Smith calls for human rights in Vietnam

Veterans honor N.J. lawmaker

 

Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 08/30/06

BY KIRK MOORE
STAFF WRITER

The Vietnamese government's announcement this week that it will release dissident Dr. Pham Hong Son from prison is a sign that ongoing trade negotiations could gain human rights advocates some leverage and push communist officials toward releasing more political prisoners and easing their repression of political speech, Rep. Christopher H. Smith, R-N.J., said in a Tuesday speech to a national veterans' convention.

"When it comes to respecting the fundamental rights of its citizens, Vietnam continues to get extremely poor grades," Smith told members of the American Legion meeting in Utah. A longtime Congressional ally of veterans' groups, Smith served for 24 years as a member and chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, until he was stripped of his post by Republican leaders last year in what observers called a stark act of party discipline.

Smith was invited to the Legion convention in honor of that long relationship. He was honored by the Legion Tuesday for his work on behalf of veterans. He lost the prominent Veterans chairmanship after opposing new cost controls on Veterans Administration spending and advocating more money in the budget to anticipate costs of caring for Afghanistan and Iraq veterans.

In his convention address, Smith spoke to his old friends — many of them veterans of Southeast Asia combat more than 30 years ago — and appealed for their help in opening Vietnam to freedom of speech and political thought.

"My appeal to you today is to press the Bush Administration and Congress to demand, as a prerequisite to enhanced cooperation, that Vietnam cease its violent and ugly repression of its own people — especially the Montagnards and people of various religious faiths — and press vigorously for a more thorough accounting of American MIAs," Smith said. "We can't squander this window of opportunity."

Now is the time because Vietnam wants membership in the World Trade Organization, and favorable trade relationships with the United States that Congress could vote on this fall, Smith says.

Smith has pressed human rights and religious freedom causes for years, including those of the Montagnards — mountain clans of Southeast Asia whose men fought alongside Americans against communist troops in the 1960s and '70s.

During a December 2005 visit to Vietnam he met in Hue with Son's wife Vu Thuy Ha and other dissidents.

Early this year Smith sponsored a resolution in the House of Representatives calling on Vietnam's government to ease up.

Son's release is supposedly part of a broader amnesty, easing sentences for more than 5,000 prisoners in a gesture before Vietnam's independence day observance Sept. 2, Smith said.

"He got five years in prison for downloading an (online) essay from the U.S. embassy in Hanoi titled "What is Democracy?' " Smith said.

Police arrested Son in 2002 after he translated the article and sent it to friends and senior government officials.

Son also posted an open letter on the Internet, protesting that authorities had searched his home illegally and seized a computer and documents.

After a closed-door trial Son, who was a trained medical doctor working as a pharmacist, was sentenced to five years in prison and an additional three years of house arrest.

Despite the early release it appears Son will still be under close police surveillance. Le The Tiem, a vice minister of public security, said the dissident would be subject to "local cooperation."

"The Vietnamese government must learn that human rights is not merely a public relations game," Smith said in a statement calling for Son's case to be examined in light of Vietnam's quest for economic integration with the world.

Son's case and the future treatment of political prisoners "will be a critical test of Vietnam's commitment to systematically reform its human rights policy before it is considered for admission into the World Trade Organization," Smith said.

"A lot of these guys are Vietnam veterans and they were glad to hear about the release," Smith said. "We need to ratchet up the pressure and not be satisfied with the release of just one person."

Last December Smith met about 60 religious and political dissidents, including Buddhist monks and Catholic priests who spent time in prison and remain under house arrest for protesting repression of religion.

Three decades after the last American soldier left Saigon, Vietnam avidly seeks American business — so much that its cheap exports like farm-raised shrimp and catfish anger American producers, who complain Vietnam's low-wage economy is dumping frozen seafood on the marketplace and driving American shrimp fishermen and catfish farmers out of business.

Smith and human rights activists hope they can harness some of that trade tension to force liberal forces into the forefront of Vietnam's economic and political evolution.

Kirk Moore: (732) 557-5728

 

 

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