(HRW/IFEX) – The following is a Human Rights Watch press release: PRESIDENT CLINTON’S TRIP TO VIETNAM (New York, November 10, 2000) – As President Clinton prepares for his historic trip to Vietnam, Human Rights Watch urged that he give high priority to human rights issues during his discussions with Vietnamese officials in mid-November. Human Rights […]
(HRW/IFEX) – The following is a Human Rights Watch press release:
PRESIDENT CLINTON’S TRIP TO VIETNAM
(New York, November 10, 2000) – As President Clinton prepares for his historic trip to Vietnam, Human Rights Watch urged that he give high priority to human rights issues during his discussions with Vietnamese officials in mid-November.
Human Rights Watch noted that Vietnam has taken steps in recent years to address some human rights violations and has implemented social and economic reforms. Tens of thousands of political detainees and re-education camp inmates imprisoned in the 1980s and 1990s have been released, thousands of Vietnamese who fled abroad as refugees have returned without incident, and the government has shown some willingness to cooperate with the U.N. on human rights issues.
However, the government continues to seriously curtail fundamental freedoms – particularly freedom of expression by dissidents and freedom of association by independent religious groups and trade unions.
The U.S. needs to take a more energetic approach to raising human rights concerns with Vietnam, said Mike Jendrzejczyk, Washington Director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division. This can be part of a constructive exchange: President Clinton can offer technical assistance for reform and seek commitments for improvements in return.
The U.S. could assist in the reform of Vietnam’s press, criminal, and national security laws and help ensure its compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which Vietnam has ratified.
Human Rights Watch stressed that U.S. policy should focus not only on implementing the bilateral trade agreement signed this year with Vietnam, but also on obtaining concrete human rights improvements. This historic visit is a crucial moment for the U.S. to send a clear signal to Hanoi on how progress on human rights will affect other aspects of the evolving bilateral relationship with the U.S., said Jendrzejczyk. The U.S. Congress has yet to vote on the new trade agreement.
Human Rights Watch urged Clinton during his visit to:
1. Call on Vietnam to immediately release all political and religious prisoners, and to cease surveillance and harassment of dissidents including those released from prison or detention.
2. Emphasize that Vietnam’s human rights and labor rights record will be carefully considered in the upcoming debate over Vietnam’s trade agreement and its receiving Most Favored Nation (MFN) status.
3. Encourage Vietnam to cooperate more fully with the U.N.’s human rights mechanisms and to implement the recommendations of the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (which visited Vietnam in 1994) and the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Religious Intolerance (who visited Vietnam in 1998). The Working Group, among other things, called for better compliance with international standards on treatment of prisoners. The report by the U.N. Special Rapporteur for Religious Intolerance recommended that people imprisoned for their religious beliefs, upon their release from prison, should be allowed to resume their religious activities with full rights and freedoms.
4. Support Vietnam’s process of legal reform. That reform should address not only laws dealing with commercial matters but reforms of criminal, press and national security laws. Call on the Vietnamese government to introduce legislation that guarantees, both in the letter and in the application, the rights to freedom of opinion and expression, assembly, and association, and specifically to repeal Directive 31/CP on administrative detention.
5. Encourage Vietnam to achieve greater transparency and accountability in its legal and penal systems and continue to press for the establishment of an independent and impartial judiciary. Press for access for international observers and independent monitors to trials and to persons held in prison or administrative detention.
6. Urge the Vietnamese government to end its censorship and control over the domestic media, including the Internet and electronic communications, recognizing that a free press is essential in promoting civil and political rights. The government should consider amending or repealing the 1999 press law and the 1993 Law on Publications, which limit the right of the domestic and foreign press to report independently and accurately without penalties or censorship.
HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUES IN VIETNAM
Press Backgrounder
While dissent is seriously punished by isolation of critics and through a legal system that is highly politicized, Human Rights Watch notes that there have been areas of gradual improvement in Vietnam in recent years. Restrictions on everyday life for most citizens have eased noticeably as the market economy has taken hold. Travel within Vietnam is easier. Surveillance of ordinary citizens through the country’s extensive network of monitors has become less intrusive, although individuals the government considers to be subversive or plotting peaceful evolution continue to be watched closely. Worship services of many major religions now go ahead unhindered, while at the same time the government exercises control over virtually every other aspect of religion, from ordination of Catholic clergy to prohibition of flood relief efforts by the non-sanctioned Buddhist organization, the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam.
Highly publicized steps during 2000 to liberalize the economy, however, including the signing of a landmark trade agreement with the United States and the establishment of the country’s first stock exchange, have not been accompanied by rights improvements. Authorities continue to take strong action against those who criticize the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) or speak out in favor of democratic change. Disaffected former CPV leaders, long-time academic critics, independent religious leaders, and the press are common targets. A wide range of political subjects remain off-limits to the media. In a show of reconciliation during the year 2000, the government granted amnesties to more than 20,000 prisoners, but only a handful were people held for their political or religious views. The government restricts access to areas affected by social unrest.
Repression of Dissent
Twenty-fifth anniversary celebrations of Vietnam’s reunification in April highlighted recent social and economic openings and the government’s success in reintegrating returning refugees and bringing recovery after decades of war. However, the government maintains tight control over freedom of expression and other basic rights. Peaceful critics of the government continue to have few outlets for independent expression.
Communication among dissidents, and between them and the outside world, is hampered by official interception of mail, blockage of telephone lines, and denial of publishing rights. When dissidents or former political prisoners criticize the CPV or call for reforms they are subject to heightened surveillance or interrogation by officials.
The 1997 Administrative Detention Decree 31/CP remains in force. It allows officials to detain individuals suspected of posing a threat to national security without a warrant or prior judicial approval. Article 30 of Vietnam’s criminal code enables local authorities to place people convicted of national security offenses under supervision and surveillance for a probationary period of up to five years after release from prison. Formerly imprisoned political dissidents and re-education camp inmates, including religious dissidents, appear to be routinely subject to such monitoring.
In early 2000, the CPV’s ideological commission accused Nguyen Thanh Giang, a leading geologist and outspoken intellectual who had been detained for two months in 1999, of writing documents which showed close collusion with reactionary forces abroad to disrupt the social order. Giang remains under surveillance as of this writing.
On May 12, police in Dalat put dissident intellectual Ha Si Phu (Nguyen Xuan Tu) under house arrest and threatened to charge him with treason under Article 72 of the Criminal Code. Authorities apparently linked him to dissident intellectuals who were drafting an open appeal for greater democracy. On April 28, police searched his house and confiscated his computer and diskettes. As of October, Ha Si Phu remained under investigation and confined to his home, although he had not yet been officially charged.
The government announced several times during 2000 that it was taking steps against terrorist plots allegedly supported by overseas Vietnamese and imperialist countries. On August 16, Nhan Dan (The People) newspaper stated that more than forty people had been arrested since March 1999 for directly participat[ing] in the reactionaries’ sabotage
plan, but it was unclear whether those arrested were indeed saboteurs or peaceful critics.
Several religious leaders and former political prisoners have been recently denied exit visas to attend conferences abroad, including prominent dissident Nguyen Dan Que, Thich Tue Sy of the banned Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam (UBCV), and Thich Thai Hoa, a leader of the Buddhist order in Hue.
Despite government repression, several dissidents have issued critical public statements during the last year, though, typically, they have been able to do so only on the Internet and primarily reach an overseas audience. On May 19, five prominent dissidents issued a public appeal to the National Assembly for greater democracy, the withdrawal of charges against fellow dissident Ha Si Phu, and the repeal of Administrative Detention Decree 31/CP. In April, Thich Huyen Quang, supreme patriarch of the UBCV, who remains under pagoda arrest in Quang Ngai province, issued a letter to the party leadership calling for greater religious freedom.
Internet and Press Controls
The domestic media remain under strict state control and publish little criticism of the government. One exception during the year 2000, however, was criticism published in Nhan Dan by Vietnam’s most prominent war hero, General Vo Nguyen Giap, who stated that the CPV should be more democratic and accused it of ideological stagnancy. Requests by dissidents such as Tran Do and Thich Quang Do for publishing licenses have been either denied or ignored by the authorities.
Provisions in the 1999 Press Law, which enable media outlets to be sued for defamation whether the information they publish is accurate or not, were applied for the first time in September 2000. The Haiphong Agriculture Materials and Transport Company sued Tuoi Tre Hanoi (Youth News) for damaging the company’s prestige because of its critical reporting on the company’s operations. As of October, the case had not yet gone to trial.
The potential for press censorship increased in August 2000 when the Ministry of Culture proposed new regulations that would more than triple the number of activities, from 200 to 650, defined as offensive to Vietnamese culture. The regulations, which had not been officially adopted as law as of October, would impose fines for the production or possession of culturally inappropriate materials, including those which distorted Vietnam’s history or defamed its national heroes.
Foreign journalists based in Vietnam receive strong warnings from government officials after trying to contact and interview dissidents. On December 26, 1999, Pham The Hung, a French journalist for Radio France International, was expelled from Vietnam after meeting with Catholics whose names were not on a list of interviewees he had submitted with his journalist visa request. In April, French reporter Arnaud Dubus, traveling on a tourist visa, was interrogated and had his notes confiscated by police after he met with several dissidents. On April 12, security police in Ho Chi Minh City arrested Sylvaine Pasquier, a reporter for the French weekly L’Express, after she tried to meet dissident Nguyen Dan Que. Pasquier was deported on April 14.
Vietnamese listeners have access to most international radio stations, but the government has jammed access to Radio Free Asia and Hmong-language Christian broadcasts from the Far East Broadcasting Company. In June 2000, the Foreign Ministry confirmed that the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), which had an application pending since 1993, would be authorized to open a Vietnam bureau.
While foreign language newspapers and magazines can be purchased in the major cities, an internal Customs Department bulletin in December 1999 announced a crackdown on illegally imported foreign publications because of their poisonous content. Singled out were the South China Morning Post, the Asian Wall Street Journal, Singapore’s Straits Times, and Thailand’s Nation. Foreign publications were occasionally censored. In May government censors blacked out an editorial in the International Herald Tribune that criticized Vietnam’s human rights record.
In March, the Ministry of Culture and Information ordered the confiscation and withdrawal from circulation of a book by Hanoi author Bui Ngoc Tan. The only book to be banned during the year, Chuyen Ke Nam 2000 (An Account of the Year 2000) described the author’s experiences in North Vietnamese prisons between 1968 and 1973.
Internet access remains tightly controlled for Vietnam’s approximately 85,000 subscribers (about .1 percent of the country’s population). The government maintains control over Vietnam’s only Internet access provider, Vietnam Data Communications (VDC), as well as over five Internet service providers operated by state organizations, including one owned by the army. VDC is authorized to monitor subscribers’ access to sites and to use firewalls to block connections to sites operated by groups critical of the government. In January 2000, the Foreign Ministry stated that all information relayed through the Internet in Vietnam must comply with broadly worded national security provisions in Vietnam’s press laws and could not damage the reputations of organizations or citizens. These measures have been selectively applied in the past to keep critical voices out of public media. In September, the government launched a new domestic Internet service, which, unlike other services does not require users to register with the government. The new service, however, restricts subscribers to Vietnamese websites only.
Peasant and Worker Unrest
Several protests over alleged abuses by local officials and complaints about compulsory labor contributions to national infrastructure projects have been reported recently, although coverage is limited by strict controls on media access to the affected areas. In April 2000, several dozen people from southern Dong Thap province assembled for several days in front of the CPV headquarters in Hanoi to protest corruption and the lack of democracy in their province. That same month, villagers in Nam Dinh province denounced alleged interference by local Party officials in commune-level People’s Council elections. In June, citizens in Nam Dinh held two district Party members hostage for a week. After promises that the hostage takers would not be punished, the officials were released.
In August, a group of 150 ethnic Ede highlanders in Dak Lak province stormed a lowland Vietnamese settlement in protest over encroachment on their land, part of which was being developed for coffee plantations and gem mining. In September, more than one hundred protesters from several provinces camped outside government offices in Ho Chi Minh City for several weeks to lodge complaints against graft and land confiscation.
Labor unrest is a growing problem in Vietnam, with the official Vietnamese news agency reporting more than 50,000 labor disputes and 400 strikes – mostly in Ho Chi Minh City and the southern provinces – since Vietnam’s Labor Code was passed in 1995. During the third quarter of 2000 alone, some 6,000 workers have taken part in nine strikes at enterprises in Ho Chi Minh City. According to VNA, most of the labor disputes have involved violations of labor contracts and collective labor agreements.
Rural grievances over unfair taxation were exacerbated by the unpopular decree introduced by Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet in 1996 on compulsory labor contributions. Under the slogan of the state and the people working together, citizens are required to contribute ten days labor to national infrastructure projects, such as road-building. Most urban dwellers pay off local authorities rather than undertake the labor, but few poor peasants can afford to buy their way out, contributing to their resentment against local authorities.
As the Ninth Party Congress nears, scheduled for March 2001, Party officials appear increasingly apprehensive about the potential for rural unrest to boil over, as it did in Thai Binh and Dong Nai provinces in 1997. Party Secretary Le Kha Phieu announced in September 2000 that cabinet-led inspection teams would be dispatched to fifteen cities and provinces to look into citizen complaints about corruption and abuses by officials. In October, Nhan Dan reported that more than 2,000 government and party officials had been disciplined in Thai Binh as a result of peasant demonstrations in 1997 against graft and unfair taxation.
Religious Repression
Religious freedom also remains sharply curtailed. The government’s ban on independent religious associations continues, with all religious groups required to register with and seek the approval of the state. In March 2000, a year-long controversy escalated over whether the party had the right to appoint, not simply to approve, abbots at the historic One-Pillar Pagoda in Hanoi. Congregation members contacted UBCV members abroad and prepared a petition protesting the replacement of their abbots with party appointees. In March, the Hanoi People’s Committee ordered head abbot Thich Thanh Khanh to leave the pagoda by April 30; however, as of October, he remained in place.
Members of the Hoa Hao sect of Buddhism came under increased pressure during the last year, with at least twelve in detention or prison as of mid-2000. Sect elder Le Quang Liem’s telephone line was disconnected in December 1999 and he was interrogated several times by police after he signed a joint appeal calling for greater religious freedom. Surveillance of Liem increased in February 2000, when he announced the restoration of the Central Hoa Hao Buddhist Association, separate from a government-dominated Hoa Hao committee established in 1999. Hoa Hao members in An Giang province clashed several times with police, who reportedly blocked a pilgrimage to their prophet’s birthplace, and detained and beat some adherents in December 1999. Police arrested at least eight Hoa Hao members in March 2000 as tensions increased in the approach to a religious anniversary. On March 30, police detained ten Hoa Hao members and blocked thousands of other followers from observing the religious anniversary. Additional clashes with security forces broke out in An Giang in September, when Hoa Hao followers protested the trial and conviction of five members arrested in March.
Conflict continues between the government and the UBCV. In April 2000, police made late-night visits to the pagodas of church leaders Thich Quang Do and Thich Tue Sy, ostensibly to conduct identity checks. On April 24, police took leaders Thich Khong Tanh and Thich Quang Hue to a Ho Chi Minh City police station for questioning. In July, Quang Ngai provincial officials and police interrogated UBCV Patriarch Thich Huyen Quang about a statement critical of the government that he had issued in April.
In late September and early October, UBCV monks clashed with local authorities when they attempted to conduct independent flood relief missions in the Mekong Delta and distribute aid packages marked with UBCV labels. This was in defiance of government regulations, which limited flood relief operations to state-sanctioned organizations. On September 21, authorities brought an end to a UBCV flood relief mission in An Giang province, led by Thich Nguyen Ly. In early October, a contingent of UBCV monks, including Thich Quang Do and Thich Khong Tanh, travelled to An Giang, where security police blocked their flood relief plans. Police reportedly detained the monks for twelve hours on October 7 before ordering them to leave the province and return to their pagodas in Ho Chi Minh City. The Foreign Ministry later denied that the monks had been detained.
The government also continues its attempts to suppress the growth of Protestant evangelical churches, which has gained converts among Vietnam’s ethnic minorities. While two dozen ethnic Hmong Protestants reportedly were released from detention at the end of 1999, at least eight other Hmong and Hre remained in prison or police custody as of October 2000. At the same time, the government is beginning to recognize more Tin Lanh (Good News) churches, mostly in the North, and hundreds of Protestants are able to regularly attend unrecognized Tin Lanh churches in southern and central Vietnam.
Catholics, too, are not immune from state meddling, with the government continuing to restrict the number of parishes, screen candidates for the priesthood and for appointments as bishops, and to reject requests for a papal visit. One member of the Catholic Congregation of the Mother Co-Redemptrix was released in April 2000, but at least three other Catholics remain in prison.
Unregistered sects and religious activities labeled superstitious, prohibited by a 1999 decree on religion, have come under increasing pressure. In November 1999, the state press reported that Vietnam had more than thirty illegal cults. That same month, officials
fined members of an unregistered religious sect in Hanoi known as Long Hoa Di Lac (Chinese Dragon Buddha Sect) for unlawful assembly and use of religion for propaganda
purposes. In June 2000, the state press reported that police in Thai Binh were cracking down on heresy. The target was the Thanh Hai Vo Thuong Su sect, originally established in Taiwan but led by a Vietnamese woman. In August, police in Quang Binh reportedly confiscated religious texts from the Tam Giao Tuyen Duong sect, forcing members to destroy altars and pledge to abandon the sect, and fined the group’s leader for allegedly providing illegal medical treatment.
Prison Conditions and Political Prisoners
Prison conditions remain poor, with prisoners reporting the use of shackles, dark cells, and torture. Dozens of death sentences were issued during the last year, with twenty-nine crimes considered capital offenses, including drug trafficking, many economic crimes, some sex offenses, murder, and armed robbery. In April 2000, Canadian citizen Nguyen Thi Hiep was convicted of heroin smuggling and executed.
While the government insists it has no political prisoners, in March 2000 the Public Security Ministry stated that more than one hundred people were then imprisoned for crimes against national security. This figure could include many people imprisoned for their political or religious beliefs, while other such prisoners may also be serving sentences imposed under different laws.
In its largest ever prisoner amnesty, Vietnam released 12,264 prisoners on April 30 to commemorate the reunification of the country, and a further 10,693 on National Day on September 2. The government did not publicly release the names of those freed, but political and religious prisoners known to have been released in the two amnesties included Catholic Brother John Euder Mai Duc Chuong, Hmong Protestant Vu Gian Thao, political dissident Nguyen Ngoc Tan (alias Pham Thai), Protestant Nguyen Thi Thuy, and Cao Daist Le Kim Bien.
For further information, please contact Mike Jendrzejczyk (Washington, DC) (o) +1 202 612 4341; mobile, +1 240 604 6194, Sidney Jones (New York) (o) +1 212
