The Vaclav Havel Center has named imprisoned Vietnamese journalist, publisher, and democracy advocate Phạm Đoan Trang as the laureate of its 2026 “Disturbing the Peace” Award to a Courageous Writer at Risk. The organization honors her unwavering commitment to defending freedom of expression in the face of systemic political persecution.
Trang is currently enduring a nine-year sentence in a Vietnamese prison, convicted by the one-party state on charges of distributing anti-state propaganda. Despite facing ruthless government harassment that led to prolonged incarceration, her extensive body of literary and journalistic work continues to challenge authoritarian suppression. Alongside co-founding two primary projects for Legal Initiatives for Vietnam (LIV)—Luật Khoa tạp chí (LKTC) and The Vietnamese Magazine (TVM)—she is celebrated for authoring several local texts on civic engagement, legal literacy, and civil rights, including Popular Politics, Handbook on Supporting Prisoners, and Non-Violent Opposition.
Celebrating its tenth anniversary, the “Disturbing the Peace” Award is granted annually to authors who mirror the late Czech playwright and dissident Václav Havel’s fierce dedication to human rights. The prize aims to shine and light and bring attention to writers who sacrifice their personal liberty to uphold truth, human dignity, and artistic integrity against oppressive regimes.
An international jury composed of scholars, human rights defenders, and former awardees selected Trang. They commended her defiance and her impact on the global human rights discourse.
Salil Tripathi, a board member of PEN International, praised Trang’s steadfast resilience.
“The brave Vietnamese writer and human rights defender Phạm Đoan Trang writes with the clarity of someone who has always known that silence is not an option. She has paid for that clarity with her freedom, and still her words carry further than the walls meant to contain them. Vaclav Havel understood that the dissident’s power lies not in force but in refusal—the simple, stubborn act of naming things as they are. Phạm Đoan Trang has lived that refusal, word by word, essay by essay, arrest by arrest, and in doing so has shown what it means to disturb the peace of the powerful.”
Former U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic John Shattuck underscored the resonance between Trang’s reporting and Havel’s legacy.
“Phạm Đoan Trang uses plain-spoken eloquence to describe the suppression of freedom. She has suffered the unjust consequences of speaking truth to power. Her life and her writings are a shining example of Vaclav Havel’s Power of the Powerless, in which he proclaims that ‘[t]ruth does not operate politically because it commands obedience, but because it awakens recognition.’ Havel celebrates the moral power of dissent in words that succinctly express why Pham Doan Trang has been chosen to receive the 2026 Disturbing the Peace Award: ‘The dissident articulates [her] dignity as a citizen, regardless of the cost.'”
Maksim Znak, a Belarusian lawyer, academic, and the 2025 recipient of the same award, emphasized the immense personal cost of her activism.
“Phạm Đoan Trang confirmed the message of her writing by her actions: she proved ready to sacrifice everything she had for the sake of her ideals, understanding the risks and calmly asking to use the threats to the benefits of her mission. That is the real power of a prominent writer, and that is what living in truth actually means.”
This latest recognition from the Vaclav Havel Center adds to a growing list of international accolades bestowed upon Trang while behind bars. In addition to the 2026 Disturbing the Peace Award, her fight for civil liberties has previously earned her the 2017 Homo Homini Award, the 2019 Press Freedom Prize for Impact, the 2022 International Women of Courage Award, the 2022 Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders, the 2022 CPJ International Press Freedom Award, the 2024 PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award, and the 2025 Tucholsky Prize.
As authorities in Hà Nội continue to face intense international scrutiny over their aggressive, ongoing crackdown on independent journalists, civil society leaders, and publishers, Trang’s recognition serves as another reminder of the dangerous struggle for fundamental democratic freedoms in Việt Nam.
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