Hanoi is one of the most rapidly developing cities in Asia and also has some of the poorest

air quality on the continent.

Hong-Wi-T was already keenly aware of the city's pollution problem, but a study from Harvard

University brought the issue into sharper focus for her.

This is a video about Vietnamese activists Hong-Wi-T in 2018 when she won the Goldman

Prize, a prestigious environmental award given to a handful of extraordinarily impactful environmental

activists every year.

She received the award for her work convincing the government not to include a massive

coal buildout in its energy blueprint for Hanoi.

For years later, the Vietnamese government had arrested and imprisoned her.

For tax evasion charges, that legal observers have deemed false and politically motivated.

Four other prominent environmental activists have also been arrested and jailed for tax

evasion in Vietnam since 2021.

Here's Betsy Apple, Executive Director of the Global Climate Legal Defense Network

to explain.

You have five people who were advocating for renewable energy policy in Vietnam, adjust

transition to sustainable energy sources, and four people initially and then a fifth

were arrested for tax evasion and are in jail and have been criminally convicted for

tax evasion, which seems like it has nothing to do with the climate, but in fact, it's

a way that the Vietnamese government has been able to weaponize the law against people

whose activities they don't like in the context of the climate.

That fifth person she mentioned was another internationally renowned environmental activist.

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