The human rights organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused Vietnam on Friday of kidnapping a blogger critical of the regime in Thailand and of living under refugee status.
Thai Van Duong, who fled Vietnamese authorities to the kingdom in 2019 and was later granted refugee status, disappeared last week.
According to Vietnamese state media, the 41-year-old is being held in custody in Vietnam after he was arrested on March 14 for “illegally entering” the country.
HRW does not believe this version and has asked the Thai authorities to investigate.
“Vietnamese state agents kidnapped Thai Van Duong, a UNHCR-recognized refugee, from the street near his home in Pathum Thani province, just outside Bangkok,” Phil Robertson, deputy director for Asia, said at a conference in Bangkok.
Thai Van Duong “would never (voluntarily) return to Vietnam,” said Grace Bui, a friend of the blogger and former head of another NGO, Project 88.
Mr Duong regularly posted videos on YouTube criticizing the Vietnamese communist regime and accusing it of corruption.
For state media, he ran a Facebook group that published “distorted information” about the private lives of Vietnamese leaders.
Ms. Bui said that on April 13 she received a phone call informing her of her friend’s disappearance.
Witnesses then told him they saw two white sedans blocking his motorcycle, one from the front and the other from the back.
“They came during Songkran (Thai New Year) when everyone was on vacation and all shops were closed,” she said, adding that since 2021, Thai Van Duong had told her several times that he felt in danger.
Thai police told AFP they had contacted Vietnamese authorities but had received no information.
The Vietnamese Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In 2018, a Vietnamese man was sentenced in Germany to 4 years in prison for taking part in a kidnapping in a Berlin park on the orders of Hanoi.
Two Vietnamese diplomats were also expelled.