Hoàng Cơ Minh (20 June 1935 – 28 August 1987) was the first chairman of the Vietnam Reform Revolutionary Party or Việt Tân.

After the Fall of Saigon in 1975, Hoàng Cơ Minh established the foundations for a long-term democracy movement against the Vietnamese communist regime.

Hoàng Cơ Minh's family was taken in by James Kelly, a Vietnam veteran and later senior national security official in the Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations.

For the next several years, Hoàng Cơ Minh worked as a house painter during the day and focused his energies on organizing among the diaspora.

Hoàng Cơ Minh advocated a self-reliant struggle based on the power of the Vietnamese people with the ultimate goal of rebuilding and modernizing the country.

This ran contrary to much of the sentiment in the diaspora then which believed that outside support was absolutely essential for changing Vietnam and narrowly defined the struggle as overthrowing communism.

In 1981, Hoàng Cơ Minh met with Thai government officials and received their agreement to open offices along the border with Laos.

In summer 1987, Hoàng Cơ Minh led a group of 200 activists from Thailand to Vietnam in an operation known as “Eastward” (Đông Tiến).

Inspired by the vision of Hoàng Cơ Minh and his sacrifice for the movement, Việt Tân continues to this day as the leading Vietnamese pro-democracy opposition party.