Duong Van Thai, born in 1983, is a Vietnamese journalist involved in the fight against corruption within the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP). A member of the Vietnam Association of Independent Journalists, he has published numerous investigations revealing abuses of power and acts of corruption among VCP leaders, mainly on Facebook. Because of his work, he became a target of repression, notably by the party’s former general secretary, Nguyen Phú Trong. In 2019, faced with increasing threats, Duong Van Thai fled to Thailand. In 2020, he was granted refugee status, enabling him to continue his journalistic activity while remaining concerned about his safety. However, on April 13, 2023, he was kidnapped near his home in Thailand. The following day, it was announced that he had been arrested in Vietnam for “illegal entry”, allegedly from Laos. For two weeks, no information on his fate was released, in violation of Vietnamese law. The state media called him a propagandist, accusing him of spreading distorted information. On October 30, 2024, more than a year after his abduction, he was sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment in a closed trial, a decision widely criticized by NGOs and international bodies.

The Duong Van Thai situation illustrates a worrying trend of kidnappings orchestrated by the Vietnamese government abroad, often with the complicity of the Thai authorities.