https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/14/world/asia/vietnam-pham-doan-trang-arrest.html
She left the country in 2013, but she was not happy in exile.
“It’s really hard to watch from outside what happens in Vietnam,” she said at the time. “It makes me feel helpless.”
She returned to Vietnam in 2015, and lived in hiding since 2017.
Ms. Pham’s arrest may also have been prompted by a report she co-wrote last month challenging the official account of a deadly police raid near Hanoi.
In Vietnam, all land is owned by the state, and officials have the power to seize prime parcels and give them to their cronies or foreign companies, a practice that fuels corruption. Such land grabs are a sensitive issue, and some critical activists have been imprisoned.
The dispute in Dong Tam village began when officials transferred 145 acres to the country’s largest telecommunications company, the government-owned Viettel Corp., but residents refused to give up their land. During a confrontation in 2017, villagers held 19 police and security officials captive for a week.