Vietnam came under criticism Wednesday for the harassment and jailing of bloggers and government critics during a U.N. review of its rights record in Geneva, with Western countries calling on the one-party Communist state to respect freedom of expression.
Diplomats gathered for Vietnam’s Universal Periodic Review—a process each U.N. member country undergoes every four years—also condemned Vietnam’s expanded use of the death penalty and for blocking activists from traveling to Geneva for the review.
U.S. representative Peter Mulrean called on Vietnam to “release all political prisoners” during the review before the 47-member U.N. Human Rights Council, which Vietnam joined last year.
"Vietnam still harasses and detains those who exercise universal rights and freedoms, such as freedom of expression and association," he said, according to international news agencies.
Britain's diplomat Ruth Tumer said her country regretted "recent trends to control the Internet" while officials from France and Australia called for reducing the number of crimes punishable by death and for a moratorium on executions, Reuters reported.
Sweden's Anna Jakenberg Brinck said that since Vietnam’s last UPR in 2009, at least 58 people were arrested or sentenced to prison under vague national security provisions for speaking out online.
'Lack of objective information'
Vietnamese Vice Foreign Minister Ha Kim Ngoc told the session it was a "pity that some comments were based on a lack of objective information.”
Vietnam was going out of its way to encourage a "diverse emergence of the press and mass media, including the Internet,” he said, according to Agence France-Presse.
Some 106 diplomats spoke at the UPR, some hailing the country's progress in areas such as poverty reduction and boosting school enrollment, as well as its signature of the Convention against Torture, since its last review.
Vietnam signed the U.N. Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment in November, but it has not yet ratified it and has taken few other steps to meet its obligations, U.S.-based Human Rights Watch said.
This year’s UPR came two days after Vietnam’s former consul in Geneva, Dang Xuong Hung, announced he had sought political asylum in Switzerland, calling in an open letter for the Vietnamese delegation to admit to the country’s violations.
'Sorry record'
Global rights groups said Vietnam should be held to a higher standard of protection and promotion of human rights since its election to the Human Rights Council in November.
“By being elected as a member of the Human Rights Council, Vietnam made a commitment to fully cooperate with the mechanisms of the council including the UPR process,” Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division, told RFA’s Vietnamese Service.
“Vietnam should recognize that commitment and that it involves not only cooperating on procedures but also being truthful about the content of its sorry record on human rights.”
He criticized Vietnam for blocking activists who had sought to travel to Geneva, saying it was a “clear human rights violation” to interfere with their speaking there.
Writer barred from travel
Vietnamese writer Pham Chi Dung, a prominent government critic, was barred from traveling to Geneva for a conference on the sidelines of the review after authorities stopped him at the Tan Son Nhat airport in Ho Chi Minh City on Saturday.
Vietnamese activists who made it to Geneva had held talks with diplomats in the Swiss city ahead of the review to discuss their recommendations for Vietnam’s UPR process.
Blogger Nguyen Anh Tuan, part of a delegation of Vietnamese activists that met with diplomats, said an increasingly vocal community of civil society activists in Vietnam was playing an important role in monitoring the country’s rights record using international mechanisms such as the UPR.
“This mechanism helps us a lot and we can utilize it to create pressure on the government of Vietnam to make improvements on human rights,” he told RFA.
After the UPR, activists will work to monitor commitments made by Vietnam, actions taken to comply with those promises, ways in which the country fails to comply, and any fresh violations that may arise, he said.
From under house arrest
At an event in Geneva sponsored by rights groups on Tuesday, Pham Chi Dung and two prominent Buddhist dissidents living under house arrest in Vietnam gave testimony recorded in audio messages recorded in secret.
Thich Quang Do, patriarch of the banned Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam (UBCV), said in a message from his Thanh Minh Zen monastery in Ho Chi Minh City that he had spent three decades under different forms of detention and wanted to speak out for those whose voices were similarly stifled.
“I am not alone,” he said. “In Vietnam today, hundreds of dissidents and human rights defenders are subjected to the torture of house arrest without any due process of law.”
Le Cong Cau, head of the UBCV-affiliated Buddhist Youth Movement living under house arrest in Hue in Central Vietnam, said authorities had cracked down on its movement in recent months since it began a campaign on educating youth about human rights.
"As I speak to you today, one hundred members of the Buddhist Youth Movement in Hue are under house arrest without any justification or charge, simply for exercising their legitimate right to association and peaceful assembly," he said.
Reported by RFA's Vietnamese Service. Translated by Viet Ha. Written in English by Rachel Vandenbrink.