Thanks to Jeff's Garage & Ale House, the latest addition to our blogroll of supporters, for helping championing the cause of Father Ly! Jeff also penned a noteworthy post this spring studying the outcome of the Vietnam War, read it here.
Michael W. Marine, U.S. ambassador to Vietnam, did an online question-and-answer session today on the State Department Web site. Among his responses to submitted questions:
"During the past year, Vietnam has made significant progress on advancing religious freedom. The Government instituted a new law on religion, including a ban on forced renunciations, registered hundreds of places of worship, allowed the majority of closed places of worship to reopen, began educating central, provincial and local officials on how to implement the new law and, in some cases, disciplined officials responsible for violations of religious freedom. So, while we are encouraged by the progress that has been made, there remains work ahead to ensure full religious freedom and human rights for all Vietnamese."
What kind of religious freedom is it to make places of worship register with the government? The only purpose there is for them to be able to exercise greater control over individual churches and faiths.
"Vietnamese citizens are freer than ever to pursue their own family, economic and career choices; however, basic human rights deficiencies remain. These include: the inability of citizens to choose their own government; detentions of persons for the peaceful expressions of their political views; denial of the right of fair and expeditious trials; restrictions on freedom of the press, speech, and assembly; restrictions on the use of the internet; and the prohibition on the establishment of human rights NGOs.
There remains much to do to promoting human rights in Vietnam, but the United States is committed to making the case for these rights at every opportunity. And we remain hopeful that the Vietnamese people themselves will recognize the importance of these basic rights as well. While Vietnam’s political evolution is likely to lag well behind the legal and economic changes currently underway, change is in the offing. As they are increasingly exposed to global trends and ideas, accountability for government actions and policies will become an increasing priority for this country’s next generation of leaders."
Vietnamese know the importance of these rights, they just get tossed in prison when they speak up for those rights. I'd call these more than "human rights deficiencies." As long as we have ambassadors who whitewash the problems by using gentle language and stressing the "good" before the bad reality, the U.S. will never play a good, moral role in aiding all Vietnamese who yearn to be free, from the peasants protesting governmental land grabs to the prisoners of conscience who languish in sordid jails.
For the record, I submitted a question asking Ambassador Marine what the U.S. was doing to help Father Ly and other political prisoners. He didn't respond.
About 1,000 members of Southern California's Vietnamese community rallied this past weekend against Viet Weekly. From the Orange County Register:
"An estimated 1,000 community members chanted and waved American and former South Vietnam flags, saying they were fed up with articles published in Viet Weekly.
'I don't agree with their work,' Duy Sinh, president of the Association of Vietnamese Press and Media (USA) in Westminster, said through a translator. 'They (the articles) aren't the truth.'
One article published earlier this year 'praised Ho Chi Minh as a savior of the Vietnamese people,' while another article in May justified the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, according to a posting on the blogspot Viet-Am Review.
Le Vu, Viet Weekly's publisher, has previously denied charges that the publication intentionally misrepresents stories or events to present a pro-communist slant."
In an article previewing the protests, the OC Register delved more into the community's disagreements with Viet Weekly:
"...The problem many Vietnamese-Americans have with the Viet Weekly is that their reporting is not fair and balanced, said Jean Libby, a retired history teacher who created her own blogspot titled Viet-Am Review, where she mostly writes about accomplishments of Vietnamese-Americans.
'From what I've seen, Viet Weekly thinks free speech includes lying, fabricating news and defaming individuals who mean a lot to the community,' Libby said.
She said Viet Weekly recently twisted the words of Michael Marine, U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam, saying that he condoned the actions of the communist government in suppressing the rights of political dissidents such as Catholic priest Nguyen Van Ly. The photograph of Ly, whose mouth was covered by a plainclothes officer as he tried to speak in a Vietnam courtroom, was widely circulated in Little Saigon and viewed with disgust by local community members.
But Vu vehemently denies his newspaper concocts news or manipulates audio files, as Libby alleges."
The Vietnamese regime balked today about a European Union resolution demanding the immediate release of prisoners of conscience like Father Ly, and all those behind bars for exercising the inherent human rights of freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of religion. Said Foreign Ministry spokeman Le Dung:
"It is regrettable that the European Parliament adopted a resolution that is based on incorrect information and accompanying biased comments. ...The resolution fails to correctly grasp Vietnam's situation and is not in line with the fine development in cooperative relations between Vietnam and the European Union."
Dung further claimed that "ensuring and upholding human rights constitute ... major goals" for Vietnam, which had "worked hard to build an apparatus that ensures those rights are maintained, developed and improved upon." He also had the gall to claim everyone in jail had broken the law and was not suppressed for having political opinions. Of course, Vietnam just brands everyone who expresses differing political opinions as threats to the socialist state and jails them under that excuse.
The names of cyberdissidents as tracked by Reporters Without Borders:
And, of course, on the list of traditional journalists is Father Nguyen Van Ly, imprisoned March 30, 2007, editor of Tu do Ngôn luan.
Amnesty International has urged a letter-writing campaign to Vietnamese authorities over the government crackdown on the newly formed United Workers-Farmers Organization, which among other things called for justice in government land and property seizures. Members Tran Quoc Hien, Nguyen Tan Hoanh, Tran Thi Le Hang (pictured), Doan Huy Chuong and his father Doan Van Dien were arrested; Tran Quoc Hien was tried on May 15 and sentenced to three years in prison for "conducting propaganda" against the state and two years for "disrupting security" (translation: standing up for people's inherent property rights and daring to stand up against the communist regime). The status of the other four UWFO members is unknown.
And what a horrible story lede from the San Diego Union-Tribune about Friday's protest in Dana Point:
"Thirty years of bitterness over Vietnam's failed democracy spilled out onto the otherwise sleepy streets of this beach town yesterday."
So Vietnamese protest just because they've been bitter for three decades? What a blatantly unfair and prejudicial statement. The Vietnamese community protested Nguyen Minh Triet wherever he went because of what's happening today, not because of what happened 30 years ago. Particularly in this age of new media, the communist regime is scared to death of the reach of cyberdissidents and political movements, and thus is cracking down on journalists and pro-democracy activists as never before.
"'We enjoy the freedoms here, but we don't forget about the people' still in Vietnam, (Loc) Nguyen said. 'We owe the Vietnamese people. We have to speak for them.'"
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