Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and ladies and gentlemen.
If I may, please, I'll start with some figures and numbers. In 2013, so in just 12 months, the Government of Vietnam sentenced more than 63 dissidents to sentences totalling more than 425 years in prison, which doesn't include lifetime sentences, and also sentenced dissidents to more than 57 years of house arrest. In addition, the Vietnamese authorities also detained, harassed, beat, kidnapped, and tortured a number of people, a number that is really too colossal to track.
The Communist Party's methods for suppressing dissent are, I might say, extremely, extremely sophisticated. Without a watchful eye, the Communist Party can easily hoodwink the international community and their own people and thus give this false facade of a government that is trying to improve its human rights record due to international pressure, but of course that's not true.
For example, they release one activist to appease the international community, but then they arrest 10 others. They boast that they granted amnesty to thousands of prisoners, but in fact, not one of those prisoners was a prisoner of conscience. They not only admit to hiring 1,000 online public opinion shapers to indoctrinate their people and bash human rights activists, but they also physically bash them by hiring criminals to beat the activists or to cause “traffic accidents” in order to kill people so that the government is not tied to these acts of violence.
Their joining the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2013 is just a ploy to tell their people that the world regards them as a nation that respects human rights, but of course they've never listened to any one of their international obligations or human rights standards, and I think that their being on the Human Rights Council is a great opportunity for Canada to voice its concerns and to hold Vietnam to their international obligations.
In summary, they have many tools to dupe both their people and the world and create a very, very repressive society.
Our four witnesses today—three in Vietnam via video and one from the United States, Dr. Nguyen—are more than qualified to unmask the Government of Vietnam. They are witnesses and experts. If I may, please, I'll play the DVD.
Thank you very much.
[Video Presentation]
Thank you.
We now have our very last witness, Dr. Nguyen, who is from Virginia, in the United States. He's an expert in this matter. He is the president and CEO of Boat People SOS.