Shooting of the climate change messenger in Vietnam

As Vietnam suffers the consequences of Typhoon Yagi, including prolonged power outages, severe damage to roads and bridges, and the forced evacuation of over 100,000 people, the reality of climate change is becoming increasingly clear.

Rising sea levels threaten to submerge parts of the Mekong Delta, Vietnam’s rice bowl. Saltwater intrusion is already destroying farmland, while increasingly violent storms and floods wreak havoc on communities.

Vietnam is not alone – last month, countries in the lower Mekong Basin experienced devastating and record-breaking floods. These escalating climate impacts underscore the urgent need for bold climate action and resilience planning across the region.

But at this critical juncture, one of Vietnam’s most prominent climate defenders, Dang Dinh Bach, has been on hunger strike for two weeks – not on the front lines of the climate fight, but behind prison bars.

Bach’s protest highlights the Vietnamese government’s ongoing crackdown on civil society and climate and environmental activists – an approach that undermines both international climate goals and basic human rights.

During his three years behind bars, Bach and his family made nearly 30 formal complaints about mistreatment and inhumane conditions at the prison, but they were ignored by prison authorities.

Bach now finds himself forced to take this drastic step, which seriously endangers his health, in order to draw attention to the plight of the elderly and frail prisoners who suffer with him under harsh prison conditions.

Bach’s demands are simple and reasonable: abolish solitary confinement, allow prisoners time outside for exercise and social contact, ensure electrical safety, allow the exchange of books and adequate lighting for reading, and ensure that contact and communication with family is not arbitrarily restricted become.

Most urgently, Bach calls for appropriate medical treatment for prisoners with latent tuberculosis, a critical public health measure in the high-risk prison environment. These fundamental improvements would bring Vietnamese prisons closer to compliance with the Minimum Standard Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners and the United Nations (UN) Convention Against Torture.

Last week, the 57th session of the UN Human Rights Council concluded, including the Universal Periodic Review for Vietnam – a peer review of the country’s human rights record that takes place every 4.5 years.

During the interactive dialogue, the International Federation for Human Rights issued a statement highlighting Bach’s case and the inhumane treatment he endured in prison. The statement highlighted the ongoing and systematic reprisals and harassment against human rights defenders and the repression of civil society in Vietnam, including environmental and climate defenders.

In its response to the review process, the Vietnamese government accepted recommendations to improve the country’s notorious prison system, including ensuring conditions in line with UN Standard Minimum Rules. Bach’s hunger strike underscores the urgency of putting these commitments into action.

However, the government rejected all recommendations calling for an end to the targeting and harassment of human rights defenders and the repression of civil society, which contradicted its stated commitment to human rights and climate justice.

As founder and director of the Law and Policy of Sustainable Development Research Center, Bach has dedicated his career to strengthening communities through legal advocacy.

He played a crucial role in overhauling Vietnam’s environmental protection laws, restricting plastic waste and enforcing a move away from coal-fired power generation. Bach trained over 100 young lawyers, building a new generation of environmentalists in Vietnam.

It was precisely this influential work that made Bach a target. In the months before his arrest, Bach led a 17-day campaign to reduce Vietnam’s dependence on coal.

Shortly thereafter, he was arrested on trumped-up charges of tax evasion – charges that the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has deemed a “violation of international law based on discrimination based on political or other opinions in connection with his environmental work.” ”

Bach’s case is not an isolated one. Since 2021, six of Vietnam’s most prominent climate leaders have been jailed on similarly dubious charges. The silencing of critical voices like Bach’s fundamentally undermines the possibility of achieving a decisive transition to clean energy in Vietnam – and around the world.

Without strong civil society involvement, there is a real risk that international climate agreements will fail to deliver meaningful change and may even worsen existing inequalities or environmental damage.

Bach’s hunger strike is a stark and timely reminder of the human and climate costs of state repression. Next month, the international community will gather in Azerbaijan for the 29th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP29).

Like Vietnam, Azerbaijan is imprisoning leading climate advocates and environmentalists while intensifying its crackdown on independent civil society.

Allowing these injustices to go unchallenged in Vietnam, Azerbaijan and around the world will eliminate crucial opportunities to challenge the status quo, undermining global efforts to combat climate change and the credibility of multilateral forums.

The international community must use all available diplomatic and economic levers to secure Bach’s immediate and unconditional release – and the release of unjustly imprisoned climate advocates and environmentalists worldwide – and to ensure that climate commitments are based on respect for human rights.

As Bach wrote shortly before his arrest: “Only if [we] As we enter an era of genuine national development based on the rule of law and respect for human rights, can we hope to address the climate crisis?”

Andrea Giorgetta is Asia Desk Director at the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and Maureen Harris is a senior advisor at International Rivers and coordinator of the Vietnam Climate Defenders Coalition