Trần Huỳnh Duy Thức
In October 2020 he started a hunger strike to demand that his sixteen-year prison sentence be reduced in line with the Penal Code of 2015. When he was visited by family during this time, he passed a note to them saying, “You must continue our struggle for human rights and use my death as inspiration to push our struggle forward through the end of this year and into the next”.
Trần Huỳnh Duy Thức is an entrepreneur and blogger who, through his writing, raised the social, political and economic issues prevalent in Vietnam. He also founded the Chan Research Group to study the economy, politics, and society of Vietnam and other countries in the region.
Vietnamese authorities treat human rights defenders as “enemies of the State”. HRDs are subjected to intimidation, threats, interrogation, harassment, arrest and routine beatings. Many defenders are victims of arbitrary detention and criminalisation.
