On October 29, 2025, the BBC issued a statement expressing “deep concern” over the case of a Vietnamese journalist working for the British broadcaster who has been unable to leave Vietnam for months after authorities confiscated their passport and national ID card during a trip home to renew their travel documents.
According to a separate report by The New York Times, Vietnamese authorities have withheld the journalist’s passport since August, subjecting them to repeated and lengthy interrogations.
The paper noted that the case “highlights the risks faced by Vietnamese nationals who work for international news outlets” in a country consistently ranked among the world’s most restrictive for press freedom. The journalist’s name was withheld for security reasons, including possible arrest in Vietnam in retribution for publicly exposing the case.
The BBC statement came just one day after Vietnamese Communist Party chief To Lam arrived in London for an official visit promoted by Vietnamese state media as a diplomatic milestone aimed at “enhancing cooperation and boosting Vietnam’s global reputation.”
Yet, the BBC case casts a long and dark shadow over that image, exposing an ongoing pattern of repression against the media, including Vietnamese nationals working for foreign media, some of whom have been kidnapped and forced back to Vietnam, where they’ve faced imprisonment and abuse.
The BBC’s decision to go public suggests that quiet diplomacy failed to secure the journalist’s release. Meanwhile, the UK Foreign Office issued a carefully worded statement: “The United Kingdom’s commitment to press freedom is clear.”
Behind the diplomatic phrasing lies an implicit warning that Hanoi’s repressive behavior could erode the very “trusted partner” image To Lam is attempting to promote abroad.
Web of control
According to the BBC, the journalist traveled home only to visit family and renew official documents, not report the news, but ended up detained for questioning and stripped of their identity papers.
The incident constitutes a clear violation of the right to freedom of movement guaranteed under both Vietnam’s Constitution and international human rights conventions.
It also reflects the state’s enduring paranoia toward Vietnamese citizens employed by international media, who authorities see not as reporters, but as potential “information leaks” to the outside world.
Just months earlier, To Lam publicly declared that “Vietnam’s most precious resource is its 106 million people.” While the statement sounded like a celebration of human potential, the government’s behavior suggests otherwise: that citizens are treated not as rights-bearing individuals but as assets to be managed, monitored and contained.
Preventing a journalist from leaving the country is a striking example of how the state turns people into “resources that can be seized.”
For years, the withholding of passports has been one of the Vietnamese Security Ministry’s most effective tools to restrict movement and silence dissent. Human rights defenders, former political prisoners and bloggers have routinely had their passports confiscated without charge, without trial and without any formal legal process.
Such “temporary holds” operate in a legal vacuum: invisible, arbitrary and devastatingly effective in denying the basic right to leave one’s own country. Despite repeated international protests, foreign governments have found little leverage to counter this practice.
Now, by targeting a BBC Vietnamese Service journalist, who is based in Bangkok, Thailand, the authorities appear to have upgraded the same playbook, shifting from human rights activists to Vietnamese nationals employed by international media.
It is a more subtle yet equally coercive tactic: avoid overt public arrests, but deliver a clear warning to those who bring Vietnamese stories to a global audience.
To Lam’s visit to London, his first since becoming Party chief, was expected to showcase Vietnam’s economic potential and political stability to Western investors. Yet the BBC case – and the ongoing authoritarian abuse it epitomizes – has overshadowed his otherwise carefully choreographed trip.
British media circles have already questioned whether London should deepen economic engagement with a government that detains journalists. Analysts note that Vietnam often releases or eases pressure on prisoners of conscience ahead of major visits to Washington or Brussels — but this time, the opposite occurred.
By detaining a journalist working for the UK’s own public broadcaster, Hanoi may have sent the worst possible signal at the worst possible moment.
When quiet diplomacy fails
The timing of the BBC’s statement suggests that earlier attempts to resolve the matter discreetly have not succeeded. For months, the journalist’s situation remained unresolved despite private and official appeals, leading the broadcaster to go public shortly before To Lam’s arrival in London.
By releasing the story in English rather than Vietnamese, the BBC ensured that the issue would reach a global audience and attract diplomatic attention during the Vietnamese leader’s visit, turning a quiet human rights concern into a matter of international scrutiny.
Hanoi’s move fits into a broader pattern of extraterritorial narrative control. In recent years, Vietnamese authorities have pressured social media platforms, harassed diaspora YouTubers and commentators, and tightly monitored journalists working for foreign outlets.
The goal is not merely domestic censorship but the projection of control beyond Vietnam’s borders, ensuring that even Vietnamese voices abroad remain cautious. By turning the act of renewing a passport into an interrogation, the state signals that journalism itself is a national security threat.
The BBC case also exposes a deeper structural issue: Vietnam’s Security Ministry not only enforces the law, it now writes it. As previously analyzed in Asia Times, the Communist Party chief has consolidated unprecedented legislative power in the hands of the ministry from which he rose to power.
The BBC case now demonstrates how that legal architecture translates into everyday repression.
Recent legislative drafts led by the ministry have expanded police authority in criminal execution, judicial records and travel restrictions – all justified under the banner of “national security.” Proposed amendments to the Press Law would require journalists to divulge their sources, potentially stripping reporters of one of the few safeguards they have.
That same rationale is now being used to legitimize the confiscation of a professional journalist’s passport, showing how easily the term “national security” can be manipulated to silence independent voices.
Under To Lam’s leadership, the message from Hanoi is clear: freedom of expression is a luxury, not a right, and the police can detain anyone under the vague pretexts of Article 331 (“abusing democratic freedoms”) or Article 117 (“anti-state propaganda”) of Vietnam’s penal code.
Irresponsible governance
Despite all that, Vietnam still sits on the UN Human Rights Council, a position it uses to project an image of responsible governance. Yet, the BBC case exposes the contradiction between Hanoi’s lofty rhetoric and its on-the-ground reality, signing international pledges on freedom of expression while suppressing journalists within and even outside its borders.
The BBC episode is more than an isolated rights violation; it illustrates the deep contradiction at the heart of Vietnam’s governance model. On one hand, the Party promises reform, modernization and global integration. On the other, it continues to suppress even those working with esteemed international institutions like the BBC.
If Vietnam’s 106 million citizens are indeed its “most valuable resource,” as To Lam asserts, then his government is demonstrating exactly how it intends to exploit that resource: through fear, confinement and the denial of the most basic of human rights – the right to speak freely and to leave one’s own country.
Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, also known as Mother Mushroom, is a Vietnamese writer, human rights commentator and former political prisoner based in Texas, United States. She is the founder of WEHEAR, an independent initiative focusing on Southeast Asian politics, human rights and economic transparency.
