A member of the Norwegian parliament who was traveling in Vietnam last week was ordered to leave the country, after he visited a dissident author.
PHOTO: FÆDRELANDSVENNEN
Peter Gitmark, a member of parliament for Norway’s Conservative party, was questioned in his hotel room by Vietnamese security police, who then asked him to leave the country.
Gitmark told his hometown newspaper Fædrelandsvennen in Kristiansand that he had been in the country on a tourist visa. He used the trip, however, to visit human rights and democracy activists.
Among those he visited was the dissident author Than Kanh Tran Theuy in Hanoi. Gitmark was apparently observed by neighbours, who reported the visit to police.
Gitmark could produce an airline ticket that showed he was leaving the country the next day anyway. “If I hadn’t been traveling on the first flight out, they surely would have kicked me out,” he told the paper.
Gitmark claimed many families of Vietnamese refugees in Norway are kept out of the labour market or imprisoned, because their relatives in Norway work for a free and democratic Vietnam.
Gitmark is a member of the Norwegian parliament’s energy and environment committee. He was initially held at the airport security checkpoint, but later flew out on his scheduled flight.
Site Ref: http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article2276503.ece