President and Prime Minister Dung set to meet next week
By BRITTANY LEVINE
WASHINGTON – Human rights first, trade second. That’s what President Bush needs to keep in mind when he meets with Vietnam’s prime minister next Tuesday, lawmakers said Thursday at a news conference on human rights at the Capitol.
Since Vietnam got free trade relations with the U.S., human rights there have eroded, the House members said. To turn the tide, Bush needs to aggressively “insist on specific and written improvements,” that all political prisoners be released, and for the upkeep of freedoms of religion, speech and assembly during next week’s meeting, Rep. Loretta Sanchez said.
“Vietnam is becoming less and less free,” said Sanchez, D-Garden Grove. “It’s up to the international community and us to clean it up.”
If these demands are not met, Vietnam should be placed on the State Department’s country of particular concern list, said several members of the House Vietnam and Human Rights caucuses. Being on the list could prevent Vietnam from receiving U.S. aid and trade.
Bush plans to discuss such topics as economic integration, climate change and the United Nations Security Council with the prime minister, Nguyen Tan Dung, according to a White House press release. Bush also plans to talk with him about the importance of freedom of speech, free assembly and religion. “They played a game, played some for fools, that they were on the mend, until they got the ’x’ in the box on business,” said Frank Wolf, R-Va., co-chair of the Human Rights Caucus. “The U.S. embassy in Vietnam should be an island of freedom and it’s turned into an island of business.”
Human rights in Vietnam have been a long-time concern on Capitol Hill. Last year, the House overwhelmingly passed the Vietnam Human Rights Act, which prohibits non-humanitarian assistance to Vietnam unless the government prevents human rights abuses there. Three Orange County Reps. —Dana Rohrabacher, Ed Royce and Sanchez—co-sponsored the act, which died in the Senate. “The U.S. Senate gets an ’F’ for not passing the Vietnam Human Rights Act,” Royce, R-Fullerton, said. He also promised to continue the fight for passage of the measure.
The arrest last year of Nguyen Quoc Quan, an American citizen from Sacramento, and other members of Viet Tan, a pro-democracy group, by Vietnamese police was mentioned several times as examples of human rights violations. Quan was convicted of terrorism after he was arrested distributing pamphlets that called for peaceful change in Vietnam.
Quan, who spent six months in a hot, small cell in Saigon, was released last month and returned home to Sacramento. Sanchez spoke out against the arrests last year along with Royce.
Last summer, Bush spoke to Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet. To convince Bush to speak with Triet about human rights, several Vietnamese groups held protests in Orange County, Washington, D.C. and New York. Congressmen also held meetings with Bush days before Triet arrived to stress the need for human rights reform in Vietnam. Human rights were discussed during that meeting.
Although human rights violations have continued despite that meeting, Congress and Vietnamese activist groups need to continue to push for reform, Sanchez said. “We have to keep doing this until something changes, everything changes. Llook at South Africa, at Russia,” Sanchez said. “We must keep pushing from the outside to embolden those like Dr. Quan on the inside who are taking the real risks.”
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/rights-human-vietnam-2072337-bush-sanchez
