The president is elected by the National Assembly for a five-year term, and is responsible for appointing the prime minister, who is confirmed by the legislature. However, all selections for top executive posts are predetermined in practice by the CPV’s Politburo and Central Committee.

In 2016, nominees for president and prime minister were chosen at the CPV’s 12th Party Congress, which also featured the reelection of Nguyễn Phú Trọng as the party’s general secretary. In April of that year, the National Assembly formally confirmed Trần Đại Quang as president and Nguyễn Xuân Phúc as prime minister.

President Trần Đại Quang died in September 2018, and the National Assembly confirmed Nguyễn Phú Trọng as his replacement in October; Trọng retained the post of party general secretary. The next party congress was scheduled for January 2021.

Elections to the National Assembly are tightly controlled by the CPV, which took 473 of the body’s 500-seat maximum in the 2016 balloting. Candidates who were technically independent but vetted by the CPV took the other 21 seats filled that year. More than 100 independent candidates, including many young civil society activists, were barred from running in the elections.

The electoral laws and framework ensure that the CPV, the only legally recognized party, dominates every election. The party controls all electoral bodies and vets all candidates, resulting in the disqualification of those who are genuinely independent.

The CPV enjoys a monopoly on political power, and no other parties are allowed to operate legally. Members of illegal opposition parties are subject to arrest and imprisonment.

The structure of the one-party system precludes any democratic transfer of power. The Vietnam Fatherland Front (VFF), responsible for vetting all candidates for the National Assembly, is ostensibly an alliance of organizations representing the people, but in practice it acts as an arm of the CPV.

The overarching dominance of the CPV effectively excludes the public from any genuine and autonomous political participation.

Although members of ethnic minority groups are nominally represented within the CPV, they are rarely allowed to rise to senior positions, and the CPV leadership’s dominance prevents effective advocacy on issues affecting minority populations. Vietnam has enacted policies and strategies aimed at boosting women’s political participation, but in practice the interests of women are poorly represented in government.

The CPV leadership, which is not freely elected or accountable to the public, determines government policy and the legislative agenda.

CPV and government leaders have acknowledged growing public discontent with corruption, and there has been an increase in corruption-related arrests in recent years. The government reported in 2019 that it had disciplined over 53,000 officials and other party members for graft. Multiple senior officials, including two members of the Central Committee, have faced discipline including jail time.

Despite the crackdown, enforcement of anticorruption laws is generally selective and often linked to political rivalries. Many top officials who have been detained or jailed belonged to a different political faction than Trọng. The CPV does not tolerate journalistic investigations, independent courts, or other autonomous bodies that might serve as a check on corruption.

The CPV leadership operates with considerable opacity. The National Assembly passed an access to information law in 2016, but its provisions are relatively weak. Information can also be withheld if it is deemed to threaten state interests or the well-being of the nation. Independent journalists and civil society groups are not permitted to scrutinize or critique government activities.

Although the constitution recognizes freedom of the press, journalists and bloggers are constrained by numerous repressive laws and decrees. Those who dare to report or comment independently on controversial issues also risk intimidation and physical attack.

The criminal code prohibits speech that is critical of the government, while a 2006 decree prescribes fines for any publication that denies revolutionary achievements, spreads “harmful” information, or exhibits “reactionary ideology.” Decree 72, issued in 2013, gave the state sweeping new powers to restrict speech on blogs and social media. The state controls all print and broadcast media.

A cybersecurity law that was adopted in 2018 and took effect in 2019 includes several provisions that could restrict access to uncensored news and information. It requires companies like Facebook and Google to store information about Vietnamese users in Vietnam, and allows the government to block access to a broad range of content that could be defined as dangerous to national security. Under pressure from the government, Facebook agreed to increase its removals of allegedly illegal content in Vietnam during 2020, and officials reportedly threatened to block the platform if it did not restrict even more content. Radio Free Asia found that some of its Vietnamese Facebook posts were removed. Google’s YouTube video-sharing platform also reportedly complied with government censorship demands during the year.

New arrests, beatings, criminal convictions, and cases of mistreatment in custody involving journalists and bloggers continued to be reported in 2020. Among other cases during the year, a Radio Free Asia blogger was sentenced to 10 years in prison in March, a prominent dissident writer was arrested in May and charged with subversion, and a blogger was reportedly beaten while confined to a psychiatric hospital in July. Also in July, the well-known writer and journalist Phạm Đoan Trang ended her association with her publisher due to what she claimed was intense police harassment. Trang was arrested in October on charges of “propaganda against the state,” which carries a prison term of up to 20 years. In November, prosecutors indicted three leaders of an independent journalists’ association on similar charges.

Score Change: The score declined from 1 to 0 due to the intensifying persecution of independent writers and journalists.

Religious freedom remains restricted. All religious groups and most individual clergy members are required to join a party-controlled supervisory body and obtain permission for most activities. The 2016 Law on Belief and Religion reinforced registration requirements, allowed extensive state interference in religious groups’ internal affairs, and gave authorities broad discretion to penalize unsanctioned religious activity. Unregistered and unrecognized religious groups face routine harassment, including violence, criminal charges, and property damage.

Academic freedom is limited. University professors must refrain from criticizing government policies and adhere to party views when teaching or writing on political topics.

Although citizens enjoy more freedom in private discussions than in the past, authorities continue to attack and imprison those who openly criticize the state, including on social media. The government engages in surveillance of private online activity.

In 2020, the authorities imposed fines on hundreds of people for allegedly sharing false information about COVID-19 online. The crackdown was carried out under existing laws as well as a new decree implemented in April that prescribed fines for the use of social media to disseminate content that reveals state secrets or is deemed false or misleading, slanderous, or harmful to moral or social values.

Freedom of assembly is tightly restricted. Organizations must apply for official permission to assemble, and police routinely use excessive force to disperse unauthorized demonstrations. After nationwide anti-China protests in 2018, during which dozens of participants were assaulted and arrested, the courts convicted well over a hundred people of disrupting public order, and many were sentenced to prison terms.

A small but active community of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) promotes environmental conservation, land rights, women’s development, and public health. However, human rights organizations are generally banned, and those who engage in any advocacy that the authorities perceive as hostile risk imprisonment.

Criminal prosecutions and violence against activists persisted in 2020. In June it was reported that an Australian citizen who had been jailed in Vietnam for membership in the banned opposition Viet Tan movement had been held incommunicado for months. In July, a court imposed lengthy prison terms on eight activists who had planned protests calling for the protection of constitutional rights on National Day in 2018. Also in July, a court sentenced a prominent prodemocracy activist to eight years in prison for his antigovernment posts on Facebook.

The Vietnam General Conference of Labor (VGCL), the only legal labor federation, is controlled by the CPV. The right to strike is limited by tight legal restrictions.

A 2019 revision of the labor code, adopted to comply with international trade agreements, would theoretically allow workers to form their own representative bodies after taking effect in 2021, but the government was expected to limit such groups’ independence in practice.

The judiciary is subservient to the CPV, which controls the courts at all levels. This control is especially evident in politically sensitive criminal prosecutions, with judges sometimes displaying greater impartiality in civil cases.

Constitutional guarantees of due process are generally not upheld. Defendants have a legal right to counsel, but lawyers are scarce, and many are reluctant to take on cases involving human rights or other sensitive topics. Defense lawyers do not have the right to call witnesses, and often report insufficient time to meet with their clients. In national security cases, police can detain suspects for up to 20 months without access to counsel.

Amendments to the penal code that took effect in 2018 included a provision under which defense lawyers can be held criminally liable for failing to report certain kinds of crimes committed by their own clients.

There is little protection from the illegitimate use of force by state authorities, and security personnel are known to abuse suspects and prisoners, sometimes resulting in death or serious injury. In June 2020, family members of jailed activist Nguyễn Văn Đức Độ claimed in a petition that he had been beaten and fed human feces while incarcerated in Đồng Nai Province. Prison conditions are generally poor. The death penalty can be applied for crimes other than murder, including drug trafficking.

Members of ethnic minority groups face discrimination in Vietnamese society, and some local officials restrict their access to schooling and jobs. They generally have little input on development projects that affect their livelihoods and communities. Members of ethnic and religious minorities also sometimes face monitoring and harassment by authorities seeking to suppress dissent and suspected links to exile groups.

Men and women receive similar treatment in the legal system. Women generally have equal access to education, and economic opportunities for women have grown, though they continue to face discrimination in wages and promotions.

The law does not prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, and societal discrimination remains a problem. Nevertheless, LGBT+ pride events are held annually across the country.

Although freedom of movement is protected by law, residency rules limit access to services for those who migrate within the country without permission, and authorities have restricted the movement of political dissidents and members of ethnic minorities on other grounds. Vietnamese citizens who are repatriated after attempting to seek asylum abroad can face harassment or imprisonment.

All land is owned by the state, which grants land-use rights and leases to farmers, developers, and others. Land tenure is one of the most contentious issues in the country, and is the subject of regular protests. The seizure of land for economic development projects is often accompanied by violence, accusations of corruption, and prosecutions of those who voice objections. A dispute over the leasing of land to a state-owned company in a village outside Hanoi turned deadly in January 2020, when a police raid on protesting residents led to the killing of a village leader and three police officers; officials later indicted 25 people on murder and other charges in connection with the incident.

The government generally does not place explicit restrictions on personal social freedoms. Men and women have equal rights pertaining to matters such as marriage and divorce under the law. In 2015, Vietnam repealed a legal ban on same-sex marriage, but the government still does not grant such unions legal recognition.

Domestic violence against women remains common, and the law calls for the state to initiate criminal as opposed to civil procedures only when the victim is seriously injured.

Human trafficking is a problem in Vietnam, although the US State Department reported in 2020 that the government has taken some steps to boost antitrafficking efforts. Internationally brokered marriages sometimes lead to domestic servitude and forced prostitution. Male and female Vietnamese migrant workers are vulnerable to recruitment for forced labor abroad in a variety of industries. Enforcement of legal safeguards against exploitative working conditions, child labor, and workplace hazards remains poor.