Rights group condemns attacks on Vietnamese activists
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| Vietnamese social activist La Viet Dung speaking at a coffee shop in Hanoi - AFP |
(Vatican Radio) An international human rights group
has expressed concern that rights activists and bloggers in Vietnam are being
increasingly threatened and attacked, often in view of police, and urged the
government to investigate the violence and hold those responsible
accountable. New York-based Human Rights Watch released a report on
Monday highlighting 36 assaults, sometimes resulting in serious injuries, that
took place with apparent impunity between January 2015 and April 2017.
Despite being a one-party Communist state, Vietnam is one of
south-east Asia's fastest-growing economies, and has increasingly opened to
social change. Yet the state maintains a tight control on the media and
freedom of expression with zero tolerance for criticism. Hence critics
often take to the social media to air their grievances.
“In many cases, the assaults took place in plain view of
uniformed police officers who did not intervene,'' Human Rights Watch said in
the 65-page report titled, “No Country for Human Rights Activists: Assaults on
Bloggers and Democracy Campaigners in Vietnam.” ``In many of the
cases, the assaults took place in tandem with and seemingly in support of
official repressive measures against the activists in question.'' It added
that in almost all the cases the victims of those attacks “were also targeted
for arrest and other forms of official repression.”
“The fact that thugs abducted activists in broad daylight,
forced them into vans, and beat them demonstrates the impunity with which
activists are persecuted,'' said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights
Watch, in a news release. `“The Vietnamese government needs to make it clear
that it will not tolerate this kind of behavior and bring to an end this
campaign against rights campaigners,” Adams said, warning that tolerance
of these violent attacks would lead to lawlessness and chaos instead of the
social order and stability that the state was striving for.
Human Rights Watch said 35 out of 36 cases featured in its
report found no identified and prosecuted perpetrator despite the fact that
victims often report their beating to the police. The report said there
are approximately 110 known political prisoners in Vietnam. The Communist
government has said there are no political prisoners in the country, only those
who broke the law were put behind bars.
According to the 2017 World Press Freedom Index by Reporters
Without Borders, Vietnam ranks among worst ten in the world. It is the
6th worst nation out of a total of 180 monitored for press freedom.
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