Pham Doan Trang is the 2026 recipient of an award that promotes democratic freedoms and universal human rights.
Pham Doan Trang is the 2026 recipient of the ‘Disturbing the Peace Award to a Courageous Writer at Risk’ from The Vaclav Havel Centre, founded in 2012 to honour the legacy of Vaclav Havel, a playwright and human rights activist, and first president of the Czech Republic.
Salil Tripathi, former Chair of PEN International’s Writers in Prison Committee and current board member of PEN International, said “Pham Doan Trang writes with the clarity of someone who has always known that silence is not an option. She has paid for that clarity with her freedom, and still her words carry further than the walls meant to contain them.
“Vaclav Havel understood that the dissident’s power lies not in force but in refusal — the simple, stubborn act of naming things as they are. Pham Doan Trang has lived that refusal, word by word, essay by essay, arrest by arrest, and in doing so has shown what it means to disturb the peace of the powerful.”
A Vietnamese writer, journalist, publisher, and advocate for democratic freedoms and human rights, Pham Doan Trang is currently serving a nine-year prison sentence in Vietnam following her conviction for “conducting propaganda against the State.” Through her writing and activism, she has continued to defend freedom of expression despite years of harassment, persecution, and imprisonment.
In honouring Pham Doan Trang, the Vaclav Havel Centre recognises both her remarkable courage and the enduring power of the written word to challenge repression and defend human dignity.