Phạm Đoan Trang

Phạm Đoan Trang (born 1978 in Hanoi) is a Vietnamese author, blogger, journalist, publisher, and democracy activist. She received the 2017 Homo Homini Award from People In Need, who called her "one of the leading figures of the contemporary Vietnamese dissent". In 2024, she is in prison after being convicted of “conducting propaganda against the State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam”.

Work and recognition
Trang is the co-founder of the blog Luật Khoa tạp chí (English: "journal of law"). Her blog received around 20,000 daily visitors in 2018.

In 2013 she co-founded the Network of Vietnamese Bloggers with Nguyễn Ngọc Như Quỳnh.

In 2017, she published Chính trị bình dân (English: "politics for everyone"), her ninth book. After that, she sought refuge at an undisclosed location, where she also spoke to the media.

In 2018, Trang was awarded the Homo Homini Award by the Czech-based human rights organisation People In Need. She was lauded for using "plain words to fight the lack of freedom, corruption and the despotism of the communist regime".

She is also the co-founder of the publishing house Nhà xuất bản Tự Do (Liberal Publishing House) which in 2020 was awarded the International Publishers Association's IPA Prix Voltaire.

In 2022, Trang received the International Women of Courage Award from the United States Department of State. She was awarded the CPJ International Press Freedom Award in 2022.

In 2024, she received the 2024 PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write award, which is awarded annually to a jailed writer of conscience.

Arrests
According to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), Trang was detained under de facto house arrest in February 2018. Her treatment by the government has been condemned by RSF.

On October 7, 2020, she was arrested by Hanoi police and the Ministry of Public Security Officers in Ho Chi Minh City for "making, storing, spreading information, materials, items for the purpose of opposing the State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam". She was charged under Article 117 of the penal code for "propaganda against the State", and faced a maximum sentence of 20 years in jail if convicted. In late-2021, she was sentenced to 9 years imprisonment. Amnesty International called the conviction "outrageous," saying that her treatment by the Vietnamese government "encompassing harassment, surveillance, threats, torture and bogus prosecutions, is cruelly emblematic of the Vietnamese authorities’ repression of peaceful human rights activism across the country."