Hoàng Thị Minh Hồng is àngThịMinhHồa Vietnamese environmental human rights defender who founded and directed an environmental rights organization. She is in prison convicted of tax evasion, by a trial which has been criticized by the United Nations and others.
Activities
Hồng worked for the World Wildlife Fund. Later she founded "CHANGE VN", which worked on environmental issues in Vietnam from 2013 to 2022. It was a national non-profit organization with the mission of raising awareness and inspiring the community to protect nature and the environment, wildlife, combat climate change and promote sustainable development. Hồng's decision in 2022 to close down the organization was partly because several environmental activists were arrested that year and in 2021. In 2023 she started an environmental consultancy called CHOICE.
In 2019, Forbes magazine voted Hồng as one of the 50 most influential women in Vietnam. In 1997 she was the first Vietnamese person to set foot on Antarctica, and became a UNESCO Young Envoy. In 2018-19 she was the first Vietnamese to win an Obama Foundation scholarship at Columbia University. In 2019, she was one of five recipients of the Inspirational Ambassador award at the 2019 WeChoice Awards; and won the title Green Warrior of the Year at the Elle Style Awards. In 2015, she was included in the list of Climate Heroes by climateheroes.org on the occasion of the United Nations Conference on Climate Change COP21. In 2018 former US President Barack Obama wrote that Hồng was one of the young people who inspired him during the year.
Conviction for tax evasion
In June 2023 Hồng was detained on charges of tax evasion. Hồng was the 5th environmental activist arrested on this charge, after Phan Mai Loi, Dang Dinh Bach, Nguy Thi Khanh and Bach Hung Duong. Previously, when four other environmental activists were arrested, in October 2022, Hồng announced the dissolution of the Change organization after 10 years of operation.
Ben Swanton, co-director of Project 88 working for human rights in Vietnam, said that immediately after the incident of four environmental activists being arrested for tax evasion in 2021–2022, Hồng asked for an official direction from the City Tax Department on the tax status of the CHANGE organization. The tax department's response, according to Swanton, "is evidence of CHANGE's tax-exempt status. Therefore, it is completely illegal for the police to now charge Hồng with tax evasion."
On 28 September 2023 Hồng was tried at Ho Chi Minh City’s Peoples Court, found guilty of tax evasion, and fined 100 million dong and sentenced to 3 years in prison.
Reactions
More than one foreign government said that the Just Energy Transition Partnership (international funding for phasing out coal power in Vietnam) needs the participation of civil society activists.
United Nations and other countries
The United Nations human rights agency noted that Hồng was the 5th environmental activist arrested for tax evasion in Vietnam in 2 years. The United Nations believes that the arrests are part of a broader trend of the Vietnamese government suppressing freedom of expression. In July 2023 the United Nations special rapporteur on Human Rights and UN experts wrote to the government - however after 60 days the government had not replied and the rapporteur published the letter.
The United States also believes that the above arrests are part of a broader trend of the Vietnamese government suppressing freedom of expression. US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement on June 2, “The United States is concerned about the detention of leadership and staff of the CHANGE organization, including the ongoing detention of its founder Hoàng Thị Minh Hồng,” In June 2023, the British Foreign Ministry issued a statement: "The UK calls on the Vietnamese government to respect all human rights, including freedom of expression and association. We recognize the importance of civil society organizations like CHANGE in ensuring sustainable and inclusive development for all.”