Independent citizen journalist, Do Cong Duong, has died in detention on August 2 while serving an eight-year sentence for reporting on land seizures in Vietnam’s Bac Ninh province. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) condemns Duong’s death in custody and urges the Vietnamese authorities to end their assault on human rights and press freedom.
David Brown is a freelance writer on contemporary Vietnam, covering its political and economic life, international relations, media culture and environmental challenges. His commentary frequently appears in Asia Sentinel, East Asia Forum and other regional publications, and he has written for Foreign Affairs, Yale Global and the Brookings Institution. His reportage also appears in translation in Vietnam's leading independent journal of news and opinion, Tieng Dan.
Asia Sentinel
False hope of help from Trump
Jan 21
By: David Brown
By almost any measure, 2020 was a calamitous year for Vietnam s democracy movement. Already reduced by the Hanoi regime s increasingly efficient repression, now it was transfixed by Donald Trump s battle for a second term. Trump, it was said, would defend Vietnam against China. Oddly but somehow understandably, a majority of those who doubt the nation s single-party dictatorship came to view the American president as their hope for a brighter future.
Disillusionment with Vietnam s current regime, even despair, is understandable. Controls on what may be said don t sit all that well on a nation that s been opening to the global economy and sending its brightest abroad to study for a quarter century. Vietnam s democracy movement is, or at least it was, a loosely-organized network of citizens who have not hesitated to call out the regime. The movement was empowered by the Internet, which for roughly a decade enable