Vietnam Human Rights Act

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S. 3678. A bill to promote freedom, human rights, and the rule of law in Vietnam; to the Committee on Foreign Relations.

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce an important piece of legislation—the Vietnam Human Rights Act.

Over the last several sessions of Congress, legislation addressing the human rights situation in Vietnam has been repeatedly introduced but has never been enacted into law.

Like many of my Senate colleagues, I had hoped that strengthening our relationship with Vietnam on the trade and economic front and supporting Vietnam’s integration into the international community would dramatically improve Vietnam’s human rights record.

But that has not turned out to be the case.

The United States has removed Vietnam from its list of Countries of Particular Concern, granted Vietnam permanent normalized trade relations, and supported Vietnam’s bid to join the World Trade Organization, yet Vietnam continues to arrest its citizens for their peaceful advocacy of political views.

It also continues to strictly restrict religious freedom, to harass and detain labor activists, and to refuse its citizens the basic rights of freedom of association, assembly, and expression.

Just last year, Vietnam carried out one of its harshest crackdowns in 20 years against peaceful protestors calling for political change.

The crackdown, which continued through mid-2007, led to the arrest of hundreds of individuals, including Father Nguyen Van Ly, who was sentenced to 8 years in prison. This crackdown happened shortly before the visit of Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet to the United States last June.

At the end of 2007, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom summed up Vietnam’s recent behavior this way:

Vietnam’s overall human rights record remains very poor and deteriorated in the last year ….. Dozens of legal and political reform advocates, free speech activists, labor unionists, and independent religious leaders and religious freedom advocates have been arrested, placed under home detention or surveillance, threatened, intimidated, and harassed.

Now we are witnessing yet another crackdown—this time on Catholic Church members in Hanoi who have been holding prayer vigils to demand the return of properties confiscated after the Communist government took power in the 1950s.

The Vietnamese government has responded to these protests through intimidation, violence, and arrest.

Just last week, Ben Stocking, the Bureau Chief for the Associated Press in Hanoi, was beaten by Vietnamese security forces for photographing one such vigil. It is time for such behavior to stop.

The Boxer bill seeks to improve human rights in Vietnam by shifting the focus of U.S. non-humanitarian foreign aid to a comprehensive approach that does more to address human rights.

The bill specifically requires that any spending increase for U.S. non-humanitarian development, economic, trade, and security assistance to Vietnam be matched by additional funding for programs focusing on human rights, the rule of law, and democracy promotion. To date, the majority of non-humanitarian U.S. assistance programs to Vietnam have focused on business, trade, and security, and have not effectively addressed human rights abuses.

In addition, the bill outlines objectives for U.S. diplomacy with Vietnam on human rights related issues and encourages Vietnam to release its religious and political prisoners.

The Boxer bill also prohibits Vietnam from having access to the U.S. Generalized System of Preferences, GSP, program until Vietnam improves its labor standards. The GSP program allows developing countries to import certain items into the U.S. duty-free.

While the 110th Congress will shortly come to an end, I wanted to introduce this legislation as a signal to the Vietnamese government that its record on human rights and recent behavior has not gone unnoticed. I intend to reintroduce this legislation very early in the 111th Congress.

Let me be clear. I support a strong bilateral relationship between Vietnam and the United States. But the Vietnamese government must dramatically improve its human rights record in order for our relationship to grow.

Source: Congressional Record

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