Vietnam 'intensified' repression in 2011: HRW

1/22/2012
Agence France-Presse

Vietnam "intensified its repression" of dissidents in 2011, jailing a string of peaceful activists and cracking down hard on freedom of expression, Human Rights Watch said Sunday.

The situation in the communist country is "poor and worsening," and there is "no sign of any serious commitment to improve," according to the US-based campaign group.

"For quite some time, bad human rights situations in nearby countries like (Myanmar) and Cambodia have allowed Vietnam to escape critical notice," Phil Robertson, HRW's deputy director for Asia, told AFP.

"Now people are finally seeing Vietnam for what it is -- a government that severely persecutes peaceful political activists with long prison terms," he said.

Vietnam detains 50 who protested against China

Monday, August 22, 2011

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — A Vietnamese state media report says police detained 50 people following an anti-China rally in Hanoi.

It described the weekend gathering as "ridiculous" even though the government has allowed similar protests to take place for two months.

Communist Party newspaper Hanoi Moi said Monday that 47 protesters were taken to police stations Sunday for allegedly attacking authorities. Thirty-nine have been released with a warning while eight remain in custody.

China-Vietnam Dispute

Hanoi's dealing with Vietnamese protesters is very similar to that used by the Hoon Xhen's regime. Wonder why? Take a wild guess...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PIsYznXzJY&feature=player_embedded#at=71

Vietnam troops 'use force' at rare protest

May 06 2011
AFP

Vietnamese soldiers have clashed with ethnic Hmong after thousands staged a rare protest in a remote mountain area calling for greater autonomy and religious freedom, a military source said on Thursday.

The Vietnamese army sent troop reinforcements after the demonstrations broke out several days ago in Dien Bien Province in the far northwest of the nation.

Soldiers "had to disperse the crowd by force," according to the military source, who did not provide details of any casualties or the number of troops involved.

It is Vietnam's worst-known case of ethnic unrest since protests in 2001 and 2004 in the Central Highlands by the Montagnards. About 1,700 of them fled to Cambodia after troops crushed protests against land confiscation and religious persecution.

Vietnam quashes rare Hmong uprising lasting days

Thursday, May 5, 2011
The Associated Press

Vietnamese security forces quashed a rare protest of hundreds of ethnic Hmong Christians calling for an independent state, officials said Thursday.

Giang Thi Hoa, vice president of the People's Committee in Dien Bien province, said the situation was brought under control after several days. She did not provide more details.

Another People's Committee official said the Hmong were calling for a separate state and that people living outside Vietnam were believed to be orchestrating the demonstrations. The official was identified only as Bac because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Clinton Is Urged to Confront Vietnam on Human Rights [-Repression in Vietnam]

Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton spoke with Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, center, and his wife, Tran Thanh Kiem. (Damir Sagolj/Reuters)

October 29, 2010
By SETH MYDANS
The New York Times

“In a country where the state controls all traditional media outlets, independent bloggers have emerged as important sources of news, information and social commentary” - Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch

BANGKOK — The Vietnamese government has arrested or convicted a half-dozen dissidents and bloggers in the days before a visit to Hanoi by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, according to the United States Embassy and human rights groups.

Washington has often voiced its concern over human rights issues in Vietnam, and the latest actions drew sharp criticism from some members of Congress as well as a statement from the United States Embassy in Hanoi urging their release.

Congress members and human rights groups are urging Mrs. Clinton to speak out for human rights while she is in Hanoi on Friday and Saturday for a meeting of Southeast Asian leaders.

Three dissidents have been convicted on charges of causing public disorder, and three bloggers have been arrested at a time of increased pressure on critics. Many analysts say the clampdown is intended to silence debate before a Communist Party congress in January.

In addition, six Roman Catholics were tried and convicted Wednesday in a case the Catholic News Agency said stemmed from violent clashes with the police over a parish’s attempt in May to bury a woman in a cemetery that the local government had seized for a tourist resort.

The arrests and trials “contradict Vietnam’s own commitment to internationally accepted standards of human rights,” the United States Embassy said in its statement. “We urge the government of Vietnam to release these individuals.”

According to the rights group Amnesty International, Vietnam is holding at least 30 people on political charges, including members and supporters of banned political groups, independent trade unionists, bloggers, businessmen, journalists and writers.

This week, Representative Loretta Sanchez, a California Democrat, wrote a letter signed by three other House representatives that urged Mrs. Clinton to raise several concerns with the Vietnamese, including “use of the legal code to criminalize peaceful political activities” and the repression of Internet freedoms.

In a separate statement, Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, listed cases of arrests and harassment over the past year and said, “It is clear that the Vietnamese government is failing to afford its citizens fundamental human rights.”

The Vietnamese government, like China, Myanmar and other nations that curb dissent in the courts, says these are not political arrests and that all the accusations involve criminal activity.

The recent case against the three labor activists, Nguyen Hoang Quoc Hung, Do Thi Minh Hanh and Doan Huy Chuong, involved charges of disrupting public order for distributing leaflets supporting workers’ rights at a factory, according Amnesty International. Their sentences were not officially announced.

The bloggers are Le Nguyen Huong Tra, Phan Thanh Hai and Nguyen Van Hai. Mr. Hai was rearrested after completing an earlier sentence for tax evasion.

The government is particularly sensitive to blogs that touch on official corruption, relations with China and a Chinese-run bauxite mine that has prompted widespread controversy.

“In a country where the state controls all traditional media outlets, independent bloggers have emerged as important sources of news, information and social commentary,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. The group urged Mrs. Clinton to speak out against what it called “an intensifying campaign of harassment, arrest, beatings in custody, unfair trials and long prison terms” against bloggers and activists.

Sacrava's Political Cartoon: Yuon-Hanoi Aid

Cartoon by Sacrava (on the web at http://sacrava.blogspot.com)

The Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security has provided the Cambodia Ministry of Home Affairs with a consignment of technical and combat equipment worth VND20 billion.

Deputy Minister of Public Security Dang Van Hieu and Cambodia’s Deputy Prime Minster and Minister of Home Affairs Sar Kheng witnessed the hand-over of equipment in Phnom Penh on September 30.

Nothing changes with the authoritarian regimes in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Burma

Saturday, January 23, 2010
By Scott Johnson
Canada Free Press

Nothing changes in Vietnam. Nor in Laos, Cambodia or Burma. These authoritarian regimes continues to do anything to repress its people in order in maintain a corrupt and brutal regime.

And can you beleive that hundreds of Montagnards remain in Vietnam’s prisons and the US State Department doesn't want to include these people as prisoners of concern?? (ie: not enough evidence of religious persecution)

Just an appalling act of abandonment.

Regards
Scott
Human Rights Watch
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Vietnam: Repression Intensifies Prior to Party Congress

"With its treatment of peaceful critics, the Vietnamese government seems determined to stand out as one of the most repressive countries in Asia. We’d be thrilled if the Vietnamese government proved us wrong, but there are no signs that it will reverse its increasingly harsh crackdown on dissent." - Brad Adams, Asia director

Rights Defenders, Democracy Activists Targeted

January 21, 2010
Source: Human Rights Watch

(New York) - This week’s convictions and heavy sentences for four Vietnamese democracy activists, including the prominent human rights lawyer Le Cong Dinh, highlighted the climate of increasingly harsh political repression in Vietnam, Human Rights Watch said today after the release of its World Report 2010.

The 612-page World Report 2010, the organization’s 20th annual review of human rights practices around the globe, summarizes major human rights trends in more than 90 nations and territories worldwide. In Vietnam, the report says, the government arrested and imprisoned dozens of democracy activists linked to opposition parties, independent bloggers, land rights protesters, and members of unsanctioned religious organizations during 2009.

“With its treatment of peaceful critics, the Vietnamese government seems determined to stand out as one of the most repressive countries in Asia,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “We’d be thrilled if the Vietnamese government proved us wrong, but there are no signs that it will reverse its increasingly harsh crackdown on dissent.”

In the lead-up to a key Vietnamese Communist Party congress in 2011, Human Rights Watch is concerned that the Vietnamese government will intensify its campaign to silence government critics and curb social unrest in an effort to quell any potential challenges to its one-party rule.
Away from the public spotlight, in 2009, the police cracked down on farmers protesting land grabs in the Mekong Delta, on Catholic parishioners in central and northern Vietnam opposing government confiscation of church properties, and on Montagnard activists in the Central Highlands resisting government control of their churches.

The four activists just sentenced to prison - Le Cong Dinh, Nguyen Tien Trung, Tran Huynh Duy Thuc, and Le Thang Long - were tried in Ho Chi Minh City on January 20 and 21 and received prison sentences ranging from five to 16 years. They were arrested during May and July for alleged links with the banned Democratic Party of Vietnam. They were accused of “colluding” with Vietnamese activists based abroad to create anti-government websites, post critical articles on the Internet, and incite social instability, and charged with attempting to overthrow the government under article 79 of Vietnam’s penal code. A fifth defendant, Tran Anh Kim, was sentenced to five and a half years in prison under article 79 on December 28.

On January 14 and 15, the Gia Lai provincial court sentenced two Montagnard Christians to prison, for nine and 12 years respectively, allegedly for organizing a “reactionary underground” network in violation of the country’s unity policy.

“Rights-respecting governments should speak up to protect peaceful activists and rights defenders in Vietnam and insist that the government abide by its international commitments,” Adams said. “Donors have been far too quiet about rights in recent years, but Vietnamese activists say that they will never succeed without consistent support from influential governments.”


Vietnamese courts sentenced at least 20 government critics and independent church activists to prison during 2009 on vaguely worded national security charges, according to the World Report. These include nine dissidents from Hanoi and Haiphong convicted in October for disseminating anti-government propaganda under penal code article 88. Their sentences are expected to be upheld in hearings before Vietnam’s Supreme Court this week even though the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention determined last year that five of the defendants had been detained arbitrarily.

Hundreds of other peaceful political and religious activists are serving long prison sentences in Vietnam. Religious freedom deteriorated during 2009, Human Rights Watch said. The government targeted religious leaders and their followers who advocated civil rights, religious freedom, and equitable resolution of land disputes.

There were also clashes between police and thousands of Catholic parishioners in Quang Binh protesting government confiscation of church properties, and government-orchestrated mobs violently dispersed followers of Thich Nhat Hanh, a renowned Buddhist monk who has advocated more religious freedom.

In the Central Highlands, authorities continued to arrest Montagnard Christians suspected of belonging to unregistered house churches considered subversive by the government, or of planning land rights protests or conveying information about rights abuses to activists abroad. On several occasions the police beat and shocked Montagnards with electric batons when they refused to sign pledges to join government-sanctioned churches.

During the review of Vietnam’s rights record by the UN Human Rights Commission in May, Vietnam defiantly rejected recommendations by UN member states to allow groups and individuals to promote human rights, express their opinions, and express public dissent. The government also refused to issue invitations to visit Vietnam to UN rights experts covering freedom of religion, expression, torture, and violence against women.

Vietnam’s antipathy toward free expression and other fundamental rights does not bode well for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which Vietnam now chairs, Human Rights Watch said. Vietnam has signed the ASEAN Charter, a legally binding agreement that commits member states to “strengthen democracy, enhance good governance, and protect and promote human rights and fundamental freedoms.”

“By locking up peaceful rights defenders, democracy activists, and cyber-dissidents, the Vietnamese government is clearly flouting its promises to ASEAN and the international community,” Adams said.

Vietnam Outlaws News Blogs, Claims Foreign Servers Will Help, UN Security Council Review

In the global blogosphere, who's watching whom?

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: New Media Analysis

UNITED NATIONS, January 1 -- Vietnam in late 2008 moved to regulate the blogosphere, dictating that blogs remain entirely "personal" and not purport to report any news, much less state secrets. The Vietnam government stated that services such as Google and Yahoo will help them enforce these "no news on blogs" rules. While Yahoo did turn in a Chinese dissident blogger to the government in Beijing, and Google has a history of "disappearing" content apparently at its powerful partners' request, Vietnam's claims seem anachronistic.

On December 31, Inner City Press was asked by Vietnam's mission to the United Nations to appear on Vietnam TV to review the country's year on the Security Council, judged to be one of the "Top Ten Vietnam News Stories of 2008." While Vietnam has sought to keep human rights violations from Myanmar to Zimbabwe off the Security Council's agenda, its diplomats have not been unwilling to answer the Press' questions. During Vietnam's presidency of the Council in July, its Ambassador memorably told Inner City Press, when asked about a request for Council action by Cambodia in its UNESCO-enabled border dispute with Thailand, that "meeting postpone, issue disappears."

But in Vietnam itself, the goal seems to be to have news and social critique disappear from the Internet. In November, Vietnam's Deputy Minister of Information and Communications (MoIC) Do Quy Doan argued that "as blogs are personal sites, bloggers are not allowed to use blogs to promote anti-state activities, war and obscenity, or to offend the honor or prestige of organizations and individuals or to release secret state documents."

Doan subsequently signed into law circular 07/2008/TB-BTTT which provides that blogs shall not even "post links which go to information that violate Article 6 of Decree 97/2008, banning anyone who takes advantage of the Internet to deliver distorted information [or] reveal state secrets."

One step down the bureaucratic ladder, the Chief of the MoIC’s Broadcasting, Television and Electronic Information Control Agency, Luu Vu Hai argued that "when we use the press freedom right we have to obey the Press Law and we couldn't use the press freedom right in a non-press environment."

At a press conference about the circular, Doan was asked how the government would "prevent 'black' blogs, blogs that are contrary to Vietnamese customs and habits?" He answered that "most bloggers in Vietnam are using services supplied by foreign service providers... After the circular takes effect in 2009, the two sides will exchange information and cooperate with each other. I think service providers also wish to have a clean Internet environment. I think if state agencies of Vietnam ask for cooperation, Google or Yahoo will be willing too."

Again, we hope this is unlikely, even though Yahoo did turn in a Chinese dissident blogger to the government in Beijing, and Google has a history of "disappearing" content apparently at its powerful partners' request, click here for that.

Deputy Minister Doan went on to note that "some say that blogs are personal diaries. If they are personal diaries, they should be kept for their authors, or their friends or relatives. If they are opened for the public, they are not personal diaries anymore, but become electronic information pages... Blogs don't represent any organization or release orthodox information."

But corporations now promote themselves with blogs. The UN in December invited Inner City Press to make a presentation at an event promoting the use of blogs, click here for the UN's summary of the session. The UN, not only an organization but calling itself "The Organization," brags about its own blogs. Would they be illegal in Vietnam? Will the UN, though its compromised UNESCO or otherwise, say anything about this? organization but calling itself "