Mr. Chair, ladies and gentlemen members of the Subcommittee on International Human Rights, good afternoon.
I want to thank all the members of the subcommittee for giving us this long-awaited opportunity to share our views on human rights violations in Vietnam.
We are very pleased to be able to assemble a group of young and relatively young witnesses who are all democracy and human rights activists with a wide range of backgrounds.
First, we have Dr. Nguyen Thang, president and CEO of Boat People SOS in the United States. He is well known in the overseas Vietnamese community and also in Vietnam for his tireless activities in helping Vietnamese refugees and victims of human trafficking and for his numerous initiatives in community development in the U.S.
We have Nguyen Khue-Tu, the commissioner for human rights for the Vietnamese Canadian Federation, who was born and raised in Canada, and who has a special interest in promoting respect for human rights in Vietnam. Over the last three years he has worked tirelessly to prepare the annual report on violations of human rights in Vietnam for the federation.
We also have three special witnesses from Vietnam—writer Pham Thanh Nghien, lawyer Nguyen Van Dai, and economist and writer Pham Chi Dung—all of whom were born and raised entirely under the communist regime. Once they realized the brutality and shortcomings of the regime, they started to raise questions about it and tried to reform it from within.
All of these witnesses are willing to testify to the subcommittee today. Being seasoned political activists, they are all aware of the risks involved in discussing political issues, but they're willing to accept them for the sake of promoting democracy and human rights in Vietnam.
To start our testimony, Khue-Tu will give an overview of the findings of her 2013 annual report on the violation of human rights in Vietnam.
Next, we'll hear from the three witnesses in Vietnam. After that, Dr. Nguyen Thang will talk about human rights, the Trans-Pacific Partnership initiative, and the human rights aspects of human trafficking. Finally, Khue-Tu will come back with some recommendations for concrete action. Following that, the floor will be open for discussion.
Since the biographical notes of the witnesses are available, in order to have as much time as possible for the presentations, I suggest that we begin right away with the testimony of Khue-Tu, if that is agreeable.