February 3, 2010
Hanoi – The recent sentencing of 15 Vietnamese democracy activists to prison could damage the country’s image and its diplomat relations, the US ambassador to Vietnam said Wednesday. Michael Michalak painted a generally bright picture of bilateral relations, which have grown closer in recent years, during a Hanoi press conference.
But he said the convictions of several advocates of multiparty democracy, including US-educated lawyer Le Cong Dinh, “appear to be efforts to suppress the peaceful expression of political views.”
Michalak said the convictions “affect the bilateral relationship.”
“It has an effect on the way the people of the United States look at Vietnam, the way the congress looks at Vietnam, the way the administration looks at Vietnam,” Michalak said.
He said negative impressions could affect visits by senior officials, or US congressional approval for arms sales or bilateral assistance.
Michalak said the US would pursue closer diplomatic and economic relations, while also raising human rights issues.
The ambassador noted that the number of Vietnamese students studying in the US had tripled over the past three years, to 13,000, and that last year the US for the first time was the source of the most new investment in Vietnam.
The US has been Vietnam’s largest single-country export market since the early 2000s. The two countries, which fought a bitter war in the 1960s and ’70s, will celebrate the 15th anniversary of their establishment of diplomatic relations this year.
The US has sharply criticized Vietnam’s arrests of democracy activists and crackdown on internet freedom over the past year.
Last week, three members of the US Congress representing large Vietnamese-American constituencies sent a letter to President Nguyen Minh Triet calling for the release of two imprisoned democracy advocates, Tran Khai Thanh Thuy and Pham Thanh Nghien.
