EU increases pressure on Vietnam’s human rights record

In a break with recent practice, the EU has issued a unilateral statement after its latest human rights dialogue with Vietnam, expressing ‘serious concerns’ regarding political prisoners and reports of transnational repression.

In the statement, which was issued on 17 July, the EU said that it had ‘expressed serious concerns regarding reports of transnational repression […] and raised a number of specific cases of political prisoners and human rights defenders’ during the dialogue, which took place in Brussels on 2 July.

During a consultation briefing with civil society organisations ahead of the dialogue, CSW specifically recommended that a unilateral statement be issued, arguing that this allows for greater robustness from the usual joint statements, and is already established practice in the case of the EU-China human rights dialogue. In the latter case, a list of individual cases of victims of human rights violations is also included. CSW called for this to be implemented in next years’ iteration of the Vietnam dialogue.

CSW also raised several individual cases with the EU ahead of the dialogue, including that of Montagnard Christians Siu Yu and Siu Dok, who were 被扣留 on charges of ‘undermining national unity’ on 1 June; Cao Dai adherents Trần Ngọc Sương, Nguyen Ngoc Dien, Nguyen Anh Phung and Tran Thanh Tuyet, who were arrested on accusations of sharing documentation of human rights abuses online; and Y Quynh Bdap, the founder of the Montagnard Stand for Justice (MSFJ) human rights organisation who was extradited to Vietnam from Thailand in November 2025 and is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence on spurious terrorism charges.

CSW’s Senior EU Advocate Jonathan de Leyser said: ‘CSW thanks the EU for taking this important step of issuing a unilateral statement on the human rights dialogue for the first time, which has facilitated a clearer and more accurate description of the details of Vietnam’s human rights violations. We also emphasise that General To Lam’s visit to Brussels anticipated later this year will provide the EU with a further opportunity to confront Vietnam on its human rights record, and to push for gestures ahead of the visit, including prisoner releases.’