Vietnam:
Communist Party Tightens Grip
Increase in Political Trials, New
Repressive Legislation Offset Positive Steps
Human Rights Watch
January 21, 2014
(New York, January 21, 2014) – Activists were increasingly targeted by the
Vietnamese authorities in 2013, worsening a trend of politically motivated
convictions against peaceful critics, Human Rights Watch said today in its World
Report 2014.
“Escalating repression is putting the Vietnamese government on a collision
course with an increasingly politically aware and active population,” said Brad
Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Foreign governments should use all
diplomatic means to pressure Vietnam to listen to the voices of the country’s
people, who are demanding an end to old-style one-party rule.”
In the 667-page world report, its 24th edition, Human Rights Watch reviews
human rights practices in more than 90 countries. Syria’s widespread killings of
civilians elicited horror but few steps by world leaders to stop it, Human
Rights Watch said. A reinvigorated doctrine of “responsibility to protect” seems
to have prevented some mass atrocities in Africa. Majorities in power in Egypt
and other countries have suppressed dissent and minority rights. And Edward
Snowden’s revelations about US surveillance programs reverberated around the
globe.
On November 28, the National Assembly adopted an amended Vietnamese
constitution that disappointed those hoping for significant reforms, instead
strengthening Communist Party political domination. The Communist Party has
presided over a one-party state since the country was unified in 1975.
Human rights provisions in the constitution were watered down with loopholes
that allow the state to criminalize even peaceful expression, association, and
assembly.
While it maintained its monopoly on state power in 2013, the party faces
growing public discontent over slowing economic growth, widespread corruption,
and a lack of basic freedoms. Denial of rights and endemic official corruption
are widely seen as stifling Vietnam’s political and economic progress.
At the end of 2013, Human Rights Watch estimated that Vietnam is holding some
150-200 known people in detention because of the exercise of their fundamental
human rights, including lowland Vietnamese and upland ethnic minority prisoners,
some of whom were detained at least in part in connection with their religious
activities. The total included at least 63 political prisoners convicted by
politically controlled courts in 2013, an increase over the roughly 40 sentenced
in 2012, which in turn exceeded the numbers sentenced in 2011 and 2010. The
government has consistently used vague penal code provisions to convict these
peaceful critics.
Dialing back digital, religious freedom
Enhancing already extensive government powers to punish and otherwise deter
digital freedom, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung on September 1, 2013, put into
force Decree 72, which contains provisions legalizing content-filtering and
censorship, and outlawing vaguely defined “prohibited acts.”
In January 2013, the prime minister put Decree 92 into effect, further
extending controls on religious groups via inclusion of onerous requirements for
official permission to practice religious belief and vague prohibitions on
religious worship that effectively allow the authorities to selectively prohibit
any religious activities they dislike. In its enforcement actions, the
government monitors, harasses, and sometimes violently cracks down on religious
groups that operate outside of official, government-registered and
government-controlled religious institutions.
Positive moves in 2013 included the signing of the Convention Against Torture.
The government has pledged that this will be ratified within a year. The
National Assembly decriminalized same-sex marriage, though disappointed
campaigners by failing to legalize it.
“Instead of putting its critics in prison, the Vietnamese government should
engage with their ideas, and accept that one-party states should be consigned to
the dustbins of history,” Adams said.
To read Human Rights Watch’s World Report 2014 chapter on Vietnam, please
visit:
https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2014/country-chapters/vietnam
For more Human Rights Watch reporting on Vietnam, please visit:
https://www.hrw.org/asia/vietnam
For more information, please contact:
In London, Brad Adams (English): +44-7908-728-333 (mobile); or adamsb@hrw.org
In Washington, DC, John Sifton (English): +1-646-479-2499 (mobile); or siftonj@hrw.org
In Bangkok, Phil Robertson (English, Thai): +66-85-060-8406 (mobile); or
robertp@hrw.org