The key findings and analysis of artistic freedom in Vietnam from the Southeast Asia Artistic Freedom RADAR, 2025.
Introduction
2025 was a transformative year for Vietnam, as Tô Lâm, in his second year as General Secretary of the Vietnam Communist Party (VCP), continued his ambitious reform plan aimed at achieving what he calls the “Era of National Rise” (Kỷ nguyên vươn mình của dân tộc).[1] Under this political slogan, Tô Lâm urged the nation to embark on a “double breakthrough” in digital technology, and to solve all weaknesses and limitations that have been stifling the nation’s growth.[2] As a result, there were revisions to laws and regulations, administrative restructuring and merging of governmental offices. 2025 also saw the many-month-long preparation for important events such as the celebration of 50 years since the end of the Second Indochinese War (Vietnam War), the 80th anniversary of Vietnam’s independence from France in 1945, and the 14th VCP National Congress, held in January 2026, which would determine the country’s trajectory in the next five years.
Impact on artistic freedom
Against this backdrop, RADAR recorded a total of 22 violations and challenges against creative and artistic expressions—a surge almost doubling 2024’s 12 cases. Eighteen involved popular music, pop culture, or entertainment, in other words, works with wide appeal. It appears that, along with the ongoing concerted control over the online sphere, as pointed out in the 2023–2024 report, Vietnam is tightening its grip on art forms that reach mass audiences. This is evident in the targeting of 15 rap and pop songs and/or musicians, removal of the Chinese drama series Love Ambition for containing the nine-dash line, and the targeting of the annual VietPride parade and other related events in Ho Chi Minh City.
This year’s high number of music cases is attributed to the Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee’s Propaganda and Mass Mobilisation Department’s Official Dispatch 69 (Dispatch 69), which called for stricter measures against musical activities that show signs of “deviating from the cultural standard”. It cited 9 songs and 11 performers by name as “being amongst works with offensive lyrics and ‘cultural deviations’”.[3] The official directive also suggested that relevant government departments consider not inviting the named singers to perform at city-organised events,[4] effectively deplatforming them without explicitly banning the songs or artists. As an advisory body that works closely with the Politburo, the Secretariat, and Party committees at all levels, this department is tasked with “shaping the Party’s politics, ideology, and morality, perfecting socialism, and fostering a close relationship between the Party and the People.”[5] Dispatch 69 was addressed to the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Culture and Sports, the HCMC Music Association, the HCMC Council of Artistic Theory and Criticism, and local news and communications agencies, urging them to collaborate to “orient, correct, and establish a healthy, humanistic artistic and cultural environment that fits the nation’s original traditions and fine customs.”[6]
Having no legal or constitutional power,[7] Dispatch 69 nonetheless has an authoritative voice and operated as a speech act which triggered a chain of reactions. Shortly after the document was issued, many of the Vietnamese singers, including Pháo, GDucky, Andree, Jack, and B Ray, immediately removed[8] the music videos for the songs mentioned from their YouTube accounts even though the dispatch did not explicitly require them to.
It is important to note that most of these works were released years, some more than a decade earlier, and have been in public circulation without any untoward incidents. Public reactions were mixed. On one music Facebook page covering the story, some commenters argued the artists deserved penalisation, and that their music be banned outright; others mocked the artists’ quiet compliance as little more than an attempt to appease the authorities.[9]
Within a few days of its circulation, the Bureau of Performing Arts and the Bureau of Broadcast, Television and Electronic Information (under the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism) met to discuss plans for stricter measures against inappropriate musical activities.[10] The directive led to self-censorship within the wider music community, as even those not mentioned, such as SS Label, which represents rappers and producers such as Rhymastic, Andree, Binz, Hoàng Touliver, and Soobin Hoàng Sơn, also took down some of their artists’ hip-hop hits from their Youtube accounts.[11]
Due to the concatenation of many important political events, the Vietnamese soundscape in 2025 also witnessed the return of “red music”—a genre of revolutionary, nationalistic songs that first emerged in Vietnam during the First Indochinese War (1946-1957). Within the first week of August 2025, one month before Vietnam celebrated the 80th anniversary of its Independence Day on 2 September, reports noted the release of around 20 patriotic songs and music videos by local pop singers.[12] These musical works were varied in genres and styles—some reinterpreting folk and traditional forms, others drawing on more popular genres such as rap, pop, and EDM— but all centred on themes of love for the nation, homeland, and compatriots. This wave has continued into recent months, most notably with singer Anh Tú’s track Thưa Đảng (Có Đảng Trong Tim), (‘Dear Party—The Party Is in My Heart’), which he performed at a state event in January 2026.[13] While many members of the public have praised these celebrities for using their platforms to promote patriotism, the developments described above raise a broader question about the local music scene: is contemporary “red music” merely a temporary resurgence, or has it become an outlet for pop stars to perform their loyalty amid an increasingly hostile political environment?
Among the 22 cases documented, 17 violations were carried out by the state, which requires only a single administrative step to determine whether artworks can circulate in the public domain. This marks a significant shift, as during the 2023–2024 period, cases often had more than one step in the challenge chain. In that period, the public played an important role in alerting authorities to alleged violations, for example when films and dramas feature the contested nine-dash lined map. With only 5 cases instigated by the public recorded in 2025, a clearer gap has emerged between the public and regulatory bodies as agents of enforcement.
This shift may suggest that, under Party Secretary Tô Lâm’s leadership, Vietnam is moving towards a more authoritarian approach when managing artistic expression. This approach, backed by laws and regulations, albeit based on vague notions of “original” traditions and “fine” customs, allows the government to successfully exercise its control over what is accepted and what is not, and receive support from the masses.
On 25 September 2025, just two days before their flagship “rainbow march” took place on Nguyễn Huệ walking street, VietPride, the annual festival for LGBT+ community in Vietnam, announced on their Facebook page that the event was cancelled due to “external reasons.”[14] At least five other events in Ho Chi Minh City were similarly subjected to last-minute cancellations or restrictions on access.[15] Though VietPride never elaborated on what these “external reasons” entailed, netizens speculated that the cancellations stemmed from a scheduling conflict with another festival taking place on Nguyễn Huệ Street. If that were indeed the case, however, it would not explain why other events linked to VietPride, held at different venues, were also cancelled. Indeed, subsequently, VietPride also announced that its events in Hanoi would be scaled down. This incident—unprecedented in the organisation’s 13-year history and notable given its regular coverage in both local and international media for advocating LGBTQ rights and social acceptance—has raised concerns as well as anxiety within the community about the government’s evolving stance towards queer visibility. While observations from previous years suggested that the seemingly queer-friendly Vietnam only permits queerness to exist within an arrested autonomy—a controlled space within which one is given a feigned sense of freedom, the events surrounding VietPride augurs a grim future where even this limited space may be steadily narrowing.
Conclusion
In October 2025, a Tuổi Trẻ News article titled “More than 1000 photos submitted to Photo Hanoi’25, only 4 were removed” served as a proud entry point for the discussion about the incoming photography biennial that took place later that month. Among the four removed, two were disqualified during the exhibition licensing process for violating traffic laws, as one showed a girl lying on a zebra crossing.[16] These two photos form part of photographer Jamie Maxtone-Graham’s series Lying Down (2012), which depicts a girl lying on the ground in front of various urban sites across Hanoi. The asymmetry between the amount of pictures approved and four censored was so jarring that it almost read as a telling sign in how progressive the process of evaluation and exhibition licensing in Vietnam had become. Yet, other figures, like the those in this report, or in Reporters Without Borders’ press freedom index which ranks Vietnam 174 out 180[17] presents a contradiction. While small progress has been made, in this era of heavy-handed leadership, it may be a long time before these ripples form a wave.
Footnotes
[1] Giang Nguyen Khac, “Vietnam’s Bureaucratic Reforms: Opportunities and Challenges in ‘The Era of National Rise’”, ISEAS Perspectives, No.14 (2025): 2.
[2] Phùng Hữu Phú, “Kỷ nguyên vươn mình của dân tộc và những yêu cầu lịch sử,” Tạp chí Cộng sản, January 3, 2025.
[3] Tuyết Anh, “B Ray – GDucky và loạt nghệ sĩ “xóa sổ” MV sau đề nghị chấn chỉnh các sản phẩm âm nhạc “lệch chuẩn văn hóa””, Kenh14, 29 October 2025.
[4] Thư Viện Pháp Luật, “Công văn 69 định hướng chấn chỉnh hoạt động âm nhạc có biểu hiện lệch chuẩn văn hóa tại TP.HCM,” accessed March 9, 2026.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] According to Tạp chí Dân chủ & Pháp luật (Democracy and Law Journal), the official communication channel of Vietnam’s Ministry of Justice, official dispatch is an administrative document, a means of correspondence between government agency and organisation, official and citizen.
[8] Since RADAR is only able to document incidents in the public space, or verified through private sources, it may well be that the number of works removed is much higher, but is as yet unnoticed by the public.
[9] Sorry Musicc., Facebook post, 28 October 2025.
[10] Tuyết Anh, “B Ray – GDucky và loạt nghệ sĩ “xóa sổ” MV sau đề nghị chấn chỉnh các sản phẩm âm nhạc “lệch chuẩn văn hóa””, Kenh14, 29 October 2025.
[11] Thanh Niên, “Binz và các rapper bất ngờ gỡ loạt MV ‘ăn chơi’,” October 28, 2025.
[12] Báo Xây Dựng, “Bùng nổ làn sóng âm nhạc yêu nước chào mừng Quốc khánh 2-9,” August 13, 2025.
[13] “Chuyện xúc động đằng sau ca khúc ‘Thưa Đảng’ của ca sĩ Anh Tú,” VietNamNet, January 15, 2026.
[14] VietPride, “Thông tin về hoạt động Dung dăng Dung dẻ”, Facebook, September 25, 2025.
[15] My Nguyen, “Vietnam’s Quiet LGBT Politics,” Vietnam Social Sciences Forum, May 20, 2021.
[16] Thiên Điểu, “Hơn 1.000 bức ảnh tham gia Photo Hanoi’25, chỉ 4 ảnh bị loại,” Tuổi Trẻ Online, October 22, 2025.
[17] Press Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders.
Linh Le
Linh Lê is an independent curator, writer and researcher from Saigon, Vietnam. Her work investigates the changing landscapes and ecologies of Saigon and other parts of Vietnam under the pressure of modernisation and urbanisation, while at the same time exploring and filling in the gaps in contemporary art historical discourses in Vietnam, particularly in experimental art forms such as performance art and video art. Since July 2024, she has been working on Đo Đạc, a site-responsive curatorial project that attempts to survey the impact of forced resettlement in Thủ Thiêm peninsula, Sài Gòn. She is currently a Curatorial Board member of Á Space (Hà Nội), and a research fellow of ArtsEquator’s Southeast Asia Artistic Freedom RADAR project.
