I: Introduction
Playing host to over thirty countries for the Seventh Francophonie summit on November 14-16, the first ever to be held in Hanoi, Vietnam takes another firm step into the international arena. After more than a decade of doi moi or economic renovation, the Vietnamese Communist government has achieved diplomatic and economic links with numerous foreign partners, including membership of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and framework cooperation agreements with the European Union. Meanwhile Vietnam is negotiating for Most Favored Nation (MFN) trading status and accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO).
But while the Vietnamese government pursues this open-door policy and continues to woo foreign investment, domestically it is strengthening Communist Party control, repressing dissent and stifling any development of civil society. As part of its drive towards a market economy, Vietnam is undertaking a long-term program of legal reform in conjunction with the World Bank, the Asia Development Bank and the United Nations Development Program. Concurrently the government is passing new legislation which codifies the repression of civil and political rights. These new directives violate certain articles of the 1992 Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to which Vietnam is a party.
Of particular concern to Human Rights Watch are the following:
After a decade of economic liberalization, Vietnam has seen a dramatic rise in living standards in urban areas. But of the country's seventy-five million population, eighty percent who are in rural areas lag conspicuously behind. In May this year widespread rural unrest broke out in Thai Binh province 80 kilometers southeast of Hanoi and continued for several months. Thousands of peasants took to the streets to protest against rampant corruption among local
Party and government officials, punitive taxation, unfair rice prices, land disputes, and compulsory labor contributions to national infrastructure projects. As Hanoi welcomes delegates for Francophonie, farmers are still protesting against economic injustices in some districts of Thai Binh province, and tension is riding high in many other rural areas. Reports indicate that over a hundred protestors have been detained without trial on charges of threatening "national security." On November eighth and ninth, thousands of peasants blocked Highway One in Dongnai Province in a similiar protest. With no right to association and no freedom of expression through the media, these peasants have no legal channel to voice their grievances.
Human Rights Watch calls on the foreign press and delegates of the Francophonie conference in Hanoi to raise these specific human rights concerns with the Vietnamese government at press conferences, and in the course of multilateral and bilateral dialogues. Vietnam's foreign partners should urge the government to increase transparency and accountability within its process of legal reform, and honour international commitments to freedom of speech, freedom of the press and protection from arbitrary detention. The international community should also call for the immediate and unconditional release of all detainees held for peaceful expression of their political or religious views.
II: Administrative detention
Administrative detention is a familiar means of social and political control in Vietnam. It was widely used by the French colonial authorities in the 1930s to arrest those suspected of Communist activities. The Communist authorities have long employed very similar means to detain those suspected of counter-revolutionary' offenses, most forcibly with the detention of hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese in reeducation camps after April 1975. With the introduction of the "Administrative Detention Directive" (31/CP) signed by Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet on 14 April 1997, the Vietnamese government is now legalizing this tool of control.
Article 2 of directive 31/CP states that "administrative detention applies to those individuals considered to have violated the laws, infringing on the national security, as defined in Chapter 1 of the Criminal Code, but [whose violation] is not serious enough to be prosecuted criminally". This directive formally legitimizes detention of any individual voicing political dissent or opposition, the so-called "hostile forces promoting peaceful evolution". It is so vaguely worded as to invite abusive application.
Directive 31/CP authorizes village-level People's Committee and Public Security officials to detain individuals without trial for between six months and two years. Because there is no criminal prosecution, the detainee is not brought to trial, and therefore has no opportunity for legal defense. The provincial People's Committee chairman decides whether the detainee is to be held under surveillance at their place of residence or in an alternative detention facility. Village-level People's Committee cadres are responsible for keeping monitoring files on the detainee, who is encouraged to earn credit points' by reporting on other people suspected of violating the law. The detainee is "placed under the control and education of the local government and people."
Since May this year Thai Binh province has seen serious rural unrest in six out of seven districts. Sporadic protests have also been reported in various neighbouring provinces, including Thanh Hoa. The protests have been directed against corrupt local officials who are perceived by the peasantry as having failed to address their fundamental economic grievances. In certain districts protests turned violent against local officials, with reports of isolated cases of arson and physical assault, and "kangaroo courts" being established by the local people to bring corrupt cadres to book. The Vietnamese press has reported that over one hundred "bad elements" among the protestors have also been arrested and detained. However, no specific charges or trials have been announced. Among the organisers of the protest have been former Party members, war veterans and war heroes' mothers, traditionally perceived as stalwart patriots. Their involvement indicates the extent of discontent with local authorities. In a Hanoi-directed attempt to clamp down on corruption within local authorities, over fifty police and People's Committee officials have been arrested and are to be brought to trial on charges of corruption.
Restricted access to information makes it impossible to gauge how many people are currently being administratively detained in Vietnam without having been brought to trial. Every province has an administrative detention centre where individuals are held on a variety of charges ranging from threatening national security to vagrancy, prostitution, drug abuse and other so-called "social evils." A typical centre in An Giang province claims to hold an average of 200 individuals at any one time. While the Vietnamese government continues to refute that it has any political prisoners, it is well documented that numerous dissidents have been arbitrarily arrested and detained, and held either under house arrest, in detention camps or prison.
Directive 31/CP violates key human rights enshrined in both the Vietnamese Constitution and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) including the following:
III: Control of the press
Article 69 of the Vietnamese Constitution claims that "citizens are entitled to freedom of speech and freedom of the press." In reality all domestic media is state-controlled and subject to rigorous censorship. Vietnamese and foreign journalists claim that press controls have become even tighter since the Eighth Party Congress in June 1996.
At that Congress, the Party and government pledged to crack down on corruption at all levels. General Party Secretary Do Muoi, at a national conference on the press and publishing in Hanoi on August 24 this year, emphasized the role of the mass media in fighting corruption, bureaucratism, smuggling and other social vices'. Less than six weeks later, on October 8, Nguyen Hoanh Linh, editor of the business newspaper, Doanh Nghiep, was arrested and charged with the criminal offense of "revealing state secrets" for reporting high-level corruption within the General Department of Customs regarding the purchase of four speed boats from Ukraine. It is not known when he will be brought to trial. Linh's arrest suggests that the widely reported corruption cases of recent months - in January this year Tamexco, a major import-export company, and in March EPCO-Minh Phung, a large trading conglomerate, - were primarily show-case arrests. Among those arrested in both cases were senior company directors and state officials on charges of misappropriating state assets. The arrest of Linh for reporting alleged high-level misappropriation of funds brings into question the government and the Party's commitment to exposing corruption when politically inconvenient. Human Rights Watch condemns Linh's arrest as a violation of freedom of expression, and is seriously concerned at the warning this sends to other Vietnamese journalists.
His arrest raises another serious concern regarding the role of the press. With no right to reply and no legal protection against defamation or libel, the frequent vilification of arrested individuals in the newspapers constitutes a form of trial by state media.
Subsequent to Linh's arrest, the Politburo issued a directive on October 23 instructing the state media to adhere to Communist Party policy, and criticized newspapers for "revealing state secrets." This development contradicts the Vietnamese government's professed commitment to strengthen transparency and accountability as an integral part of its economic reform process. It also puts in serious jeopardy the safety of any Vietnamese journalist endeavouring to report official corruption or abuses of power.
There was a national press blackout regarding the Thai Binh protests from May to September this year, during which time the informal information channels were rife with unofficial accounts of the protests, and reports were being broadcast from overseas radio stations. The five-month official silence may indicate Hanoi's indecision as to how best to defuse this potentially explosive situation, and prevent it spreading to other provinces. The so-called "bad elements" among the protestors were paraded on provincial television to deliver self-criticisms, and act as a warning to other protestors. National coverage of the unrest has been largely confined to the Communist Party's official daily, Nhan Dan, and the Army newspaper Quan Doi Nhan Dan. The articles acknowledged the legitimate grievances of the farmers and criticized widespread corruption amongst grassroots cadres, but provided no detailed information about the scale of the protests and number of subsequent arrests and charges.
No foreign journalist has been granted permission to go to Thai Binh since major rural unrest broke out in May. According to press regulations which came into force on December 1 1996, foreign journalists must submit written requests to the Foreign Ministry Press Department for permission to travel outside of Hanoi five days in advance. Repeated requests from virtually the entire foreign press corps to visit Thai Binh have been refused on the grounds that a visit at such a time would be "inconvenient."
Foreign journalists are directly monitored by the Foreign Ministry Press Department, while their local press assistants are obliged to report regularly on their activities to the Ministry of Interior Press Center. Instances of harassment and even intimidation of press assistants have increased over the past year, particularly if the foreign journalist is endeavouring to cover any issue deemed sensitive by the authorities, such as civil unrest.
A government directive adopted on September 28 this year legally obliges Vietnamese journalists to obtain approval from the Ministry of Culture and Information before passing any information to foreign journalists. The directive potentially puts in jeopardy any Vietnamese journalist who enters into even informal contact with a foreign journalist. It constitutes a serious infringement on the right to freedom of expression and of the press, and demonstrates a tightening of control over information flows.
Censorship extends to the foreign press. The Far Eastern Economic Review correspondent's visa was not renewed in October 1996, apparently on grounds of reporting perceived to be too critical by the Vietnamese authorities. Human Rights Watch also understands that the Ministry of Finance recently sent a letter to the Ministry of Interior recommending strict disciplinary measures to be taken towards a foreign financial journalist subsequent to a series of articles in June concerning the State Bank. Articles about Vietnam in international English-language magazines (Far Eastern Economic Review and Time) are frequently though somewhat arbitrarily blacked out before distribution in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Yet contradictions abound; within this climate of strict control over both the domestic and foreign press, the Vietnamese government is promising that Internet will shortly be available.
At a pre-Francophonie meeting in Hanoi on November 7 the International Union of French Language Journalists and Press drew up several motions, including one condemning the lack of free press and imprisonment of journalists for "reporting criticism or writing articles expressing opinions different from the governments' " in sixteen out of the forty-nine countries participating in the Francophonie summit. Vietnam was not singled out for criticism, but the Vietnamese delegation, headed by Phan Bang, president of the official Vietnamese Journalists' Association, "resolutely rejects as nul and void the proposed text because we consider it as unacceptable interference in the internal affairs of a country."
The domestic media is currently used as a tool for Party propaganda, with no freedom to develop into an independent social, political or economic watchdog. These restrictions of the press constitute violations of Article 69 of the Vietnamese Constitution as cited above and Article 19 of the ICCPR which states "everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds regardless of frontiers."
IV: Voices of dissent
Human Rights Watch welcomes the recent release of Pham Duc Kham and Le Hong Ha, and urges the immediate and unconditional release of all those still detained for having spoken out in favour of greater democracy, freedom of expression, association and assembly. Information is too scarce to provide a definitive list of all such individuals, but the following intellectuals, former Party members and Buddhist leaders are a few sample cases of those detained in Vietnam today.
Dr. Doan Viet Hoat, a prominent intellectual, was arrested in 1990 for his part in the publication of a pro-democracy publication "Freedom Forum". He was detained without charge for three years. In 1993 he was sentenced to fifteen years' imprisonment for "attempting to overthrow the government." A prominent dissident intellectual and political prisoner, Hoat was just awarded the Golden Plume Award for Press Freedom of the World Association of Newspapers on November 1 in Istanbul. The fifty-four- year-old is suffering from a kidney disorder, and is imprisoned in Thanh Cam reeducation camp in Thanh Hoa province.
Dr. Nguyen Dan Que, an endocrinologist and the first member of the human rights organisation Amnesty International in Vietnam , was arrested in June 1990 for a public appeal for political pluralism and a respect for human rights. Dr. Que was sentenced in October 1991 to twenty years in prison and five years house arrest. He is currently in Xuan Loc labour camp in Dong Nai province.
Ha Si Phu, a biologist and author of various critiques of the Communist system, was arrested in December 1995 in Hanoi, charged with "revealing state secrets" for being in possession of Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet's letter to the Politburo. He was imprisoned without trial until August 1996 when he was sentenced to one year in prison. He has now returned to his home in Dalat, where he is living under constant surveillance by the Security police, with very restricted freedom of movement. Some reports claim his telephone line has been cut, others that it is closely tapped and international calls are blocked.
Bui Minh Quoc and Bao Cu , two intellectuals who have spoken out publicly against Ha Si Phu's imprisonment and in defense of the freedom of expression are under similar conditions of police surveillance and harassment in Dalat.
Nguyen Ho is a former prominent Party member and founder of the Club of Former Resistance Fighters. He has written extensively on the need for exposing abuses within the Party apparatus and calling for greater democracy. Held under house arrest from September 1990 to May 1993, and rearrested in March 1995, he is again under house arrest in Ho Chi Minh City under total Security Police surveillance. Reports suggest a policeman is actually living in the house with Ho.
Hoang Minh Chinh, a former high-ranking Party cadre, was detained in Hanoi in June 1995 on a charge of propagating "anti-socialist propaganda", his third period of detention for criticising Party policy. He is currently under constant Security Police surveillance in Hanoi.
Thich Huyen Quang, born in 1917, is the Supreme Patriarch of the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam which is not recognised by the Communist Party. He has was first arrested in April 1977, and then again in 1982 for protesting against the State-sponsored Vietnam Buddhist Church. From his forced exile in central Quang Ngai province, he issued a declaration in November 1993 calling for democratic reform, and a respect for human rights. In December 1994 he was rearrested on charges of organising a UBCV flood relief operation in the Mekong Delta. Thich Huyen Quang is currently under house arrest in Nghia Hanh district in Quang Ngai province, in solitary confinement under police guard. He suffers from high blood pressure and a lung condition for which he has not been allowed medical attention.
Thich Quang Do, Secretary General of the UBCV, has also been repeatedly arrested over the past twenty years for protesting against the establishment of the State-sponsored Buddhist Church, and speaking out in favour of greater religious freedom and other human rights. In August 1995 he was sentenced to five years' imprisonment and five years' deprivation of civil rights. Since then he has been transferred from Ho Chi Minh City to Ba Sao reeducation camp, Nam Ha province in northern Vietnam, and since May 1996 has been in B14 or Thanh Liet prison near Hanoi. He is reported to be in very poor health and has very little access to visitors.
Nguyen Hoi is the most recent member of the UBCV to be sentenced to imprisonment. A member of the "Movement for the Restoration of the UBCV" he was arrested in October 1995 in Ho Chi Minh City. On November 1 this year he was sentenced to three years in prison in Ho Chi Minh City, charged with "abusing democratic freedoms with the intention of threatening the interests of the State and of social organizations." Documents were confiscated from his home relating to the UBCV flood relief efforts.
V: Recommendations
To the Government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam:
To the International Community: