May 30, 2008
HANOI (AFP) – A US human rights envoy said Friday he had raised with Vietnam the arrests of two journalists who led reporting on a major corruption scandal and urged its communist rulers to respect media freedom.
The two journalists — Nguyen Van Hai of the Tuoi Tre newspaper and Nguyen Viet Chien of the Thanh Nien daily — were arrested for “abuse of power” in early May, sparking a rare outcry from Vietnam’s tightly controlled media.
“We did raise the case of the two journalists,” David Kramer, US assistant secretary of state for human rights, democracy and labor, told a Hanoi media briefing a day after the annual bilateral human rights dialogue.
“And we urge that proper consideration be given in this matter and also stress the importance of freedom of the press in this connection,” he said.
“We stress that journalists need to be able to report and write or broadcast without concern for their safety and without concern for being arrested every time they may report on a sensitive matter.”
Hai and Chien led aggressive reporting on a corruption scandal inside a transport ministry infrastructure unit called PMU 18, where officials allegedly embezzled funds and gambled much of the money on football matches.
The scandal broke ahead of a five-yearly party congress in 2006 and led to the resignation of transport minister Dao Dinh Binh and the arrest of his deputy, Nguyen Viet Tien, who was cleared in March of the charges against him.
The journalists’ arrests triggered unusually strong reactions from the Vietnamese media, including a Thanh Nien article headlined “Honest Journalists Must Be Freed,” but critical reports stopped after stern official warnings.
The former head of PMU 18 and several officials were jailed last year, and some face further charges. A senior police officer accused of giving information to the two journalists was also arrested earlier this month.
Kramer stressed that “also important are journalists’ sources, and if people who talk to journalists run the risk of being arrested every time they discuss a sensitive issue, that too crowds into freedom of the press.
“We hope as the media here develops there be a more elastic and flexible approach toward handling the media from the government. We will continue to follow this specific case… The embassy will, and we will back in Washington.”
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