Opinion | Vietnam imprisons Hoang Thi Minh Hong, another climate activist - The Washington Post

Opinion | Vietnam imprisons Hoang Thi Minh Hong, another climate activist - The Washington Post

Vietnam has much at stake as the climate changes: 2,026 miles of coastline that will be vulnerable to rising seas; a heavy reliance on fossil fuels, especially coal; and an energy-hungry industry that is already experiencing power outages. Vietnam’s leaders ought to be listening to Hoang Thi Minh Hong, the country’s leading climate activist.

Instead, Ms. Hoang is being held incommunicado in Chi Hoa detention center in Ho Chi Minh City on phony charges of tax evasion, making her the fifth environmentalist to face such charges in the past two years. Vietnam is ruled by a Communist Party that maintains a monopoly on power, allowing very little latitude for independent activists and bloggers. It now holds 197 political prisoners.

Ms. Hoang was detained May 31, along with her husband and about 15 former and current staffers of the Center of Hands-on Action and Networking for Growth and Environment, or CHANGE, which she founded in 2013 to advocate for environmental protection and wildlife preservation. On June 1, she was formally charged with tax evasion, and the others were released.

Vietnamese law was previously vague on the question of whether local nongovernmental organizations had to pay corporate income tax, and it was common for them not to pay tax on funds received from abroad. As the 88 Project, a human rights group, recently demonstrated in a report, the government has sought to silence environmental activists by falsely accusing them of tax evasion, weaponizing the ambiguity in the law. The same tactic was used against Dang Dinh Bach, a lawyer and activist, one of the other four charged earlier. Nguy Thi Khanh, a pioneering climate activist also in that group of four, has been released. Ms. Hoang was aware of possible prosecution and last year tried several tactics to avert it — resigning from the organization, even trying to close it — all to no avail.
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Radio Free Asia. In the past six years, at least 60 bloggers and activists have been sentenced to between 4 and 15 years in prison under the law,

Human Rights Watch found. Read more of the Editorial Board’s

coverage on

autocracy and

Vietnam.

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Ms. Hoang served as an Obama Foundation scholar from 2018 to 2019, and her classmates have asked former president Barack Obama to intervene. She has long been prominent in environmental issues in Vietnam. CHANGE sought to educate the public about the impact of coal-burning on the environment and attempted to mobilize communities against the financing and construction of new coal-fired power plants, including a petition drive in 2017 against one plant in Long An province that drew 15,000 signatures. The drive faltered when police intervened. Ben Swanton of the 88 Project said with Ms. Hoang “behind bars, the whole leadership of the climate change movement has been jailed.”

In December, Vietnam entered into an ambitious agreement with the European Union and Group of Seven nations, as well as Denmark and Norway, called the Just Energy Transition Partnership, designed to help Vietnam meet its commitment to net-zero emissions by 2050, accelerate targets for reductions, scale up investment in renewable energy and become a “major low carbon manufacturing hub.” The E.U. and other outside countries agreed to mobilize at least $15.5 billion from public and private investors to help Vietnam meet its climate goals. The agreement stipulated that “for the transition to be just and equitable, regular consultation is required, including with media, NGOs and other stakeholders so as to ensure a broad social consensus.”

Jailing Ms. Hoang and the other environmentalists runs directly counter to this agreement. The United States and its partners should insist that Vietnam free the political prisoners before receiving such generous foreign assistance. Can Vietnam really be serious about fighting climate change if it imprisons the leading voices for action?

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Members of the Editorial Board and areas of focus: Opinion Editor David Shipley; Deputy Opinion Editor Karen Tumulty; Associate Opinion Editor Stephen Stromberg(national politics and policy); Lee Hockstader(European affairs, based in Paris); David E. Hoffman(global public health); James Hohmann(domestic policy and electoral politics, including the White House, Congress and governors); Charles Lane(foreign affairs, national security, international economics); Heather Long(economics); Associate Editor Ruth Marcus; Mili Mitra(public policy solutions and audience development); Keith B. Richburg(foreign affairs); and Molly Roberts(technology and society).