S10, Ep4: In Vietnam, Tax Evasion Charges Help Lock Up Climate Activists

[00:00:00] Goldman archival: Hanoi is one of the most rapidly developing cities in Asia, and also has some of the poorest air quality on the continent. Hong Hui Thi was already keenly aware of the city's pollution problem, but a study from Harvard University brought the issue into sharper focus for her.

[00:00:28] Amy Westervelt: This is a video about Vietnamese activist Hong Hui Thi in 2018, when she won the Goldman prize, a prestigious environmental award given to a handful of extraordinarily impactful environmental activists every year. Thi received the award for her work convincing the government not to include a massive coal buildout in its energy blueprint for Hanoi.

Four years later, the Vietnamese government had arrested and imprisoned her... for tax evasion charges that legal observers have deemed false and politically motivated. Four other prominent environmental activists have also been arrested and jailed for tax evasion in Vietnam since 2021. Here's Betsy Apple, Executive Director of the Global Climate Legal Defense Network, to explain.

[00:01:29] Betsy Apple: You have five people who were advocating for renewable energy policy in Vietnam, a just transition to sustainable energy sources. And four people initially, and then a fifth were arrested for tax evasion and are in jail and have been criminally convicted for tax evasion, which seems like it has nothing to do with the climate, but in fact, it's a way that the Vietnamese government has been able to weaponize the law against people whose activities they don't like in the context of the climate.

[00:02:11] Amy Westervelt: That fifth person she mentioned was another internationally renowned environmental activist.

[00:02:44] UN Press Conference: Hong Thi Minh Huong in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam

[00:02:48] Amy Westervelt: This is a press conference that the UN held about the arrest.

[00:02:59] UN Press Conference: According to credible sources, Hung and several colleagues were detained for questioning by the Police Division for Economic Crimes on Wednesday.

While others were subsequently released and asked to return to the police station for further questioning. She was presented with a temporary detention order with charges of alleged tax evasion.

[00:03:24] Ben Swanton: Huong is an Obama Foundation scholar who, along with her colleagues, successfully advocated for the government to commit to a policy of net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

[00:03:38] Amy Westervelt: Ben Swanton, co director of the non profit... Ben Swanton, co director of the non profit 88 Project, put out a report last month on this trend of using tax evasion laws to lock up climate activists in Vietnam.

[00:04:01] Ben Swanton: And Hong is probably the most activist of the group. She took a particularly activist approach to her work that involved educating the public and mobilizing communities to stop the construction and financing of new coal fired power plants. So, in 2017, for example, her organization changed. spearheaded a petition to stop the construction of a coal fired power plant in Vietnam's Long An province, which gained about 15, 000 signatures and was widely shared on social media.

Work on the petition, however, had to stop after change came under fire from the police. At the time, Hong said that the signatures were planned to be sent to South Korean owners and investors of the planned power plant. Um, coal fired power plant, and also to Vietnamese government leaders, but due to, uh, police harassment, she and her organizations decided not to send the petition.

[00:05:22] Amy Westervelt: Following the arrest of four other climate activists between 2021 and 2022, Huong had closed her environmental organization.

[00:05:36] UN Press Conference: She feared she would also be prosecuted. The chilling effect on such cases brought under tax laws is palpable among civil society in Vietnam and risks holding back debate on issues of importance to society as a whole.

[ music]

[00:05:56] Amy Westervelt: President Biden is in Vietnam right now as part of a general move that the U. S. government is making to upgrade its diplomatic and trade relationship with the country. Human rights advocates are encouraging the president to address the government's move to lock up climate activists, and perhaps even make certain aspects of the relationship between the two countries Contingent on the Vietnamese government committing to protecting civil society.

Biden's visit is his first as president. When former president Obama visited at the end of his presidency, he met with a handful of activists in Vietnam.

[00:06:44] Obama archival: I just had a wonderful conversation with, uh, some. We have some preeminent civil society activists here in Vietnam and I just want to thank them for taking the time to meet with me and discussing with me some of the important work that they're doing and the progress that's being made here in Vietnam.

[00:07:07] Amy Westervelt: Two of those activists he mentioned there are now in prison on trumped up tax evasion charges. That's our story today after the break. Welcome back to Drilled, the real free speech threat. I'm Amy Westervelt.

[midroll]

Ben Swanton says his report was meant to document something a lot of people have been speculating about in Vietnam.

[00:07:41] Ben Swanton: an attempt to, you know, to really do a deep dive investigation into what a lot of people perceive to be a series of politically motivated prosecutions. But, you know, there was little evidence. To, to substantiate that, um, and at the same time to also, you know, explore some of the nuances of the political context of Vietnam and what's been going on since when Fu Chou and his hardline faction of the Communist Party came into power in 2016.

[00:08:23] Amy in Interview: the Vietnam example is very interesting for U.S. people, I think because the sort of conservative people in the US are very much like, oh these protesters are communists and whatnot. And then you look at what's happening in Vietnam and you have a communist government locking people up for protest, but saying and doing a lot of the same things that people in quote unquote democratic countries are doing too, so it's...

[00:08:54] Ben Swanton: it's an interesting dynamic, right? I guess, you know, one thing to note is that Vietnam is, is communist in name only. There's very little that's socialist about the contemporary Vietnamese state. Communities have almost no control over policy making and There's no, you know, democratic or popular control of, of enterprises and, and firms.

And I think, you know, one important place to start is that Vietnam is a one party state.

people can't vote their government out of power. And so since the end of The Vietnam War and subsequent reunification the Communist Party has been the only game in town. And, and the party doesn't accept any political opposition. People who have tried to establish independent political parties have, have been imprisoned and persecuted.

And those organizations that they've established have been immediately smashed.

So, there are very few avenues available to Vietnamese people who want to participate in politics.

[00:10:34] Amy in Interview: could I have you talk a little bit about the Vietnam four, or I understand it's now five people

[00:10:41] Ben Swanton: So the five are Nguyễn back home zoo. Dunding back. And quantity Ming Hong who was arrested on June the 1st of 2023. So she's the most recent person to be arrested. And they they were all charged with tax evasion.

[00:11:08] Amy in Interview: was there any, anything in particular that spurred this sudden push to criminalize them?

[00:11:18] Ben Swanton: Yeah, so what I argue in the report is that the criminalization of climate activism in Vietnam actually reflects a broader issue of criminalization of policy activism and civil society movements. And this is something that has intensified since Wen Fu Chong and his hardline faction of the Communist Party came to power in 2016.

One of the first things that he did was to cement hostility to the very concept of civil society in official party policy. And... I think we can understand these arrests as a backlash to not only the organizing that these folks did, but the fact that they were actually successful and pushed the government to commit to a policy of net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

And therefore challenge the Communist Party's monopoly. on policymaking. And the way they did this was by organizing non profits and non governmental organizations into powerful advocacy coalitions that worked within the system, within the law, and within the rules, and leveraged state institutions like the state run media.

And sympathetic government officials to advocate for progressive policy change. And immediately after they did that, they were rounded up, and detained, and arrested, and charged.

[00:13:32] Amy in Interview: I thought it was interesting how all five of these people were doing very different types of, of activism, that there's someone who's involved in media, there's a lawyer, activists. I'm curious if that's something that's happening across the board with civil society in general, where it's an effort to go after not just people who might be showing up in the street with a protest sign, but also doing these professional services type jobs.

[00:14:07] Ben Swanton: Yeah, I think so. And, and that's why I said I think that the criminalization of climate activism in Vietnam is the tip of the iceberg of a broader crackdown on activism, dissent, and civil society. In general. And so, we can understand this as an attempt by the Communist Party to prevent anyone challenging its monopoly on policy making by, for example, organizing registered non profits into advocacy coalitions to advocate for more progressive climate policies and also by cracking down on efforts to create an autonomous civil society movement. These individuals were not just climate activists. They were also press freedom activists. They were civil society activists. They were trying to create independent institutions.

And that was a bridge too far for the Communist Party.

[00:15:35] Amy in Interview: I thought it was interesting too that you mentioned, I think towards the end of the report, this idea that the countries that have signed on to I'm gonna forget the name of it

Yeah, like I thought that was super interesting and also applicable in a lot of different situations as we head into COP this idea that It's not just a matter of countries taking climate action. It's also a matter of preserving civil society. I was wondering if you could talk about that in a little bit more detail.

[00:16:09] Ben Swanton: So in December, 2022, the just energy transition partnership of which the United States is a member, agreed to provide 15 billion in funding to help Vietnam cut its reliance on fossil fuels. This is the third such agreement that's been made between the G7 and developing countries. Jet P stands for Just Energy Transition Partnership, and it's supposed to be just in that it is based on a recognition of the historical responsibility of industrialized Western nations in creating the problem of climate change and its disproportionate impact on developing countries like Vietnam.

Although another aspect of justice is that the people who will be affected by the transition to renewable energy should have a say in deciding how the process is designed and implemented. And recognizing this, the declaration that established the JETP for Vietnam states that for the transition to be just and equitable, regular consultation is required with media, non governmental organizations and other stakeholders. But the Vietnamese government's imprisonment of the country's leading climate activists makes a mockery of this requirement. Because obviously there can't be a just transition while the leaders of the climate change movement remain behind bars.

And so, what organizations like mine, Project 88, have been advocating for is for donor countries to jet P, that is the G7, including the United States and also Denmark and Norway, to start attaching some conditionality to this aid, and at the very least, secure the release of these climate activists from prison in Vietnam before they go ahead with funding the country's energy transition. Although unfortunately, up until now, there's been very little political will to make any demands of the Vietnamese government, let alone to, to actually condition the aid on the release of the activists. And so I think what we're seeing here is climate change diplomacy taking precedence over human rights. And climate change diplomats like Special Presidential Envoy John Kerry being more concerned about preserving diplomatic accomplishments like JETP than securing the release of the activists.

[00:19:28] Amy in Interview: I have to say, I've been surprised that I don't know that I've heard any high level climate negotiator from a global north country, at least recently, talking about the need to even address this issue at COP. Are you seeing that? Is there any appetite for having that discussion or including human rights, in the COP discussions?

[00:19:51] Ben Swanton: I haven't either. And I can only imagine that they're not talking about it because it's not a priority for them. When they do talk about human rights, it's often in more general terms. Or in terms of the right to a clean environment. Like clean water and clean air, but not civil society. So this is what I talk about as being an example of human rights defenders being left out.

[00:20:24] Amy in Interview: I don't think that Vietnam is unique in terms of repression of climate activists being very much tied to repression of civil society and dissent in general. You know, I think it kind of goes hand in hand with a breakdown of civil society across the board, so it's You know, I don't know how people think they're going to get climate action without civil society.

[00:20:48] Ben Swanton: Well, the theory of change that the G7 seems to be putting forward is that it's going to happen as a result of diplomacy and cooperation between states. And civil society has a small role to play in this. If you look at the text of the JETP agreement, for example, civil society is not even mentioned.

It only mentions the media and non governmental organizations. And, It just says that these institutions need to be consulted. So civil society isn't viewed as playing a major role in the transition to renewable energy sources. And I think that that's just based on an inaccurate understanding of how progressive change comes about.

I suspect that it's easier to pretend that, you know, through diplomatic initiatives and a very state centric process we're going to be able to solve the threat of climate change.

So, something that my organization... has observed is that the year 2023 marks the 10th anniversary of the Vietnam United States comprehensive partnership. But far from promoting greater respect for human rights, the achievement of close ties between the US and Vietnam has actually coincided with a significant increase in human rights abuses by the Vietnamese government against its own citizens.

And there are several indicators of this. One is the fact that Vietnam kills more of its own citizens than almost any other country in the world. Between 2013 and 2016, which is the most recent time period for which data is available, the government went on a killing spree, executing 429 people. And this puts Vietnam behind only China and Iran in its use of the death penalty.

And this happened at a time when globally, use of the death penalty is at an all time low. So at the end of 2022, 112 countries had abolished the death penalty for all crimes. But instead of ceasing this barbaric practice, Vietnam continues to execute people at an alarming rate and government plans show that the country intends to expand its capacity to administer executions in virtual international isolation.

And, you know, to be sure, Vietnam was never a beacon of human rights, but the situation has worsened since 2016, when Nguyen Phu Trong seized power. And under Trong's reign, the Ministry of Public Security, which is the police force, has overseen a brutal crackdown on activism, dissent, and civil society. And they've imprisoned scores of dissenters and human rights activists for violating general and vague provisions in the country's penal code, which criminalizes all sorts of behavior, such as conducting propaganda against the state and abusing democratic freedoms.

Vietnam now has close to 200 political prisoners. But it's important to note that this, this number masks how many people have been persecuted into silence or forced into exile. And the results of this crackdown have meant the forced closure of the only independent publishing houses.

The only independent journalist association and the only independent anti corruption organization that we're operating in the country.

[00:25:37] Amy Westervelt: All that would seem like pretty important stuff for Biden to bring up as he is upgrading the United States relationship with Vietnam. But then he might have to say something about the climate activists being jailed and falsely accused in his own country, too. Don't worry, we're going to get into that story soon. That's it for this week. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.

[00:00:00] Goldman archival: Hanoi is one of the most rapidly developing cities in Asia, and also has some of the poorest air quality on the continent. Hong Hui Thi was already keenly aware of the city's pollution problem, but a study from Harvard University brought the issue into sharper focus for her.

[00:00:28] Amy Westervelt: This is a video about Vietnamese activist Hong Hui Thi in 2018, when she won the Goldman prize, a prestigious environmental award given to a handful of extraordinarily impactful environmental activists every year. Thi received the award for her work convincing the government not to include a massive coal buildout in its energy blueprint for Hanoi.

Four years later, the Vietnamese government had arrested and imprisoned her... for tax evasion charges that legal observers have deemed false and politically motivated. Four other prominent environmental activists have also been arrested and jailed for tax evasion in Vietnam since 2021. Here's Betsy Apple, Executive Director of the Global Climate Legal Defense Network, to explain.

[00:01:29] Betsy: You have five people who were advocating for renewable energy policy in Vietnam, a just transition to sustainable energy sources. And four people initially, and then a fifth were arrested for tax evasion and are in jail and have been criminally convicted for tax evasion, which seems like it has nothing to do with the climate, but in fact, it's a way that the Vietnamese government has been able to weaponize the law against people whose activities they don't like in the context of the climate.

[00:02:11] Amy Westervelt: That fifth person she mentioned was another internationally renowned environmental activist.

[00:02:44] UN Press Conference: Hong Thi Minh Huong in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam

[00:02:48] Amy Westervelt: This is a press conference that the UN held about the arrest.

[00:02:59] UN Press Conference: According to credible sources, Hung and several colleagues were detained for questioning by the Police Division for Economic Crimes on Wednesday.

While others were subsequently released and asked to return to the police station for further questioning. She was presented with a temporary detention order with charges of alleged tax evasion.

[00:03:24] Ben Swanton: Huong is an Obama Foundation scholar who, along with her colleagues, successfully advocated for the government to commit to a policy of net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

[00:03:38] Amy Westervelt: Ben Swanton, co director of the non profit... Ben Swanton, co director of the non profit 88 Project, put out a report last month on this trend of using tax evasion laws to lock up climate activists in Vietnam.

[00:04:01] Ben Swanton: And Hong is probably the most activist of the group. She took a particularly activist approach to her work that involved educating the public and mobilizing communities to stop the construction and financing of new coal fired power plants. So, in 2017, for example, her organization changed. spearheaded a petition to stop the construction of a coal fired power plant in Vietnam's Long An province, which gained about 15, 000 signatures and was widely shared on social media.

Work on the petition, however, had to stop after change came under fire from the police. At the time, Hong said that the signatures were planned to be sent to South Korean owners and investors of the planned power plant. Um, coal fired power plant, and also to Vietnamese government leaders, but due to, uh, police harassment, she and her organizations decided not to send the petition.

[00:05:22] Amy Westervelt: Following the arrest of four other climate activists between 2021 and 2022, Huong had closed her environmental organization.

[00:05:36] UN Press Conference: She feared she would also be prosecuted. The chilling effect on such cases brought under tax laws is palpable among civil society in Vietnam and risks holding back debate on issues of importance to society as a whole.

[ music]

[00:05:56] Amy Westervelt: President Biden is in Vietnam right now as part of a general move that the U. S. government is making to upgrade its diplomatic and trade relationship with the country. Human rights advocates are encouraging the president to address the government's move to lock up climate activists, and perhaps even make certain aspects of the relationship between the two countries Contingent on the Vietnamese government committing to protecting civil society.

Biden's visit is his first as president. When former president Obama visited at the end of his presidency, he met with a handful of activists in Vietnam.

[00:06:44] Obama archival: I just had a wonderful conversation with, uh, some. We have some preeminent civil society activists here in Vietnam and I just want to thank them for taking the time to meet with me and discussing with me some of the important work that they're doing and the progress that's being made here in Vietnam.

[00:07:07] Amy Westervelt: Two of those activists he mentioned there are now in prison on trumped up tax evasion charges. That's our story today after the break. Welcome back to Drilled, the real free speech threat. I'm Amy Westervelt.

[midroll]

Ben Swanton says his report was meant to document something a lot of people have been speculating about in Vietnam.

[00:07:41] Ben Swanton: an attempt to, you know, to really do a deep dive investigation into what a lot of people perceive to be a series of politically motivated prosecutions. But, you know, there was little evidence. To, to substantiate that, um, and at the same time to also, you know, explore some of the nuances of the political context of Vietnam and what's been going on since when Fu Chou and his hardline faction of the Communist Party came into power in 2016.

[00:08:23] Amy in Interview: the Vietnam example is very interesting for U.S. people, I think because the sort of conservative people in the US are very much like, oh these protesters are communists and whatnot. And then you look at what's happening in Vietnam and you have a communist government locking people up for protest, but saying and doing a lot of the same things that people in quote unquote democratic countries are doing too, so it's...

[00:08:54] Ben Swanton: it's an interesting dynamic, right? I guess, you know, one thing to note is that Vietnam is, is communist in name only. There's very little that's socialist about the contemporary Vietnamese state. Communities have almost no control over policy making and There's no, you know, democratic or popular control of, of enterprises and, and firms.

And I think, you know, one important place to start is that Vietnam is a one party state.

people can't vote their government out of power. And so since the end of The Vietnam War and subsequent reunification the Communist Party has been the only game in town. And, and the party doesn't accept any political opposition. People who have tried to establish independent political parties have, have been imprisoned and persecuted.

And those organizations that they've established have been immediately smashed.

So, there are very few avenues available to Vietnamese people who want to participate in politics.

[00:10:34] Amy in Interview: could I have you talk a little bit about the Vietnam four, or I understand it's now five people

[00:10:41] Ben Swanton: So the five are Nguyễn back home zoo. Dunding back. And quantity Ming Hong who was arrested on June the 1st of 2023. So she's the most recent person to be arrested. And they they were all charged with tax evasion.

[00:11:08] Amy in Interview: was there any, anything in particular that spurred this sudden push to criminalize them?

[00:11:18] Ben Swanton: Yeah, so what I argue in the report is that the criminalization of climate activism in Vietnam actually reflects a broader issue of criminalization of policy activism and civil society movements. And this is something that has intensified since Wen Fu Chong and his hardline faction of the Communist Party came to power in 2016.

One of the first things that he did was to cement hostility to the very concept of civil society in official party policy. And... I think we can understand these arrests as a backlash to not only the organizing that these folks did, but the fact that they were actually successful and pushed the government to commit to a policy of net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

And therefore challenge the Communist Party's monopoly. on policymaking. And the way they did this was by organizing non profits and non governmental organizations into powerful advocacy coalitions that worked within the system, within the law, and within the rules, and leveraged state institutions like the state run media.

And sympathetic government officials to advocate for progressive policy change. And immediately after they did that, they were rounded up, and detained, and arrested, and charged.

[00:13:32] Amy in Interview: I thought it was interesting how all five of these people were doing very different types of, of activism, that there's someone who's involved in media, there's a lawyer, activists. I'm curious if that's something that's happening across the board with civil society in general, where it's an effort to go after not just people who might be showing up in the street with a protest sign, but also doing these professional services type jobs.

[00:14:07] Ben Swanton: Yeah, I think so. And, and that's why I said I think that the criminalization of climate activism in Vietnam is the tip of the iceberg of a broader crackdown on activism, dissent, and civil society. In general. And so, we can understand this as an attempt by the Communist Party to prevent anyone challenging its monopoly on policy making by, for example, organizing registered non profits into advocacy coalitions to advocate for more progressive climate policies and also by cracking down on efforts to create an autonomous civil society movement. These individuals were not just climate activists. They were also press freedom activists. They were civil society activists. They were trying to create independent institutions.

And that was a bridge too far for the Communist Party.

[00:15:35] Amy in Interview: I thought it was interesting too that you mentioned, I think towards the end of the report, this idea that the countries that have signed on to I'm gonna forget the name of it

Yeah, like I thought that was super interesting and also applicable in a lot of different situations as we head into COP this idea that It's not just a matter of countries taking climate action. It's also a matter of preserving civil society. I was wondering if you could talk about that in a little bit more detail.

[00:16:09] Ben Swanton: So in December, 2022, the just energy transition partnership of which the United States is a member, agreed to provide 15 billion in funding to help Vietnam cut its reliance on fossil fuels. This is the third such agreement that's been made between the G7 and developing countries. Jet P stands for Just Energy Transition Partnership, and it's supposed to be just in that it is based on a recognition of the historical responsibility of industrialized Western nations in creating the problem of climate change and its disproportionate impact on developing countries like Vietnam.

Although another aspect of justice is that the people who will be affected by the transition to renewable energy should have a say in deciding how the process is designed and implemented. And recognizing this, the declaration that established the JETP for Vietnam states that for the transition to be just and equitable, regular consultation is required with media, non governmental organizations and other stakeholders. But the Vietnamese government's imprisonment of the country's leading climate activists makes a mockery of this requirement. Because obviously there can't be a just transition while the leaders of the climate change movement remain behind bars.