Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries.
It wasn’t the first time the Vietnamese authorities had accused someone of tax evasion. But few such cases have ended in a five-year prison sentence. Fewer still have involved a man whose life was defined by public service: An environmental lawyer who trained young attorneys, comforted poisoned communities, and helped rewrite the nation’s environmental laws, reports contributor Jenny Denton for Mongabay.
On June 24, 2021, when Dang Dinh Bach was taken from his Hanoi home just two weeks after the birth of his son, there was no doubt among those who knew him: this was punishment for his activism, not his accounting.
Bach was not a dissident in the traditional sense. He believed in working with government officials, not against them. His organization, the Law and Policy of Sustainable Development Research Centre, was known for its pragmatic, community-rooted advocacy — for helping villagers affected by coal pollution, industrial toxins and dam displacement navigate Vietnam’s legal system. He helped usher in a review of Vietnam’s Environmental Protection Law and contributed to restrictions on asbestos and plastic waste. He saw the law not as a tool of resistance, but as a force for reform.
That changed in 2021, after Bach helped lead 17 days of protest against coal expansion. The state responded not with dialogue, but with handcuffs. He was tried behind closed doors, denied access to his lawyers until days before trial, and sentenced to more than even the prosecution had recommended for refusing to confess. His NGO was shuttered. His mail is censored. His health has declined amid hunger strikes and brutal treatment in a cell designed to break spirits.
And yet he has not broken.
Bach’s name now circulates not only in Vietnam but among diplomats and U.N. bodies, human rights lawyers and environmental groups. In July, he became the first Vietnamese recipient of the Roger N. Baldwin Medal of Liberty. His wife accepted the award, speaking not of vengeance, but of transparency, justice and the voices that remain unheard.
It is a cruel irony that a man who helped lay the foundation for Vietnam’s clean energy transition now sits in prison while the world applauds that very progress. But there is also a kind of hope in the persistence of his voice, carried through letters, passed between lawyers and spoken by his wife. He still believes in justice. He still believes in Vietnam. That, perhaps, is the bravest thing of all.
Read the full story by Jenny Denton here.
Banner image: Dang Dinh Bach speaking. Image courtesy of StandWithBach.org.
Source link
#fought #clean #air #breathes #bars