of Green Trees, an independent non-profit civil society organization working primarily on environmental protection. The organization was founded in response to plans to fell thousands of historic trees in Hanoi. In April 2015, Trang was assaulted during an environmental protest in Hanoi, causing her to walk with a limp.
In 2016, Trang documented and reported on the Central Vietnam marine life disaster. Her organization, Green Trees, drafted a report titled An Overview Of The Marine Life Disaster In Vietnam which addresses many issues surrounding the environmental disaster. The report was sent to Vietnamese National Assembly delegates on October 19, one day before the 2nd session of the 14th National Assembly convened. In the same year, she was invited to meet the president of the United States Barack Obama during his 2016 visit to Hanoi on May 24. Fearing the police would stop her if she traveled by plane, she decided to travel by car from Ho Chi Minh City, where she was receiving medical treatment, to Hanoi. However, she was detained for 24 hours at a hotel in Ninh Bình. Security officials reportedly denied the reason for her arrest was related to the meeting with President Obama, instead claiming that it was due to "writings on her Facebook page."
On November 16, 2017, Trang, along with activists Nguyễn Quang A, Bùi Thị Minh Hằng, and Nguyễn Chí Tuyến met with a European Union delegation to discuss the human rights situation in Vietnam. During the meeting, Trang is said to have provided the EU delegation with updated reports on the human rights situation in Vietnam, the marine life disaster in Central Vietnam, and the state of religious freedom in the country. After the meeting, Trang, Nguyễn Quang A and Bùi Thị Minh Hằng were detained by security forces. Trang was released evening of that day and was placed under "house arrest". Since 2017, she was forced to move between various cities to evade surveillance from the authorities. According to Amnesty International, she cannot settle at a location for more than a month.
In September 2017, Trang published Politics for the Common People (Vietnamese: Chính trị bình dân), a book that educates the Vietnamese public about politics. Described as a textbook, it discusses the concept of democracy, rule of law and separation of powers while promoting the idea of politics "from below". The book was highly praised by activists in Vietnam for its content, writing style, and its relevancy to the situation in Vietnam. The book was considered politically sensitive in Vietnam: it is reported that customs agents in Da Nang had confiscated copies of the book in February 2018. In the same month, Trang was detained and questioned for approximately 23 hours about the book and was kept under house arrest after release. She later went into hiding.
In August 2018, while attending the performance of "A Memory of Saigon" by singer and activist Nguyen Tin at the Casanova tea room in Ho Chi Minh City, Trang was detained by several "uninvited guests," a group of uniformed law enforcement officers, security personnel, and many people in plain clothes, who took her to a vehicle outside the venue as the audience was leaving, according to Human Rights Watch. According to an eyewitness account, Trang was the "most severely beaten audience". Trịnh Hữu Long, Trang's coworker, stated that she was taken to the police headquarters of Ward 7, District 3, where she was reportedly beaten during interrogation. After the interrogation, she was dropped off on a dark street to order a taxi. It is reported that after the police dropped her off, six men on three motorcycles approached and assaulted her using their helmet, leading to her hospitalization. According to Trang, those who visited her at the hospital was harassed by the police. According to The Vietnamese magazine, the concert was disrupted because the police may have suspected Trang to use the event to distribute her book, and materials deemed “anti-state”. The assault left her with a hand injury.