Pham Doan Trang is a renowned writer, publisher, and activist from Vietnam. The author of numerous books, Trang is also the co-founder of an award-winning publishing house, and a founding member of independent online magazine Luât Khoa. Trang has received multiple awards for her work, including the Reporters Without Borders 2019 Press Freedom Prize for Impact.
In October 2020, Trang was arrested on anti-state charges following a raid on her home in Ho Chi Minh City and was held incommunicado, without access to legal counsel or medical care, for over a year before finally being allowed to meet with a lawyer. Prior to her arrest, she had been in hiding for more than three years because of continued persecution from the Vietnamese authorities.
On 14 December 2021, the People’s Court of Hanoi sentenced Trang to nine years in prison. She has suffered several health issues while imprisoned, including worsening disability in her legs originally caused by a police assault in 2015, arthritis, and long COVID.
In a letter written in anticipation of her arrest, Trang encouraged supporters to take care of her ailing mother and send messages to ‘let her know that she and her daughter are not alone.’
In May 2024, Trang was awarded PEN America’s PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award.
PEN continues to call for her immediate and unconditional release.
For us books are not simply books. For us, books mean lives, books mean freedom.
Pham Doan Trang on winning the 2020 Prix VoltairePlease take a few moments to send a message of solidarity to Pham Doan Trang via the form below.
Background
Pham Doan Trang is an acclaimed writer and activist who has dedicated much of her life to advocating for human rights in Vietnam.
Trang has authored numerous books including Chính Trị Bình Dân (Politics for the Masses) and Cẩm nang nuôi tù (A Handbook for Families of Prisoners). She has also used her online presence, including through online magazines, her blog, and social media, to raise public awareness of human rights issues in Vietnam.
Trang’s work has been recognised through numerous international awards. In 2020, Liberal Publishing House (Nhà xuất bản Tự Do), which she co-founded the previous year, was awarded the International Publisher Association’s Prix Voltaire in recognition of their ‘inspirational’ work. Trang herself was awarded PEN America’s PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award in 2024, the Reporters Without Borders Prize for Impact in 2019, and the 2017 Homo Homini Award ‘for the courage she employs while tirelessly pursuing a democratic change within her country, despite harassment and persecution.’
Prior to her arrest, she had been assaulted, harassed, and arbitrarily detained on multiple occasions in retaliation for her writing and activism. This ongoing persecution was highlighted in a 2019 submission to the United Nations Universal Periodic Review by our colleagues at Vietnamese Abroad PEN Centre who detailed that she had been forced to go into hiding.
Trang has also spoken openly about this harassment, including in July 2020, just months before she was arrested, when she told Radio Free Asia that the mounting pressure on herself and her colleagues had led to her withdrawal from Liberal Publishing House.
Shortly after her arrest on 6 October 2020, a fellow activist published a letter Pham Doan Trang had written a year earlier, entitled ‘Just in case I am imprisoned’. The letter opens:
No one wants to sit in prison. But if prison is inevitable for freedom fighters, if prison can serve a pre-determined purpose, then we should happily accept it.
She goes on to detail the goals she has set for her imprisonment, asking friends to ‘advocate for new laws to reform how Vietnam conducts elections and forms its National Assembly’, encourage people to read her books, and to ‘take advantage’ of her imprisonment as an opportunity to negotiate with the Vietnamese authorities.
Trang also encourages supporters to take care of her ailing mother, from whom she had already been separated for more than three years as a result of being forced into hiding, urging us to ‘let her know that she and her daughter are not alone.’ Her family were allowed to visit her in 2022, two years after her arrest.
PEN continues to call for an end to the crackdown on bloggers, writers, and activists in Vietnam.
(Image credit: 88 Project)