Image Credit: John Bill via Shutterstock.com
It's Time for the Obama Administration to Get
Tough on Human Rights in Vietnam
Nguyen
Dang Minh Man’s story reminds us that Vietnam’s record on human rights remains
deeply troubling.
By John Sifton
June 24, 2015
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Nguyen Dang Minh Man is 30 years old, and has been in prison in Vietnam for a third of her adult
life.
This month, I met her father, Nguyen Van Loi, who had come to
Washington to talk about the fate of his daughter. Minh Man is one of at least
160 political prisoners the Vietnamese government convicted in the last few
years under penal code provisions that criminalize criticism of the government.
Her father came to Washington to raise awareness of his daughter’s case, a
timely trip with the General Secretary of the Vietnam Community Party, Nguyen
Phu Trong*, set to visit Washington in early July.
Minh Man was only 26 when she was arrested in 2011, charged under a provision that ostensibly blocks attempts
to overthrow the government. The specific allegation against her? Painting
graffiti “in order to incite people to protest.” The authorities also said she
was a member of the exile dissident party Viet Tan. Minh Man was sentenced
in 2013 to eight years in prison. Today she lives at Prison
Camp # 5 at Thanh Hoa, a province in northern Vietnam.
“She started her activism when she was about 24,” her father told
me. “She couldn’t accept the injustices all around.” She started to take part
in protests against the government. “She had a camera and a motorbike. She
would ride around to different places. She took pictures showing police
brutality. She took pictures of protests. She took pictures of big fancy houses
and apartment buildings built by corrupt government officials.”
Van Loi tries to visit her every month, though the prison is
over 1,000 miles from their home in the southern Mekong Delta, a trip requiring
four different train and bus lines. “It takes me 40 hours to get there,” he
told me. “And sometimes I am not allowed to visit her. They tell me she’s
violated a rule and is in solitary confinement.”
Van Loi is worried about his daughter’s treatment at the hands of
guards. He told me that when he visits, he has to talk through glass, on a
telephone—even as other non-political prisons are allowed to mingle with
visitors freely in a yard. “There are two guards on my side. Two guards sitting
on her side. And a fifth guard, who is wearing headphones, listening to you.”
Can they speak freely? “She can’t really say anything. Maybe she
makes a comment, but it must be subtle.” She manages to whisper things when the
guards let them say goodbye and hug, during a brief moment when they let him
hand over items—food, clothing, toiletries—that he has brought from home. “She
may say a few words to me, like ‘They’re only giving me rice and salt’ or ‘They
put me in solitary for ten days.’”
Van Loi’s description is consistent with accounts about other
political prisoners. Human Rights Watch has received credible reports from
former prisoners that another prominent woman dissident in the same facility, Ta Phong Tan, was beaten
by guards on at least one occasion in the last year. Tan, who Secretary of
State John Kerry mentioned in a public statement on May
5, World Press Freedom Day, is currently on hunger strike.
Truong Minh Tam, another former prisoner at the same facility who
accompanied Van Loi to the United States, told me that prisoners undertake
hours of labor every day, sewing textiles, agricultural work, or cleaning and
cooking for the guards, and must pay fees if they don’t meet work quotas.
The
authorities also routinely motivate or provoke ordinary prisoners to harass the
political prisoners. As Tam told me: “There is an unwritten rule: those with
long prison terms can earn days off their sentence if they do something for the
guards, like instigating a political prisoner to fight, or making problems for
them.” Ordinary prisoners will knock over dissidents’ food containers or stick
their feet out to trip them when they are walking by. If fights break out, or
even a verbal altercation, the political prisoners are then placed into
solitary confinement, in a hot, dark, and damp room with the footprint of a
coffin, for ten days, with only rice and a liter of water each day, and no
water for bathing.
Van Loi’s anxieties about his daughter are heartbreaking, and his
trip to Washington raises an important question: Why does the US government
remain so keen in improving relations with Hanoi?
Make no mistake, the U.S. government knows Vietnam’s record, and
has repeatedly criticized it.
President Obama recently met with an exiled
Vietnamese dissident in the White House. At the same time, the administration
continues to warm its diplomatic ties—most recently, by relaxing bans on weapons sales.
The Obama administration insists that its efforts are meant to
help spur Vietnam to improve its human rights record, but with evidence of real
reform so hard to come by, one can rightly wonder if their theory of change is
valid.
It’s time to adopt a tougher line. In a few weeks, when President
Obama meets Trung, the leader of Vietnam’s ruling party, he should ask him why
his country’s government can’t start releasing prisoners like Ms. Minh Man.
Obama should tell Trung that if Vietnam continues to treat critics as enemies,
warming U.S.-Vietnam relations are going to hit a cold front.
John Sifton is Asia Advocacy Director at Human Rights Watch.
*Name corrected from the original.
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