My name is Nguyen Van Dai, a human rights lawyer from Hanoi, Vietnam.
First of all, I would like to thank the Canadian parliamentary committee on human rights for giving me the opportunity to represent the Brotherhood for Democracy and other civil society organizations in Vietnam. I will talk to you on the status of human rights in Vietnam. Then I will have a few recommendations.
The human rights situation in Vietnam in recent times has improved slightly, but the improvement was not coming from the goodwill of the government. The improvement was due to the pressure from the international community and the growth of civil society organizations in Vietnam.
ln the period from 2006 to 2012, each year Vietnamese authorities arrested, tried, and imprisoned 10 to 40 people. The reason for those arrests is that they wanted to use freedom of speech and freedom of the press to express their political views through international websites, blogs, and Facebook. Some arrests were due to partisan political organization activities. Currently Vietnam is still holding about 120 political prisoners and 60 imprisoned religious minorities in the central highlands.
ln the last two years, with the explosive growth of information technology, blogs, and social networking sites, Vietnam people, mostly young people, have access to the Internet and social networking sites. More than 30 million people in Vietnam use the Internet every day. According to Facebook, more than 20 million people in Vietnam have an account on Facebook. This makes the Vietnam government lose control over information distribution.
Human rights activists and social and community networks have been able to create waves of public opinion. Combined with the street protests, these waves have forced the government to change unfair and unjustified policy.
Before 2013, the government could arrest anyone it wanted, but international pressure and international integration do not allow it to continue to do so. To cope with the growth of democratic movements and human rights activists in Vietnam, the government has changed the method of repression. It used violence to attack those who are active. In 2013 and 2014, each year there were at least 10 cases. The activists who were attacked suffered injuries. ln addition to physical assault of activists, security threw dirty things into houses, destroying the meetings of activists.
For those activists who have to rent rooms or houses, security pressured the landlords to cancel their lease contracts. lt forced human rights activists to move house every two or three months.
I will speak of impeding freedom of movement within the country. Every time when there are marches or international delegations to Hanoi, hundreds of activists will be stopped at home. The government deploys dozens of security police, local civil defence agents, and neighbourhood women's league members to prevent them from leaving their homes. They cannot leave their homes to go to attend the events or to meet with international delegations.
Speaking of harassment, these pupils, college students participating in the movement, are summoned by security for questioning and often threatened. Security also pressures the school to threaten expulsion. Security also meets and threatens the parents of pupils and students.
The activists are regularly summoned by security or even kidnapped when they try to leave their homes.
On the right to work, most human rights activists in Vietnam do not have the opportunity to work for a living. If they lease a business venue, security threatens the landlord about renting. If they are employed, after a few months security will force the employers to fire them.
On obstructing the rights to travel abroad, in 2014 and the early months of 2015, there were nearly 100 human rights activists who had been banned from going overseas and their passports were seized. lt can be safely said that 100% of human rights activists in Vietnam will be deprived of any chance of going abroad.
My recommendations are that the human rights committee of Parliament, the Canadian government, use economic relations and political diplomacy with Vietnam to pressure the Vietnamese government to respect human rights.
The Canadian Parliament should recommend to the Canadian embassy in Hanoi to organize regular contacts, meetings, and discussions with representatives of civil society organizations in Vietnam.
The Canadian Parliament, the Canadian government, needs to establish funds to support civil society organizations in Vietnam, because when civil society organizations in Vietnam grow, they can be a new force powerful enough to improve the human rights situation in Vietnam.
Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to my presentation.