23 October 2008, 00:45 CET
http://www.eubusiness.com:80/news-eu/1224700321.35
(STRASBOURG) – The European Union must reassess its cooperation with Vietnam and insist that Hanoi end its “systematic violation of democracy and human rights,” the European parliament said Wednesday.
“Human rights dialogue between the European Union and Vietnam must lead to tangible improvements in Vietnam,” the EU parliamentarians said in a text adopted overwhelmingly by 479 votes to 21.
The assembled MEPs called on the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, “to reassess cooperation policy with Vietnam… based on respect for democratic principles and fundamental rights.”
Amid negotiations with Hanoi on a new Partnership and Cooperation Agreement, the MEPs, meeting in Strasbourg, called for the new deal to “include a clear human rights and democracy clause… to raise with the Vietnamese side the need to stop the current systematic violation of democracy and human rights.”
They denounced in particular religious intolerance, and called for the immediate release of “all people imprisoned or detained for the peaceful expression of political or religious beliefs,”
These included more than 300 Montagnard Christians, as well as Khmer Krom Buddhist monks, Catholics and adherents of the Cao Dai religion as well as democracy activists, land rights petitioners and trade union leaders, the parliament said.
It also called on Hanoi to repeal laws that “criminalise dissent and certain religious activities” and to end the Vietnamese Government’s censorship and control over the domestic media, including the internet.
So far this year “several Vietnamese journalists have been arrested or sanctioned for reporting on official corruption, and, on 19 September 2008, the Associated Press Hanoi bureau chief Ben Stocking was arrested and beaten by police for covering a peaceful rally of Vietnamese Catholics in Hanoi,” the parliamentarians charged.
