Vietnam, which has just been approved for entry into the World Trade Organization, is presenting its best face this week as it hosts its largest international gathering, the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. With US President George W. Bush and other world leaders to impress, Vietnam’s leadership has trumpeted its recent decision to participate in on-line chats about “controversial issues” with ordinary citizens through the Vietnamese Communist Party’s official website. But will citizens get locked up for what they ask?
Le Chi Quang could tell us that this is not an Orwellian fantasy. He was arrested in February 2002 in a Hanoi Internet café, and eventually sentenced to four years in prison on national security charges. His crimes allegedly included calling for a multi-party system – precisely the kind of question someone might raise through the Party’s new website. In Vietnam, signing public appeals calling for human rights can trigger a police investigation. Using a cell phone to communicate with activists abroad can land someone in prison. And participating in an online chat about democracy can result in a police raid of the offending internet café, and arrest or even imprisonment.
As Vietnam rolls out the welcome mat, APEC leaders visiting Vietnam need to make clear that economic freedom must be linked to political freedom and basic human rights. Vietnam’s poverty reduction efforts and economic progress have earned the praise of donors, but the country remains a one-party state that denies its citizens the freedoms of speech, press, and religion, as well as the right to form independent trade unions and political parties.
Business leaders such as Bill Gates, who visited Vietnam earlier this year, should not ignore Vietnam’s anachronistic regulations requiring Internet café owners to inform on their customers and banning the publication of “harmful” material that “denies revolutionary achievements” or reveals “party secrets, state secrets, military secrets, and economic secrets.” These and the more than 2,000 regulations on sharing information represent obstacles to free speech as well as free trade.
While the US says that only two “political prisoners of concern” remain in Vietnam, in fact hundreds of Vietnamese are serving long prison sentences for advocating democratic reforms, practicing their religion, or using the Internet to disseminate proposals for human rights and religious freedom.
Nguyen Vu Binh, 38, is serving a seven-year sentence on charges of “espionage.” One of the first members of Vietnam’s emerging democracy movement, Binh resigned in 2000 from his prestigious journalism post at the party’s Communist Review and tried to form an independent political party and an anti-corruption association. He was summoned for police questioning, denounced by “citizen” mobs, detained, and placed under house arrest. After submitting written testimony about human rights violations in Vietnam to the US Congress and circulating articles critical of the Vietnamese government on the Internet in 2002, Binh was arrested and convicted after an unfair trial. Since then, he has largely been imprisoned in solitary confinement. “The regime considers him a political leader and is trying to destroy him psychologically,” a fellow dissident told us.
Hundreds of others, such as Montagnard Christian Siu Boch, 41, have been jailed for their religious beliefs. He was arrested in March 2001, after police raided a prayer meeting in his village of Plei Lao in the Central Highlands, burned down the church, and fired on villagers, killing one. He is serving an eight-year sentence.
Truong Quoc Huy, 25, was detained in 2005 for more than eight months after participating in Internet discussions about democracy. He was released in July 2006, but then re-arrested six weeks later in an Internet café. He had reportedly expressed public support for the democracy movement. The charges against him, and his current whereabouts, are unknown.
Despite the possible consequences, activists are pushing ahead this year to achieve reforms. Their efforts should be applauded—not ignored—by Vietnam’s donors. In the past six months, more than 2,000 people from different parts of Vietnam have signed on to unprecedented public appeals calling for respect of basic human rights, a multiparty political system, and freedom of religion and political association. Activists announced the creation of an independent labor union as an alternative to the party-controlled labor confederation. Others launched unsanctioned independent publications, in defiance of regulations stipulating that all media must be approved by the government.
The government has responded with harassment. Police have detained and interrogated many of the more prominent activists, including writer Do Nam Hai, Mennonite pastor Nguyen Hong Quang, professor Nguyen Khac Toan, geologist Nguyen Thanh Giang, writer Hoang Tien, novelist Tran Khai Thanh Thuy, and lawyer Nguyen Van Dai. But with APEC and WTO pending, most have not been imprisoned—yet.
What will happen to these courageous people after the international spotlight on Hanoi dims? Will Vietnam’s fledgling democracy movement suffer the fate of China’s, whose democracy activists came under a fresh wave of repression and imprisonment immediately after President Clinton’s visit to China in 1998?
World leaders should make it clear that the same repressive response after the APEC summit will not be tolerated—and seize this opportunity to press for meaningful, long-term reforms.
Sophie Richardson is the deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch.
