The Vietnamese government has placed more than 170 rights activists, including their family members, under house arrest and barred them from leaving the country on “fabricated national security grounds,” a human rights group said on Thursday. Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a report documenting the Vietnamese government’s “systematic blocking” of more than 170 rights activists, bloggers, dissidents, and their family members from domestic and international travel from 2004 to 2021. The actual number of cases is likely to be higher, given the country’s strict censorship regime and victims’ fear of publicizing their cases, it stated. “The authorities employ rights-abusing tactics such as holding activists in indefinite house arrest, detention when away from home, and bans on leaving the country under fabricated national security grounds,” Phil Robertson, HRW’s deputy Asia director, said in a statement. The house arrests were carried out with various methods, including stationing plainclothes security agents outside homes, …