Two seemingly unrelated incidents more than a year apart have sparked some of the biggest youth protests in Vietnam in a generation.
‘Tree of Justice’
Eighteen-year-old student Do Ngoc Phuong Thuy, known as Mina, was killed in Hanoi in May last year when the motorbike she was travelling on with her father was hit by a car. Tragic as the incident was, few expected it to lead to “an eruption of Gen Z outrage and creativity” that thrust Memorial Tree 55 on Nguyen Huy Tu Street “into the local zeitgeist”, said The New York Times.
The subsequent investigation yielded little information except that the driver had the initials N.S.C. and was born in 1961. This led to social media speculation that former National Assembly deputy Nguyen Sy Cuong was the car driver responsible. Some felt “the incident had been swept under the rug due to the influence of powerful figures”, said the BBC.
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But by August 2026 the car crash and Mina’s death had “almost faded from public memory” and “may have stayed that way if hadn’t been for the heavy-handed decision of Vietnam’s minister for culture, Lam Thi Phuong Than, to all but ban a new album by rap artist ‘MCK’”, said academic Nils Mallock on The Conversation. “This censorship against the most popular rap singer among Gen Z drew scrutiny to the culture minister – and from there attention moved to her husband, Nguyen Sy Cuong.”
Within days, millions of young people voiced their outrage online and Tree 55, renamed the “Tree of Justice”, had become ground zero in a growing campaign against a perceived government cover-up.
Government reaction
“Pressurised by more than a year’s worth of growing suspicion and a rush of online attention, the issue had become too big to ignore,” said the BBC.
On the evening of 17 August, state broadcaster Vietnam Television (VTV) aired an official statement from authorities confirming Nguyen Sy Cuong’s involvement in the incident, adding that because he had “sincerely confessed and actively and fully remedied the consequences of his actions”, the victim’s family had submitted a petition to exempt him from prosecution.
In the one-party state, the official acknowledgment of responsibility was “an extraordinary concession to public pressure”, said The New York Times. Warning against “opportunists exploiting the incident on social media”, the TV report “reflected the government’s deep concerns about an unexpected youth movement pushing for accountability at a time when officials are focused on economic growth”.
The Vietnamese authorities are also mindful of the wave of Gen Z protests that “toppled leaders in Nepal, challenged authorities in Indonesia, and continue to rattle the power structure in India”.
Mina’s father Do Viet Hung, who survived the crash, appeared in the VTV broadcast, saying the “family was satisfied with the investigation’s findings”, said the BBC, and asked people “not to be drawn into the influence of reactionary elements”.
A senior police official also said in the report that some people were “leveraging the incident to stoke dissent”. The Ministry of Public Security had “uncovered highly dangerous plots and intentions by hostile forces, reactionaries and bad actors to incite unrest and cause disorder”.
