Vietnam

Article

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Publicist and democracy activist Phạm Đoan Trang was arrested on October 6, 2020, when police and security service officials raided her apartment in Ho Chi Minh City. This text was published on her...

Text: Phạm Đoan Trang November 13 2025

Article

The Final Witness

The Vietnamese author Phạm Đoan Trang was imprisoned in 2020 after years of harassment. She is now serving a nine-year prison sentence for “propaganda against the state.” PEN/Opp is publishing two...

Text: Phạm Đoan Trang November 13 2025

Fiction

Forbidden poetry in Vietnam

“Vietnamese poetry is created through the left cerebral hemisphere; it knows what it is doing”, writes the author and literary critic Kristoffer Leandoer about the state of Vietnamese poetry today...

Text: Kristoffer Leandoer Translation from Swedish: Caroline Åberg December 14 2011

"Why are you following me?"

The Swedish PEN received a letter in May from the pseudonym ”Danlambao”, who wanted to tell us about the state of freedom of speech in Vietnam and one writer in particular, Bui Chat. You can read the...

Text: Danlambao July 07 2011