Chau Van Kham

Chau Van Kham (; born 1949) is an Australian democracy activist who was identified by Amnesty International Australia as being a prisoner of conscience after he was imprisoned in Vietnam between 2019 and 2023 on disputed charges of "financing terrorism".

Early life and career Chau was born in what was then French Indochina. During the Tet Offensive in 1968, he survived the Battle of Huế, where he had been studying. He later served as a soldier in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam before 1975. Following the end of the Vietnam War, he was sent to a re-education camp, where he remained for three years before fleeing Vietnam by boat.

Chau settled in Australia in 1983, where he ran a launderette in Sydney before working as a baker for several decades until he retired. At the time of his arrest, he was married with two children.

Activism Chau had fought for South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. In 2010, he joined Việt Tân, a United States-based organisation that aims to establish a liberal democracy in Vietnam. Việt Tân was subsequently proscribed as a terrorist group by the Government of Vietnam in 2016, though the United Nations described it as "a peaceful organisation advocating for democratic reform". In November 2019, his single-day trial in Ho Chi Minh City, he was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment; at the same trial, Nguyễn andTrần were sentenced to 11 and 10 years, respectively. Chau made an application to return to Australia under the International Transfer of Prisoners scheme following his sentencing.

National and international response Đỗ Hoàng Điềm, the then-chairman of Việt Tân, stated that Chau had entered Vietnam to gain "first-hand insight" into the country's human rights situation and stated that he had not committed any crimes. The United Nations' Working Group on Arbitrary Detention labelled Chau as "forcibly disappeared" in 2022. In June 2023, the new Prime Minister of Australia, Anthony Albanese, raised Chau's imprisonment during a state visit to Vietnam to mark 50 years of Australia–Vietnam relations.

Release Chau was released from prison on humanitarian grounds in July 2023 and was subsequently deported to Australia. Albanese publicly stated he "very much welcomes the release of Chau Van Kham", while his deputy, Richard Marles, thanked the Vietnamese government for its decision to release Chau, stating they did so "on the basis of humanitarian grounds and in the spirit of friendship that exists between Australia and Vietnam". Human Rights Watch, as well as Chau's family, thanked the Australian government for its advocacy and "high-level diplomacy", while noting that 150 people remained imprisoned in Vietnam for peaceful democratic activism. He currently lives in Sydney with his wife.