(New York) When they meet in Tokyo on December 11-12 for the annual meeting of the Consultative Group for Vietnam, key donor governments should express concern about human rights violations associated with growing rural unrest in Vietnam, Human Rights Watch/Asia said today in a new report. It urged donors to convey to Hanoi that economic development depended on accountable government and the easing of controls on freedom of expression and association. It also urged donors supporting rule of law programs to raise concerns about the way in which new administrative decrees and regulations were being used as an instrument of political control.
The 15-page report, "Rural Unrest in Vietnam," documents the causes and implications of continuing protests against corruption, land disputes, and compulsory labor in Thai Binh province beginning last May, as well as violent unrest in the largely Catholic district of Thong Nhat in Dong Nai province last month, initially sparked by expropriation of church land by corrupt local authorities. Despite statements by Communist Party Secretary Do Muoi and other officials that to maintain stability, citizens should be allowed to "exercise their democratic rights through the mass media," the government has clamped down on domestic and foreign media coverage of these disputes and put in place new state tools for social and political control. No new laws have been adopted since the Eighth Party Congress in 1996 strengthening the rights of Vietnamese citizens in line with the government's international obligations and its own Constitution.
After a decade of economic growth, there is now a downward trend in Vietnam, coupled with stark disparity between the income levels of rural and urban populations, according to the World Bank. Human Rights Watch/Asia applauds statements by top Vietnamese officials acknowledging the urgent need to address these fundamental problems and widespread local corruption. But the donors can play a useful role in pressing the government to go beyond rhetoric to take concrete action.
Human Rights Watch/Asia urges the donors in Tokyo to call for the repeal of the Administrative Detention decree promulgated in April 1997, giving local officials authority to arbitrarily detain anyone suspected of "threatening the national security" for up to two years without trial; to urge adoption of legislation safeguarding the right of Vietnamese and foreign journalists to report objectively as an essential element in liberalizing the economy, and to cease censorship of the domestic media; and to continue pressing for an independent and impartial judiciary. Assistance from the World Bank, and UN Development Fund, and international donors to promote the rule of law is useful, but further technical and financial assistance should be conditioned on the government's willingness to bring its laws into conformity with international standards in the key areas of freedom of press, association, speech and assembly.
