Bangkok, March 13, 2026—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Vietnamese authorities to immediately and unconditionally release journalist Le Anh Hung and cease harassing independent commentators for expressing critical views online.
On March 9, police arrested Hung at a friend’s house in central Dak Lak province, according to news reports and information compiled by Project 88, an indepen...
The strongest version of this narrative frames Vietnam’s actions as a systematic erosion of press freedom, using legal and extralegal means to silence critics. The repeated detention of Le Anh Hung—despite his prior release—suggests a pattern of retaliatory justice, where dissent is criminalized under broad national security laws. The use of psychiatric hospitals as tools of coercion echoes historical abuses by authoritarian regimes, leveraging medical authority to discredit and punish opponents...