Vietnam relied on environmentalists to secure billions. Then they were imprisoned.

When Vietnam was awarded a multibillion-dollar deal last year by a group of nine wealthy countries to work to reduce coal use, the country agreed to regularly consult with non-governmental organizations.

Instead, the government has arrested several prominent environmental activists from organizations that shaped policies that helped secure the funding, raising concerns about sending money to countries that have abused human rights.

As the country prepares to announce how it will spend the money at United Nations climate talks starting Thursday, activists say Vietnamese officials should be held accountable for what they call a crackdown on those who speak out about the impacts of the country. ecological problems.

Ngo Thi to Nhienthe director of an energy think tank, was the sixth environmental activist arrested in the past two years.

She had met with officials from the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment in March to discuss a plan for the climate agreement Partnership for a just energy transition, an effort by the United States, Japan and other developed countries to convince developing economies to abandon coal. The nine countries had announced in December that Vietnam would receive $15.5 billion in grants and loans in exchange for a commitment to renewable energy.

Ms Nhien, 48, never got a chance to see Vietnam present the plan. She was arrested in September and remains in a detention center on charges of ‘appropriating documents from agencies and organizations’.

The other five arrested were charged with tax evasion, which rights groups say are trumped up charges in response to their plea. Four were tried in closed hearings that lasted less than a day each, and given the prison sentence, the sentences were harsher than the norm. Although two activists have since been released, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said in September that the “persecutions and arbitrary application of restrictive laws are having a chilling effect” on environmental activists in Vietnam.

Activists and academics say Vietnam appears emboldened by its growing importance to the West and has taken the opportunity to pressure the country, knowing there will be few repercussions. The country has presented itself as an increasingly important geopolitical player, and one of the few Southeast Asian countries to publicly oppose China. President Biden visited Vietnam in September and strengthened ties with a new strategic relationship that he said would “be a force for prosperity and security in one of the most influential regions in the world.”

“We are dealing with a juggernaut,” said Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division. “They have challenged the international community, and they continue to do so.”

He pointed to Vietnam invitation to the Group of 7 summit this year, its inclusion in the Human Rights Council and now its funding from the Just Energy Transition Partnership, despite the country’s troubling human rights record.

Since 2016, when Nguyen Phu Trong, the general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, was re-elected, the space for civil society has shrunk dramatically. The country has the second highest number of political prisoners in Southeast Asia, with more than 160 people currently being held for exercising their fundamental rights. according to Human Rights Watch.

Authorities in Vietnam have long prosecuted people seen as overt threats to the one-party regime. But Mr Trong’s government has gone much further and focused on people who were previously given some room to operate.

Vietnam rejects any suggestion that the prosecutions are politically motivated. Pham Thu Hang, a spokeswoman for Vietnam’s Foreign Ministry, said last month that the environmental activists’ cases were “being investigated, prosecuted and adjudicated in accordance with the provisions of Vietnamese law.”

All six led organizations that were outspoken about the country’s environmental problems. That advocacy ultimately put them on a collision course with the Communist Party.

Their arrests are a signal that the government wants the energy transition to be carried out on its own terms and not on the advice of groups they have long deemed suspect, said Nguyen Khac Giang, a visiting scholar at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, a research organization in Singapore .

On the day Ms Nhien was detained, Nhan Dan, the Communist Party’s official newspaper, criticized foreign donors who had funded policy research, saying they had ordered groups to publish reports with “one-sided, negative content, which country and the people of Vietnam.”

Vietnam, a manufacturing powerhouse home to nearly 99.5 million people, is the ninth largest consumer of coal worldwide. In 2021, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh promised that the country would phase out coal consumption by 2040.

The Just Energy Transition Partnership was first awarded to South Africa in 2021 as part of an effort by wealthy countries to tackle long-standing inequalities in tackling climate change. Activists now see Vietnam as a litmus test for future agreements. Should other repressive governments get billions of dollars? Should there be specific requirements for countries that receive funding but have a poor human rights record?

Several countries behind the climate deal have expressed concern about the detentions in Vietnam, but rights groups say those countries should base their financial support on the release of the environmental activists or a government promise that there will be no additional arrests. So far, countries have not been willing to do this, says Ben Swanton, director at The 88 Projecta US-based non-profit organization focusing on human rights issues in Vietnam.

In one of the harshest punishments in Vietnam for someone convicted of tax evasion, Dang Dinh Bach, 45, was given a five-year prison sentence in January 2022. He headed a research center for law and sustainable development policy that provided legal aid to communities.

Mr Bach refused to plead guilty. Tran Phuong Thao, his wife, said she was not allowed to attend his trial and that he was attacked by police officers in prison.

“People like my husband have made great efforts to support the government and make suggestions on energy transition policies,” Ms. Thao said.

The arrest of Ms Nhien, the think tank’s director, was particularly unusual because she was not a government critic. She led the Vietnam Initiative for Energy Transition Social Enterprise, the first group in the country to specialize in energy transition.

Ms. Nhien, a former civil servant, had worked as a consultant at the World Bank and the Southeast Asia Energy Transition Partnership, a program managed by a U.N. infrastructure agency. She advocated policymaking based on scientific evidence and was invited to speak to Vietnam’s Ministry of Science and Technology in May. In June 2020, she organized a workshop on the integration of renewable energy sources into the country’s electricity grid, presenting information from the state-owned electricity company.

That was enough to make her a target. On September 15, four days after Mr. Biden left Vietnam, she was detained. The Ministry of Public Security cited the workshop as evidence that it had “appropriated internal documents.”

Two weeks later, a court in Ho Chi Minh City sentenced Hoang Thi Minh Hong, 51, one of Vietnam’s best-known environmental activists, to three years in prison for tax evasion.

Ms Hong’s husband, Hoang Vinh Nam, called his wife’s trial a sham and said the tax authorities had not sent anyone to testify against her. When her peers started getting arrested two years ago, Ms. Hong called the tax authorities to ask if she owed anything and was assured she did not, he said.

In December, Ms. Hong decided to close her environmental nonprofit, following government pressure. She was arrested in May.