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Reports on human rights violations in Vietnam have decreased due to a general fear of reprisals, the United Nations says.
Last week, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, or OHCHR, released a report which found that Vietnam was retaliating against organizations and individuals who had cooperated with the U.N. in the field of human rights from May 2023 to April 2024.
“During the reporting period civil society organizations refrained from publicly engaging with United Nations human rights bodies and mechanisms and requested anonymity and confidentiality in their contributions and engagements with the Organization due to fear of reprisals,” it said.
The report said that as a result of the retaliation, the number of reports regarding Vietnam’s human rights profile had fallen sharply ahead of the U.N. Human Rights Council in May 2024.
Quyet Ho, a human rights activist from the coastal city of Da Nang who has contributed reports to the U.N., told RFA Vietnamese that he agrees with the assessment.
“The Vietnamese government retaliates against organizations and individuals who report [Vietnam’s] human rights violations to international human rights bodies,” he said.
“Moreover, the Ministry of Public Security security agencies also take revenge on those who dare to grant interviews to foreign or overseas Vietnamese media. Many have been imprisoned recently for their previous interviews with foreign press.”
Ho said that the one-party communist government in Vietnam has “weaponized the law” to suppress dissenting opinions, resulting in many activists choosing to remain silent.
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Another human rights activist, who wished to remain anonymous for security reasons, said that the Vietnamese government’s reprisals indicated an environment of “seriously restricted freedom of speech.”
Such retaliation not only discouraged individuals and organizations who wished to defend human rights in Vietnam, but also created a climate of fear in society, she said. This chilling effect is likely creating an incomplete picture of the state of human rights in Vietnam, she added.
Targeted with violence
The OHCHR’s report cited the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, or CERD, as saying that those working on the rights of ethnic and religious minorities, indigenous peoples, and non-citizens in Vietnam had been systematically targeted with violence, intimidation, surveillance, threats, and reprisals as a consequence of their work.
CERD gave the example of two Montagnard people, Y Khiu Niê and Y Sĩ Êban, being suppressed by Vietnamese authorities before and after the Southeast Asia Freedom of Religion or Belief Conference in Bali, Indonesia in 2022 – an event where participants had opportunities to interact with UN representatives and raise awareness of how to engage with UN human rights mechanisms.
At Ho Chi Minh City’s airport, the two activists were prevented from leaving for Bali and then taken back to Dak Lak province for interrogation. They were repeatedly harassed by the police for their contacts with organizations outside Vietnam that document and report on the situation of Montagnards, according to the OHCHR.
The Vietnamese government has refuted the allegations of arbitrarily detaining and monitoring the two Montagnard activists as well as restricting their movements.
RFA emailed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs seeking comment but did not receive a response by press time.
The ministry regularly denies allegations of human rights violations by the U.N. and other international rights organizations, stating that the accusations are based on false and unverified information.
Translated by Anna Vu. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.