Human Rights watch
World report 2000
Vietnam
The Vietnamese government
continued to show little tolerance for political criticism of the government,
despite the release of more than a dozen prominent political prisoners in
amnesties in 1998 and early 1999. Political and religious dissidents faced
repression and heavy surveillance, with several key dissidents remaining under
house or pagoda arrest, and outspoken government critic Nguyen Thanh Giang was
arrested in May for two months. Freedom of expression became even more strictly
controlled with passage of a new press law. Legislation authorizing
administrative detention remained in force and prison conditions continued to
be substandard.
Human Rights Developments
In general, the government
tried to isolate rather than imprison political and religious dissidents during
the year, in order to avoid international condemnation. Key dissidents were
placed under surveillance and regularly summoned for questioning by police or
local officials. Their publishing rights were denied, friends and neighbors
discouraged from meeting them, and communication with the outside world
interrupted. Others were forced into retirement or lost their positions in the
government.
Many of the political
prisoners released in 1998, including Dr. Nguyen Dan Que, Thich Quang Do, Thich
Tue Sy, and Thich Khong Tanh, were denied residence permits and were thus
unable to travel freely. Dr. Que was unable to resume work as a medical doctor
because the authorities withheld his license to practice. Thich Nhat Ban,
released in October 1998, said that he had been released from a "small
prison only to enter a larger one."
In January, the Vietnamese
Communist Party expelled the country's highest-ranking dissident, retired Gen.
Tran Do, who has criticized the Communist Party for corruption, lack of
democracy, and disorganization. Afterwards, his phone was monitored and the
connection often cut, his house was under surveillance by undercover security
police, who followed him when he traveled, and the Ministry of Culture and
Information rejected his request in July to publish a newspaper. In March,
police arrested geologist Nguyen Thanh Giang, an outspoken intellectual who has
openly advocated human rights, multiparty democracy, and peaceful reforms. He was
charged under Article 205a of the Criminal Code for "abusing democratic
rights." After widespread international protest Giang was released in May,
but he was required regularly to report to police and prohibited from traveling
outside of Hanoi without permission.
In August, three members of
a U.S.-based anti-Communist organization, the Vietnamese People's Action
Movement, were arrested in Can Tho province. In September, in a trial conducted
quietly in An Giang province, twenty-four people, most of them members of
another U.S.-based group, the People's Action Party (PAP), were sentenced to
terms of up to twenty years for subversive activities. All of the PAP members
had been detained without trial for more than two years.
Arbitrary detention under
the 1997 Administrative Detention Decree 31/CP continued to be another way to
isolate and silence critics. As of October, critics who remained under house
arrest included biologist and writer Ha Si Phu, poet Bui Minh Quoc, writer Tieu
Dao Bao Cu, and war veteran Nguyen Ho. All had been under house arrest for more
than two years.
Equally worrisome was a new
decree, 89/ND-CP, which authorized the establishment of provisional custody and
pretrial detention centers around the country. Signed by Prime Minister Phan
Van Khai in November 1998, this decree allows police units from the district
level upward and military units from the division level upward to operate their
own temporary detention camps and to arrest and detain people under provisional
custody or pretrial detention. No information was available about what kinds of
crimes could motivate arrests under decree 89/ND-CP, nor how detention periods
would be determined.
The Vietnamese Communist
Party made several attempts to stifle dissent within the party, in addition to
expelling Tran Do. In February, the party central committee issued a resolution
supporting ideological freedom while at the same time stating that it would
punish members who expressed opinions or distributed documents against the
party. In May, Politburo Permanent Secretary Pham The Duyet outlined more than
a dozen activities outlawed for party members, including criticizing the party
platform, and organizing or inciting people to lodge complaints or join
demonstrations.
A report by Abdelfattah
Amor, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Religious Intolerance, released in March,
underscored the need for Vietnam to implement reforms to safeguard religious
freedoms. However, the government continued to require that all religious
activities be registered by the state and to apply restrictions on travel by
religious leaders and on the contents of their sermons and speeches.
In April the government
issued a new decree on religion, No. 26/1999/ND-CP. While guaranteeing freedom
of religion, the decree states that all religious organizations used to oppose
the government, as well as undefined "superstitious activities," will
be punished according to the law. The decree also bans religious organizations
that conduct activities contrary to "structures authorized by the prime
minister."
Religious leaders from the
banned Unified Church of Vietnam (UBCV) faced ongoing persecution during 1999.
In September, one year after their release from prison in 1998, three UBCV
monks-Thich Quang Do, Thich Khong Tanh, and Thich Tue Sy-were again threatened
with arrest. In March 1999, Thich Quang Do was summoned for questioning and
ordered to return to Ho Chi Minh City after he traveled to central Vietnam to
visit the Supreme Patriarch of the UBC, Thich Huyen Quang (who himself has been
under pagoda arrest for sixteen years). On August 6, officials in Ho Chi Minh
City called in Thich Quang Do for several hours of questioning and tried to
force him to sign a confession that he had acted illegally after he wrote a
letter to European Union ambassadors in Hanoi calling for human rights and
religious freedoms. On August 13, a police squad came to his pagoda after
midnight and demanded to see him, threatening to break down the door before
they eventually left. In September, Quang Do was again summoned for questioning
by police, as were Thich Khong Tanh and Thich Tue Sy. The monks were told that
their rearrests were imminent, as warrants had already been prepared to arrest
them for "subversive activities" pending further investigation.
Members of the Hoa Hao sect
of Buddhism were subject to police surveillance and at least one member was
thought to be in detention. The sect was granted official status in May,
although government appointees dominated an eleven-member Hoa Hao Buddhism
Representative Committee established at that time. In July, in one of the first
large public gatherings of the group since 1975, thousands of Hoa Hao members
commemorated the founding of the church in An Giang province.
The government also made
efforts to suppress Protestants, particularly as increasing numbers of ethnic
minorities joined evangelical churches in the northern and central highlands.
Reports were received of persecution and harassment of Hmong Protestants in Lai
Chau, Lao Cai and Ha Giang provinces, Mnong in Binh Phuoc province, Bahnar in
Gia Lai province, and Hre in Quang Ngai. In January the official law journal
Phap Luat heavily criticized the conversion to Protestantism of Hmong in
northern Ha Giang province. The provincial party chief was quoted as saying
that a district task force had been established to "deal with illegal
religious evangelism" by persuading people to sign commitments not to
follow "bad people" or cults but to rebuild ancestor shrines. Two
months earlier in Ha Giang, the provincial propaganda committee had issued a
forty-two page pamphlet entitled "Propagandizing and Mobilizing Citizens
not to Follow Religion Illegally." More than a dozen Hmong Christians were
reportedly in detention in Lai Chau and Lai Cau provinces as of mid-1999.
On May 7, police raided an
evangelical gathering of the Vietnam Assemblies of God Church in a Hanoi hotel,
holding twenty people for several days. Police detained two of the group's
leaders, Lo Van Hen (a member of the Black Thai minority group, who had been released
from three years in prison in January 1999), and Rev. Tran Dinh (Paul) Ai, who
had served two years in prison in the early 1990s for his religious activities
and who met with U.N. Special Rapporteur Amor during his 1998 visit. Lo Van Hen
was escorted back to his home in Dien Bien Phu, while Rev. Ai was detained
under police guard for a month in the Hanoi hotel where the meeting had taken
place before being released.
For Catholics, relations
between Vietnam and the Vatican slightly warmed with the visit in March of a
Vatican delegation and Vietnam's acceptance of the appointment of four new
bishops by the Vatican. In addition, in September a group of bishops from the
U.S. Catholic Conference made a historic visit to Vietnam, their first since
1975. As in 1998, tens of thousands of Catholics were able to attend an annual
festival commemorating the sanctuary of the Notre Dame of La Vang in Quang Tri
province. However, at least three members of the Catholic Congregation of the
Mother Co-Redemptrix, arrested in 1987, were believed to remain in prison.
During 1999 there were
scattered reports of civil unrest in the countryside. In January villagers and
riot police clashed over a land dispute in Ba Ria, Vung Tau province near Ho
Chi Minh City, despite an unsuccessful mediation attempt by the local Catholic
church. In May, more than one hundred farmers from provinces around Hanoi
gathered in front of the National Assembly to protest against corruption by
officials. That same month the official Thai Binh newspaper reported that
unrest continued in Thai Binh province, the site of peasant clashes with the
government over corruption and land grabs in 1997.
The party and the
government made several attempts during the year to attack corruption, starting
with an official anticorruption drive in February and the party's launching of
a two-year "self-criticism" campaign in May. The state Vietnamese
News Agency reported in May that during the first four months of 1999, more
than 1,000 officials in Thai Binh province had been suspended from their jobs
for corruption. Also in May, the state press announced that a new criminal code
had been drafted that would focus more on corruption issues and economic
crimes, rather than on national security violations. It would also decrease the
number of crimes punishable by death from forty-four to thirty. The National
Assembly failed to pass the new code before adjourning in June but was expected
to take it up again in its November session. The country's largest corruption
trial, the Minh Phung-Epco case, ended in August, with six people sentenced to
death and six sentenced to life in prison. The continued use of the death
penalty in Vietnam remained a concern.
Conditions within Vietnam's
prison system continued to be very poor and did not meet the U.N.'s Standard
Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners. Solitary confinement, pressure to
sign confessions, forced labor, and inadequate food and medical care were
commonplace.
In May, the National
Assembly passed a new press law requiring journalists to pay compensation or
publish retractions to persons hurt by their reports, even if the information
is correct. A June edition of Tap Chi Cong San , the theoretical journal of the
party central committee, instructed journalists to publish the conclusions of
competent state agencies. If the press did not agree with such conclusions, the
journal stated,it must publish them all the same but could file a complaint
with the National Assembly. An earlier 1997 directive requires Vietnamese
journalists to obtain approval from the Ministry of Culture and Information
before passing any information on to foreign journalists.
Defending Human Rights
On September 6, Dr. Nguyen
Dan Que, Vietnam's leading human rights activist, called for the establishment
of an independent human rights organization in Vietnam from his home in Ho Chi
Minh City. International human rights organizations were not permitted to visit
Vietnam during the year, nor were domestic human rights organizations allowed
to operate. In March, following the release of a report by the U.N. Special
Rapporteur on Religious Intolerance, the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry stated
that individuals or organizations coming to conduct activities concerning human
rights or religion would not be allowed in Vietnam. Communist Party Secretary
Le Kha Phieu revealed much of the leadership's view on human rights at a party
plenum in August, when he stated: "Any ideas to promote `absolute
democracy,' to put human rights above sovereignty, or support multiparty or political
pluralism...are lies and cheating."
The Role of the International Community
Donor Countries
At the meeting of the
Consultative Group of donors to Vietnam held in December 1998 in Paris, donors
pledged U.S. $2.2 billion in aid to Vietnam. One of the largest donors to
Vietnam was the European Union (E.U.), which pledged $1.7 billion. In June,
prior to a midterm review of donor aid in Haiphong, Germany's ambassador to
Vietnam, on behalf of the E.U. presidency, pushed for economic and social
reforms and expressed concerns about political prisoners and restrictions on
press and religious groups. During a September visit by Vietnamese Prime
Minister Phan Van Khai to Finland after it took over the E.U. presidency,the
Finnish prime minister raised issues of human rights, judicial reform, and
treatment of dissidents. Phan Van Khai visited Tokyo in March and received aid
commitments of 600 billion yen (U.S. $5.6 billion) in loans plus 600 billion
yen (U.S. $5.6 billion) for infrastructure projects. The Japanese Foreign
Ministry expressed concerns about the detention of Nguyen Thanh Giang but Tokyo
did not condition any of its aid on human rights improvements or legal reforms.
In August the Australian Senate passed a resolution on human rights in Vietnam,
in which it mentioned the arrest of Nguyen Thanh Giang.
United States
The United States
government took fairly strong positions on Vietnam's human rights record during
the year, criticizing the arrest of Nguyen Thanh Giang in March, and handing
over a list of political prisoners it wanted released in July during the
seventh session of the U.S. -Vietnam bilateral human rights dialogue in Hanoi.
These incidents, as well as the September release of a report by the Department
of State on religious practices in Vietnam, provoked strong reactions from
Hanoi, which criticized the United States for interfering in its internal
affairs. Nonetheless, in July the U.S. and Vietnam signed an agreement in
principle on a Bilateral Trade Agreement, potentially paving the way for eventual
granting of Normal Trade Relations status for Vietnam. However, as of October
the Vietnamese government had not yet signed the final agreement. Earlier in
the year, the U.S. House of Representatives affirmed President Clinton's 1998
decision to grant the Jackson Vanik waiver of freedom of emigration
requirements of the 1974 Trade Act. Trade, human rights, and accounting for
U.S. personnel missing in action from the Vietnam War were the main agenda
items during a visit to Vietnam in September by Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright.