(CPJ/IFEX) – In a 16 January 2002 letter to President Tran Duc Luong, CPJ expressed deep concern about a recent government decree instructing police to confiscate and destroy publications that do not have official approval. An announcement of the decree, signed by Vice Minister of Culture and Information Nguyen Khac Hai, appeared in newspapers in […]
(CPJ/IFEX) – In a 16 January 2002 letter to President Tran Duc Luong, CPJ expressed deep concern about a recent government decree instructing police to confiscate and destroy publications that do not have official approval.
An announcement of the decree, signed by Vice Minister of Culture and Information Nguyen Khac Hai, appeared in newspapers in Vietnam on 8 January, according to CPJ sources. The new decree establishes formal nationwide regulations tightening restrictions over prohibited publications, including those that express dissenting political viewpoints.
According to The Associated Press, a government official named several publications that were targeted for confiscation, including the memoirs of Lt. Gen. Tran Do, Vietnam’s most famous dissident (see IFEX alert of 24 August 2001).
Tran Do’s three-part memoirs include his thoughts on the future of the country, as well as an analysis of the 9th Party Congress, held in April 2001. Police confiscated fifteen photocopies of Part 3 from Tran Do last June. Part 2 was published overseas last year and has been widely distributed on the black market in Vietnam.
Also proscribed were Dialogue 2000 and Dialogue 2001, hard-copy editions of an Internet forum initiated in 1999 by Ho Chi Minh City-based scholars Tran Khue (see IFEX alert of 7 September 2001) and Nguyen Thi Thanh Xuan. The forum featured articles by both men advocating political reform. One essay called for the elimination of Article 4 of the Vietnamese Constitution, which guarantees the leading role of the Communist Party of Vietnam, according to CPJ sources.
The official also singled out for confiscation “Meditation and Aspiration”, an essay by dissident geophysicist Nguyen Thanh Giang (see IFEX alerts of 7 September 2001, 25 May, 14 April, 17, 16, 12 and 11 March 1999); and “A Few Words Before Dying”, an essay by Haiphong-based dissident Vu Cao Quan.
The decree accompanies an escalation in the harassment of Vietnamese dissidents. In recent days, the phone lines of several dissidents have been cut, while Tran Do and Nguyen Thanh Giang have both come under heightened surveillance.
On 7 January, police searched the home of Nguyen Xuan Tu, a scientist and political essayist better known by his pen name, Ha Sy Phu, and confiscated his computer. Ha has been under house arrest since May 2000.
Recommended Action
Send appeals to the president:
– condemning his government’s efforts to censor dissenting political views
– urging him to lift this new decree and to ensure that Tran Do, Nguyen Thanh Giang, Ha Sy Phu, and other intellectuals are free to write and publish without further interference
– recalling that Vietnam is a signatory to the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which obliges his government to ensure that citizens are free to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas of all kinds
– noting that the above freedoms are also guaranteed under Article 69 of the Vietnamese Constitution
Appeals To
His Excellency Tran Duc Luong
President, Socialist Republic of Vietnam
c/o Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Hanoi, Vietnam
Fax: + 84 4 823 1872
Please copy appeals to the source if possible.
