Nguy Thi Khanh, Vietnam’s first recipient of the prestigious Goldman environmental prize, has been arrested on tax evasion charges.
The founder of the Green Innovation and Development Centre was detained last month, but her detention was confirmed by state media on Wednesday.
Khanh, who won the Goldman prize in 2018, has campaigned for Vietnam to adopt greener energy strategies, putting her at odds with the country’s ambitions to boost its coal production.
Last month, her office and home were searched and documents and devices were confiscated. It is understood she has been allowed to speak with her lawyer, who was not immediately available for comment.
Khanh is the latest activist to be detained by the authorities on tax-related charges.
Last month, Dang Dinh Bach, who heads the Law and Policy of Sustainable Development Research Center, was sentenced to five years in prison for tax evasion, while the journalist Mai Phan Loi, leader of the Center for Media in Educating Community, received a four-year prison term for tax fraud.
Both are board members of the VNGO-EVFTA network, a group of seven community organisations involved in monitoring how the implementation of the EU-Vietnam free trade agreement, which came into force in August 2020, impacts workers’ rights, land rights and environmental strategies.
The organisations said the Vietnamese authorities had begun clamping down on their activities last year after they launched a campaign to promote clean energy.
Phil Robertson, deputy director for Human Rights Watch’s Asia division, said: “Now that Hanoi has finished imprisoning all the political dissidents while the world was distracted by Covid-19, the state’s repressive apparatus is turning on the environmental and social NGOs.
“Let’s hope the world fights harder for civil society leaders than they did for the dissidents, many of whom are now serving long prison terms for simply speaking out against rights abuses and corruption.”
