Source photographVietnamese police questioning refugees in Thailand, March 14, 2024. Credit: © Private. View with the original reporting →
Human Rights Watch reported growing cooperation between Thai and Vietnamese authorities and described arrests, detention visits, and alleged pressure on Dega and other Vietnamese refugees during 2025.
Accounts gathered in Bangkok
Human Rights Watch said it interviewed 34 Vietnamese refugees and asylum seekers in Bangkok between July and October 2025, including more than 20 Dega and Hmong people facing alleged persecution connected to religion or protest activity. The organization reported that many interviewees described greater fear of arrest, abduction, extradition, or forced return as official cooperation between Thailand and Viet Nam increased.
The report connected those fears to several 2025 immigration operations and to accounts that Vietnamese officials visited people in Thai detention or encountered them during immigration check-ins. It also described reports of pressure to sign return documents and threats involving relatives in Viet Nam. These are attributed findings and witness accounts published by Human Rights Watch, not independently verified field findings by Operation Siam.
Human Rights Watch called on Thailand to stop detaining refugees and to prevent Vietnamese police from interfering in refugee cases. All detention numbers and case-status statements in the report belong to the dates and groups it documented; they are not a current community total or a statement about anyone’s status today.
Terminology and scope
The report covers several Vietnamese exile communities and uses “Montagnard” for Dega people. Operation Siam uses Dega in its own voice, preserves the report’s terminology when attributing its findings, and does not treat evidence about one community or case as proof about every refugee in Thailand.
Sources and further reading
- Human Rights Watch — Thailand: Vietnamese Refugees at Risk from Hanoi — Original report published 13 November 2025.
External links are provided for verification and further reading. A citation does not imply endorsement, partnership, or control by the cited institution.
This news brief is an original Operation Siam summary of the cited reporting. It preserves source attribution, does not reproduce the source article, and does not imply endorsement, partnership, or independent verification by Operation Siam.