Six years ago, religious freedom activist Y Quynh Bdap fled his native Vietnam for Thailand, where he applied for refugee status with the United Nations and began the long process of seeking asylum in Canada.
This week, months after a Vietnamese extradition request sent him into hiding, the authorities finally caught up with Mr. Bdap. Thai police arrested him when he broke his cover to attend an interview for his asylum application at the Canadian embassy in Bangkok.
Activists are now scrambling to press Thailand not to send Mr. Bdap to Vietnam, where he faces “a real risk of an unfair trial and ill-treatment,” according to a statement from Human Rights Watch. On social media, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights defenders, Mary Lawlor, said extraditing Mr. Bdap would be in violation of Thailand’s domestic and international obligations.
From his temporary Thai sanctuary, Mr. Bdap had continued to press for reforms in Communist-ruled Vietnam through his organization Montagnards Stand for Justice, which advocates on behalf of a Christian ethnic minority living in the country’s central highlands and long subject to discrimination and repression, according to international human rights groups.
After violent protests in Vietnam’s Dak Lak province last year left nine people dead, including four police officers, Vietnamese authorities arrested dozens of people on terrorism charges, sentencing some to life in prison. Mr. Bdap was found guilty in absentia of playing a role in attacks against two government offices in the region, and sentenced to 10 years.
He has denied being involved in the violence, calling his conviction politically motivated retaliation for his activism. Following the trial in January, Vietnam requested Mr. Bdap’s extradition from Thailand, sending him into hiding.
In a video recorded earlier this month, Mr. Bdap said the Vietnamese authorities “have been hunting me down,” and that “many people in the refugee community have been arrested and interrogated” by the Thai police to “force them to reveal my whereabouts.”
Under both Thai and international law, Bangkok cannot deport someone to a country where they face a genuine risk of torture, persecution or other serious ill-treatment. However, Human Rights Watch has documented incidents where Thailand has deported or extradited other rights activists living as refugees to countries in Southeast Asia, in apparent exchange for crackdowns by neighbouring governments on Thai dissidents.
Thailand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Bdap was granted refugee status by the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR soon after arriving in Thailand, after which the agency began processing his resettlement to Canada.
Ottawa has faced criticism in the past for not acting fast enough in response to asylum applications by at-risk activists. In 2022, Chinese rights defender Dong Guangping was deported from Vietnam to China after two-and-a-half years of attempts to bring him from his hiding place in that country to Canada.
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According to Ben Swanton, a researcher at the 88 Project, which advocates for free speech in Vietnam, a decision by Ottawa on Mr. Bdap’s case was believed to be imminent prior to his arrest. He blamed the Canadian government for dragging its feet in processing Mr. Bdap’s application.
Mr. Swanton said the Vietnamese activist “is sitting in a Thai jail today because Global Affairs Canada made a conscious choice to delay his asylum application,” adding his organization had alerted the Canadian embassy to the risks Mr. Bdap was facing “but the government chose not to help him.”
Neither the embassy nor Global Affairs Canada would respond to questions about Mr. Bdap, referring The Globe to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, which in turn said it cannot comment, citing privacy concerns.
The incident comes as Ottawa is seeking closer ties with Hanoi, amid efforts to reduce reliance on China and foster Vietnam as a potential Western ally in the region, despite an escalating crackdown on dissent in the one-party state.
Mr. Swanton called on Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly to intervene in Mr. Bdap’s case “even if this means antagonizing Vietnam.”
In the video earlier this month, Mr. Bdap appealed to the international community for support, citing the cases of Truong Duy Nhat and Thai Van Duong, two other Vietnamese activists who were forcibly returned from Thailand and later jailed.
“Please protect me,” he said. “Don’t let them arrest and bring me back to Vietnam.”