- Although no official announcements have been made about the case, human rights groups report that Vietnamese energy expert Ngô Thị Tố Nhiên has been sentenced to 3.5 years in prison.
- Nhiên is the latest in a wave of prominent environment experts and activists to be imprisoned in Vietnam. She was charged with “appropriating internal documents” relating to the country’s state-owned power company.
- Two power company employees working as consultants for Nhiên’s organization were also arrested and charged with appropriating documents, but even less is known about the outcome of their cases.
Vietnamese energy expert Ngô Thị Tố Nhiên was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison late last month, according to the International Federation for Human Rights.
Vietnam’s government has not made any recent public announcement regarding Nhiên’s case or the apparent sentencing.
Nhiên, executive director of the Vietnam Initiative for Energy Transition Social Enterprise (VIETSE), has been detained since September 2023, when she was arrested on charges of “appropriating internal documents” related to Vietnam Electricity, the country’s state-owned power monopoly.
“Her charge of ‘appropriation of information or documents’ relates to information on Vietnam’s electricity grids to support research aimed at increasing the share of renewables in the power mix,” Tanya Lee Roberts-Davis, convener of the Vietnam Climate Defenders Coalition, told Mongabay in an email. “It indicates that authorities in Vietnam are using criminal sanctions to restrict access to information on the energy transition.”
Nhiên had previously worked for the government and collaborated with international organizations including the United Nations and World Bank on Vietnam’s $15.5 billion Just Energy Transition Partnership.
The arrest was part of a broader crackdown on advocates and experts working in the energy and environment spaces. Dương Đức Việt and Lê Quốc Anh, two government officials working as consultants for VIETSE, were also arrested and charged alongside Nhiên, though details about sentences in their cases have not emerged publicly.
Other high-profile detentions include Hoàng Thị Hồng, an Obama Foundation scholar and founder of the since-closed NGO CHANGE, who was sentenced to three years in prison on controversial tax evasion charges.
Ngụy Thị Khanh, the Goldman Environmental Prize-winning clean energy advocate, was imprisoned in June 2022, also on tax evasion charges, and released early a year later. Her case in particular sent shock waves through Vietnam’s civil society.
“Nhiên’s arrest and sentencing is part of an alarming and ongoing crackdown on climate leaders and experts in Vietnam,” said Roberts-Davis, who also serves as senior energy campaign manager for International Rivers’ Southeast Asia Program. “[Her case] will have a wider chilling effect inhibiting civil society and other kinds of energy transition enterprises from making informed decisions and are likely to fundamentally hamper the broader energy transition process.”
Banner image: Coal being transported to the power plant in Ha Long Bay, Vietnam. Image by Dennis Jarvis via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).
‘The police are watching’: In Mekong countries, eco defenders face rising risks
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