Busts of late Vietnamese president Ho Chi Minh, in Hanoi, May 7, 2013.
(Bangkok) – The Vietnamese authorities since late June 2026 have arrested and detained five people for their roles in the publication of a controversial book about Ho Chi Minh, the founder of Vietnamese communism, Human Rights Watch said today.
Hanoi police charged all five—Nguyen Thanh Nam, Tran Viet Anh, Nguyen Thuy Hang, Dao Ba Doan, and Nguyen Van Yen—with carrying out anti-state propaganda under the notorious national security law, penal code article 117, and published their home addresses, violating their families’ privacy rights. If convicted, they could face up to 20 years in prison. The government should immediately and unconditionally drop the charges against the five and release them.
“The wave of arrests for a book about Ho Chi Minh sends a chilling message to all Vietnamese writers, journalists, and publishers that the proclaimed new era of ‘national rise’ just means more repression,” said Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The extreme reaction to the book suggests that even prominent establishment figures in business, publishing, and media are not safe from Communist Party hardliners.”
In Conversation with Thanh: A New Account of the Light was written by the detained tech executive Nguyen Thanh Nam and published by the Writers’ Association Publishing House in Hanoi in April. The book details Ho Chi Minh’s life and revolutionary career using conversational dialogues between a teacher and a student, and contemporary vernacular to make Ho Chi Minh and his thinking relevant to younger Vietnamese people.
The police newspaper said “the content of this book distorts history, as well as the lines and policies of the [Communist] Party and State; and insults President Ho Chi Minh, General Vo Nguyen Giap [Vietnam’s most celebrated modern military leader], and man
