Huệ Như, Vietnamese pro-democracy and anti-corruption activist and former political prisoner, addressed the 18th Annual Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy on February 18, 2026.
Full Prepared Remarks:
Hello everyone!
I would like to invite you to listen to a story.
This is not the story of a politician.
Not the story of a leader,
The story of an ordinary person —
A Vietnamese woman whose name is Dang Thi Hue, with the nickname Hue Nhu.
I used to be a primary school teacher working in the school library, surrounded by books and children. Life was peaceful with my family and job.
I didn’t start my life with the ambition to become a human rights activist.
Nor did I seek confrontation with the Vietnamese communist state.
I began my life in a family where both parents were members of the Communist Party.
I began my life as a teacher who completely trusted the leadership of the Communist Party of Vietnam and knew nothing about Vietnamese society, which was full of injustice, wrongful treatment for the people, and rampant corruption.
My life took an unexpected turn when I witnessed the injustices related to BOT (Build-Operate-Transfer) toll stations that were improperly located, with toll collection periods expiring but businesses still relying on the State, causing burdens and losses to the people. Our activist group calls this “dirty BOT.”
The main problem here is:
Citizens pay taxes to the government to build roads, but once the roads are completed, the government hands them over to private businesses to set up toll booths.
The state is appropriating people’s money, and people have to pay taxes and fees three times for a single road. The amount isn’t huge, but it accumulates quickly each time they drive on the road.
For example, a round trip for my small 5-seater car costs 70,000 VND, which is equivalent to one-third of my daily wage.
So, one-third of my daily wage goes to the BOT (Build-Operate-Transfer) project, while I still have to pay taxes to the government and road maintenance fees, which are deducted directly from the vehicle owner’s account.
The toll booths are all located on single lane roads, leaving no other option but to pass through and pay.
After gathering numerous documents, I realized that not just in one locality, but in 127 BOT (Build-Operate-Transfer) projects across Vietnam, all were in violation of regulations. We began publicly exposing this problem on social media and received profound attention from the people nationwide. The people began to strongly protest, forcing the communist authorities to dismantle four corrupt BOT projects to appease the situation.
I recorded videos, livestreamed, and asked questions publicly.
I did not call for violence.
I did not incite hatred.
I only asked for transparency and accountability.
But in Vietnam, where the Communist Party holds absolute power, they do not allow the people to question it.
My habit of frequently asking for clarification has become a crime.
I am being monitored.
I am being summoned for questioning.
He was interrogated repeatedly.
In June 2018, I started protesting against BOT projects.
In September 2018, I was abducted by security forces in Thai Binh while I was walking on the street and forced to delete my Facebook account.
In May 2019, five plainclothes security officers from Hanoi abducted me in the middle of the street. They dragged me into the headquarters of a corrupt BOT (Build-Operate-Transfer) project, gagged me, and beat me. After I was released, my friends had to take me back to Thai Binh to be hospitalized.
The doctors had to perform surgery immediately because I had suffered a miscarriage. I was eight weeks pregnant at the time.
That was a deep pain and trauma which has lasted until today. I lost my child not because of fate, but because of the systematic oppression of the Communist Party of Vietnam.
But it did not stop there.
In June 2019, Hanoi police arrested me during a public, peaceful protest at a toll booth in Hanoi. They towed away my car and confiscated my phone.
In October 2019, Hanoi police prosecuted and detained him, and subsequently sentenced him to 39 months in prison on charges of “disturbing public order.”
During the trial, there were four lawyers defending me, but the court did not allow me or my lawyers to speak. The court handed down an unconstitutional sentence as retaliation against me for fighting corruption and to deter other citizens from speaking out, through a publicly released inter-agency directive issued just two days after my arrest.
The trial was open to the public, but hundreds of police officers were deployed to prevent my family, friends, and supporters from attending. They jammed cell phone signals throughout the entire courtroom area.
The court imposed a sentence that not only deprives individuals of their freedom,
but it also sends a broader message:
Citizens are forbidden from speaking out.
In prison I became a witness to things that the outside world couldn’t see:
Harsh detention conditions and punitive treatment.
I continued to fight tenaciously for improvements to the extremely harsh conditions of the communist prison system for prisoners:
Prison guards are embezzling rations.
Treating prisoners as labor tools, exploiting them in toxic environments, reducing food rations, served rotten, moldy food, and forced to buy canteen food at exorbitant prices…
I myself was forbidden from visiting my family and from receiving any personal belongings they sent to the camp.
I had to rely on other prisoners for food, clothing, and necessities.
I always remember the stories.
The faces.
The forgotten cries.
Upon my release, I continued to speak out and take risks.
I recounted what I witnessed in prison on YouTube and Facebook, exposing the corrupt system.
My live streams attract millions of viewers. Across all social media platforms, I recorded up to 100 million visits in a single month.
I support the families of other prisoners of conscience.
I went to every prison in Vietnam to inspire other political prisoners who were still being held incarcerated.
Security forces across Vietnam hunted me down relentlessly. My friends who spoke out with me were also implicated. The most severely affected was detained for three days and beaten with electric batons until he fainted.
I’m not afraid. I’ll continue to tell the truth.
My live streams, delivered in simple, unpretentious language—without academic jargon, philosophy, or flowery language—have awakened millions of marginalized people in Vietnam. They listen to me as if I were their very breath. They see the injustices inflicted upon them by the communist regime, and they begin to seek me out to voice their grievances.
I also joined many Vietnamese workers who were oppressed by their employers, facing wage cuts, increased working hours, lack of insurance coverage, and inadequate working conditions. For example, in the case of the large strike by Viet Glory workers in Dien Chau district, Nghe An province, where 12 workers were summoned by security forces and recommended for prosecution, we went to the scene to investigate and advise them on the law.
The consequences are:
I was released from prison in January 2023.
She was kidnapped for the first time in May 2023.
In May 2024, I was kidnapped for the second time. This time, six security officers from Thai Binh abducted me in the middle of the road right after I got off a bus traveling from Hanoi to Thai Binh. They confiscated 5,000 USD from my handbag and detained me for 24 hours without any detention order.
After finding no incriminating evidence, they released me and then proceeded to abduct my friends, forcing them to sign statements claiming they were manipulated by me on social media, so they could have a pretext to arrest me again.
After being released for 15 days, at the end of May 2024, security forces in Thai Binh surrounded me in the dark of night. This time, I climbed over the roof and escaped.
In June 2024, I was forced to cross the border by land into Thailand, where I was granted emergency refugee status by the UNHCR.
I continued my activities in Thailand.
I have exposed government-collusion projects with businesses that destroy the marine ecosystem, such as the one in Con Xanh, Nam Dinh, where thousands of hectares of mangrove forests were filled with sand to build a steel plant that discharges waste into the sea.
Security forces took my 11-year-old son to the commune’s People’s Committee office to question him about his mother’s whereabouts, causing him extreme distress. Many human rights organizations protested on my behalf at the time.
In June 2025, the Federal Republic of Germany accepted me under their humanitarian policy.
When I reported to the IDC in Thailand, I was again approached by 10 Vietnamese security officers under the pretext of persuading me to return home, but in reality, their intention was to take me back to Vietnam to face trial.
I have now been granted a residence permit in the city of Hannau, Hessen, Germany.
Exile is not the end of oppression.
In Germany, I continued my human rights activism at the international level.
I don’t consider myself a hero.
I am living proof of something very simple: I am an ordinary person who has the courage to speak the truth.
I have now settled in Germany since June 2025.
In October 2025, the security investigation agency of Hung Yen province initiated legal proceedings and issued an arrest warrant; they even requested an Interpol international arrest warrant for me.
Twelve police officers raided my parents’ house in the countryside, read out a search warrant, confiscated our family’s private security camera, and installed new cameras to monitor our family’s activities back home.
The communist authorities sent a report to Meta and blocked all my Facebook accounts in Vietnam.
YouTube also sent me a notification that my channel would be deleted.
In addition to all the state repression, I am facing transnational lawsuits from Vietnam’s number one billionaire, Pham Nhat Vuong, and his giant Vingroup corporation, suing me in Germany for silencing me as revenge, simply because I provided information about their substandard products to protect the people. This is a billionaire with connections to high-ranking officials of the Communist Party of Vietnam, who is complicit in policy corruption.
Ladies and gentlemen!
Human rights have a face, a name, a story.
Today, one of those faces is me – Hue Nhu.
I tell my own story, that of a victim of dictatorship and my aspirations.
Not to be swallowed by silence.
Because when someone is forced into exile simply for speaking out,
That is not just the failure of one nation.
Rather, it is a test of the conscience of the international community.
Thank you for listening.
