From Oct. 28–30, 2025, Communist Party General Secretary Tô Lâm travelled to the UK to ink the UK-Việt Nam Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. It was a deal meant to position his country as a rising, attractive business partner for the rest of the world to see. But the ‘real’ nation is far from the one Tô Lâm wants everyone to believe in.
Việt Nam has two faces. There’s the one it shows the world, and then there’s the one it shamefully hides, hoping no one gets a glimpse. Underneath the prim and proper facade, the country has a far uglier visage, one drowning in paranoia so deep that it has turned the country into a bureaucratic prison for a BBC journalist.
A Vietnamese journalist working for the BBC has been trapped for months, unable to leave the country. After returning in August to visit family and renew their passport, they were detained, subjected to dozens of hours of interrogation, and had their travel documents confiscated.
The BBC journalist was reportedly forced to sign a statement “confessing” to the authorship of 18 specific articles published by the BBC. They were detained for what they wrote—a familiar first step toward the filing of criminal charges in Việt Nam’s underhanded legal system.
In response, the BBC has expressed “deep concern” and the UK’s Foreign Office is apparently trying its best, despite its refusal to directly address the case. This weak, spineless, and disheartening response has done nothing for the journalist who is still stuck in Việt Nam, a state-sanctioned hostage.
If this were an isolated incident, it might be dismissed as bureaucratic overreach by an overly zealous politician or minister. But it is not. Việt Nam’s actions show a clear, escalating pattern.
Việt Nam is run by a leadership so brittle that it ordered the print run of The Economist banned last May, just because Lâm was on the cover and it probably did not like that photo. This is the same government that, according to Reporters Without Borders, ranks 173rd out of 180 countries for press freedom, earning it the title of “one of the world’s largest prisons for journalists.”
This is the same state apparatus that has banned messaging apps like Telegram and restricted the Steam gaming platform, which was blocked after government-backed competitors complained that it was ignoring the state’s censorship and licensing laws.
The hypocrisy on display is unfathomable. Even as this journalist remains involuntarily kept inside the country, Việt Nam proudly hosted the signing ceremony for the new UN “Hà Nội Convention on Countering Cybercrime.
Việt Nam is posturing as a global leader in digital governance while simultaneously weaponizing online activity to silence anyone who shows the smallest inkling of dissent. Critics rightly fear this convention will provide a new, internationally-sanctioned method for surveillance and repression.
This entire situation forces individuals—myself included—to question whether it’s even safe to visit the country. How can anyone with friends and family in Việt Nam trust a regime that views a critical article as a subversive act? It’s forcing us to choose between our safety and our relationships, all because of an onion-skinned government that treats critical reporting as a threat to its own fragile ego.
If the UK and its allies are serious about their “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership,” they must do more than publish platitudes. They must publicly demand the immediate and unconditional release of the BBC journalist from Việt Nam. Until then, they’re just shaking hands with a two-faced snake of a regime that holds press freedom and its own citizens captive.