Earlier this month, the WGAD published Opinion No. A/HRC/WGAD/2025/30 in which experts including the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, the Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, find the detention of Mr. To and Mr. Thach to be arbitrary under multiple categories of international law. The Working Group concluded that their imprisonment resulted from the legitimate exercise of their rights to freedom of opinion, expression, and religion, and of the rights of persons belonging to ethnic or linguistic minorities.
The WGAD also highlighted that this case, also denounced by UNPO in March 2025, reflects a broader pattern of arbitrary detention in Vietnam, particularly of human rights defenders, marked by arrests under vague charges, prolonged pre-trial detention without judicial review, denial of legal counsel, incommunicado detention, closed trials without due process, disproportionate sentences, and denial of access to the outside world. The concerns raised by the WGAD echo recent developments on the ground.
In recent weeks, at least 17 Khmer Krom monks, human rights defenders and activists, including respected community leaders such as Venerable Thach Chanh Da Ra, Kim Khiem, Thach Ve Sanal, and Venerable Duong Khai, have been arbitrarily arrested. Many of them were denied due process, subjected to closed trials, and handed down harsh and disproportionate sentences for the peaceful exercise of their fundamental rights. Reports indicate that some detainees have been tortured or ill-treated during pre-trial detention, while others remain incommunicado, cut off from their families and without access to adequate legal representation.
Beyond the arrests, Vietnamese authorities have intensified a broader campaign of repression against Khmer Krom religious and cultural life. The independent Tro Nom Sek temple in Vinh Long province has been violently raided, with parts of the sacred site demolished. Monks who resisted pressure to join the state-controlled Buddhist Sangha have been forcibly defrocked and expelled, stripping them not only of their religious role but also of their dignity within the community. Khmer language classes have been disrupted or shut down, undermining the transmission of cultural and linguistic heritage to future generations. Human rights defenders who attempted to document and expose these violations have themselves become targets of intimidation, arrest, and harassment.
These actions collectively represent a deliberate assault on the Khmer Krom people’s identity. By criminalising peaceful religious practices, eroding cultural institutions, and silencing defenders, the Vietnamese authorities are not merely violating individual rights, they are engaging in a systematic effort to dismantle an Indigenous community’s ability to preserve its faith, language, and traditions. As UN experts have stressed, such practices are in clear violation of international human rights standards and cannot be justified under the guise of “national security” or “public order.”
For decades, the Khmer Krom, an Indigenous people of the Mekong Delta, have endured systemic violations of their cultural, linguistic, and religious rights, as well as persistent discrimination in public life. UNPO has consistently worked to raise awareness of these abuses at the international level. Most recently, in July 2025, UNPO submitted a detailed report to the UN Human Rights Committee as part of Viet Nam’s review under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The submission documented the Vietnamese government’s denial of Indigenous status to the Khmer Krom, widespread suppression of fundamental freedoms, religious persecution of Theravada Buddhism, arbitrary detention and torture of activists, land dispossession and systemic discrimination in education, political representation and access to livelihoods. UNPO also highlighted the situation of the Khmer Krom in its contribution to the report of the United Nations Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (EMRIP) examining the traditional economies of Indigenous Peoples, in which the EMRIP stated that
“Viet Nam’s ‘refusal to recognize the Khmer Krom as Indigenous Peoples has facilitated appropriation of their ancestral lands and denied them access to traditional livelihoods. This lack of recognition has contributed to heightened levels of poverty and social marginalization”.
UNPO welcomes the findings by UN treaty bodies, Special Procedures, and the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, which collectively reaffirm what the Khmer Krom and their advocates, including UNPO, have long denounced: a persistent pattern of repression that threatens the very survival of the Khmer Krom identity.
UNPO expresses its deepest solidarity with the Khmer Krom and strongly condemns this campaign of repression, which seeks to silence Indigenous voices and erase their identity, perpetuating a pattern of systemic discrimination against the Khmer Krom people. UNPO will continue to raise these issues at the international level, ensuring that the concerns of the Khmer Krom are neither ignored nor forgotten.
Read the United Nations’ full press release here.
