Last month, 26-year old Laotian activist Khieo Lapchanh disappeared on his way to his apartment in a Thai province just outside Bangkok. He didn't show up for his registration interview with the United Nations Refugee Agency in Bangkok the next day, and hasn't been heard from since, according to a human rights group tracking his case. Days later, Australian democracy campaigner Tran Hiep, who was in Cambodia to meet with other activists of Vietnamese origin, similarly disappeared.
Tran Hiep was due to meet his wife in Bangkok but never boarded his flight. This week, Vietnamese officials confirmed his arrest and that of the two other activists who were with him. "My husband entered Cambodia legally, and now he's gone missing and it appears [he's] in a Vietnamese prison somewhere," said Chloe Dang, Hiep's wife.
"How can the Vietnamese government abduct someone on another country's land?" Their cases underscore the precarious landscape for activists across Asia, who are increasingly vulnerable to transnational repression – hunted down by authoritarian governments even across international borders. Human rights groups have been warning of a "swap market" of repression in Southeast Asia, where governments in the region work together to intimidate, arrest, extradite and punish critics and refugees. "Everyone has to be looking over their shoulder all the time," said Phil Robertson, director of Bangkok-based Asia Human Rights & Labour Advocates, who has tracked and advocated for victims of transnational repression for almost two decades.
In recent years, Cambodian opposition leaders say they have been surveilled and jailed in Thailand, once a refuge for asylum seekers. Laotian refugees in the country – verified and registered by the United Nations – have gone missing or been found dead. Viet Tan, a pro-democracy group composed of members of the Vietnamese diaspora, published a report in September that documented 20 cases where Vietnamese authorities pursued critics and activists outside its own borders.
These include blogger Duong Van Thai, who in April 2023 disappeared off the streets of Bangkok before showing up in detention in Vietnam. Thai, who was a U.N.-registered refugee seeking asylum, has since been sentenced to 12 years in prison. "You'd expect there would be some larger outcry because what we're talking about is violation of refugee rights [and] of state sovereignty," said Robertson.
But countries in the region have been "muted." "It seems to almost be like: if you do something in my country… later I'll expect a favor from you," a trade where dissidents are mutually suppressed, he added. Thailand's Ministry of Information and a spokesman for the Cambodian government did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Manushya Foundation, a human rights group that has previously assisted other Laotian asylum seekers, reported Khieo Lapchanh's disappearance to the Thai police.
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