My name is: Dang Thi Hue.

People often call me Hue Nhu.

I was born in 1981 in Dong Vinh village, Vu Vinh commune, Vu Thu district, Thai Binh province In 2018, when I was a teacher at a primary and secondary school in Vu Thu district, Thai Binh province, my hometown, I participated in the fight against overcharging and misplacing traffic BOTs nationwide. I was beaten by the police of Soc Son district, Hanoi city, causing a miscarriage when I was 8 weeks pregnant because of my peaceful anti-BOT activities.

In addition to opposing BOTs, during this time, I, a group of friends and lawyer Le Dinh Viet of the Hanoi City Bar Association participated in supporting the fight for the rights of workers at Mao Khe coal mine, Dong Trieu, Quang Ninh. Demanding the right to bathe and change shifts on time. Together, we established the GRUP: “Vietnam Independent Trade Union” on Facebook.

Because of our peaceful and effective activities, in January 2019, I was arrested by the Thai Binh Provincial Police Investigation Security Department, coded PA 09, and taken to the provincial police headquarters, forcing me to delete the group “Vietnam Independent Trade Union” and sign a commitment not to post similar content on Facebook. They confiscated a tape recorder from me, and on that tape recorder I recorded my activities against BOT as well as my conversations with workers at Mao Khe coal mine, Dong Trieu, Quang Ninh.

In November 2019, they arrested me for 39 months in prison on charges of: GRTTCC for my peaceful activities against BOT. In January 2023, after being released from prison, I and my group of friends continued their activities. We collaborated with VietNam Worker Defenders to meet workers who were summoned for strikes to demand wage increases and reduced working hours to support them with lawyers to defend them. These were workers of the Viet GLORYcos company headquartered in Dien Chau district, Nghe An province.

In addition, I continued to meet and work with female workers of the Hoa Binh environmental company to help them file complaints about the company increasing working hours but cutting toxic allowances, insurance policies and maternity benefits for many female workers

All my work was going on in parallel, but in May 2024, I was kidnapped by the Thai Binh provincial police, the PA09 department of the Thai Binh provincial police, and was taken to the headquarters to work for 24 hours straight. The workers who had contact with me were also threatened, scared and gave up. In fact, Vietnam really wants to receive international incentives. They will go down to the water to sign for the establishment of an independent workers’ union, but in reality this is a fake promise to deceive the international community. In fact, anyone who starts to establish one will be threatened, beaten or arrested, and the actions I have experienced are concrete and true proof.

From June 2024 until now, in the face of the fierce pursuit of Vietnamese security throughout the country, throughout 63 provinces and cities, I have been forced to flee my locality and move my residence continuously, and I am trying to find an opportunity to seek asylum in a safe democratic country to fight for the people of my country.

I hope that the international community and labor rights protection agencies will help Vietnamese workers, who are struggling to exchange their labor for a low salary, an extremely precarious life in exchange for the wealth of communist officials, the government and the stability of the one-party dictatorship of the Vietnamese communist regime.

I hope that the international community will have a specific sanction requiring the Vietnamese communist government to establish an independent trade union in 2024.

Finally, I would like to sincerely thank European MEP SasKa Bricmont and the European Parliament for allowing me to present as a witness to the dishonesty and duplicity of the Vietnamese communist state in establishing an independent trade union.

I sincerely thank you!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiFKnSL1NbU