Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for inviting me.
My English is not good, and I am trying to say everything I want to tell you.
As an advocate for the legitimate rights of workers, I am pleased to present the current status of the working class in Vietnam and the fate of those who fought for the right to form a union. ln countries outside Vietnam, people always think that, when integrated with the world, life and benefits of the workers will also improve, along with economic growth, but in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, we do not completely see that to be the case.
Since being forced to switch from a central planning economy to a market economy with integration into the world economic growth, the country is constantly increasing in economic growth, but only two groups are reaping the benefits: the rulers and the foreign capitalists. The working class, the front-line contributors to the output of social goods and wealth, is increasingly impoverished.
Cheap labour is the first advertisement that the state of Vietnam raises to attract and to offer to foreign investors. The objective of the Vietnamese government is to maximize profits from the investors to the rulers themselves by maximizing the exploitation of the workers by the foreign investors.
Investors are not always benevolent to and respectful of the employees, especially investors from Asian countries.
Since the 1990s, Vietnamese workers have had to work as slaves in their own country. They have to work 12 to 15 hours per day, but the average wage is only $70 U.S. per month. They do not receive unemployment insurance or benefits for sickness, even though they work in hazardous environments and are not equipped with adequate health protection clothing. They are living in squalid quarters, and in many cases they are humiliated and even beaten by the owners.
Vietnam has a union, but it was established by the Communist Party to monitor and to restrain the workers and not to help them. The president of the Vietnam General Confederation of Labour is a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam. The local union leaders are also Communist Party members. ln addition, most local union leaders receive base salaries from the employers, so they are in essence just the tools of the employers.
Being exploited and not defended by anybody, the workers go on strike to fight for their rights, but the Vietnamese government cracks down, arresting the leaders of the strike.
To help and protect the rights of workers, on October 20, 2006, the establishment of independent unions was announced and then also the association of workers and farmers solidarity, but the authorities immediately suppressed, hunted, and assassinated the founders and the members.
Lawyer Le Thi Cong Nhan and many other people were sentenced respectively, to many years in jail. Their families have been implicated. Le Tri Tue, the vice-president, sought refuge in Cambodia, but the communist secret services pursued and arrested him. He has been missing for the last eight years.
Those who fought for the rights of workers, as we did, had to switch to covert operations under the name of Lao Dong Viet, the Viet labour movement. We were hunted relentlessly. In early 2010, after helping more than 10,000 My Phong factory workers on a peaceful strike to protect their rights, Mr. Nguyen Hoang Quoc Hung, Mr. Doan Huy Chuong, and I were arrested and sent to prison, even before a guilty verdict was reached. In jail we were held in isolation, severely beaten and treated like animals.
Doan Huy Chuong and I were each sentenced to seven years in prison, and Nguyen Hoang Quoc Hung, to nine years. I have experienced it myself, and I understand the hardships on a prisoner of the communist regime whether the prisoner is a man or a woman. I was often beaten by the wardens, forced to work as a labourer. When I fought back for my rights, I was subjected to solitary confinement, stripped naked, beaten, and humiliated by common criminals in the same jail cell assigned by the wardens. I've suffered through six different prisons in Vietnam. To force me to confess, the Vietnamese government moved me to the prison in the north with very harsh conditions and far from my family, with no visitation allowed. When transferred over long distances of nearly 2,000 kilometres, I was still handcuffed and shackled in the trunk like an animal. My friends Doan Huy Chuong and Nguyen Hoang Quoc Hung, as men, were treated so much worse than I was.
I do not know the specific conditions of detention of hundreds of other prisoners of conscience in Vietnam, but through personal experience, as a young woman I was living in hell.
Thanks to the enduring struggle of Vietnamese people inside and outside the country and the strong intervention of governments and international organizations, including the people and Government of Canada, the Vietnamese government had to release me unconditionally, but my friends still suffer a great deal in prison. Outside prisons, violent attacks by security personnel disguised as barbaric thugs are severely administered on dissidents, especially those who write for press freedom and those who are active in trade unions for Vietnam. I am also regularly threatened, intimidated, and my family harassed.
I urge you in your position to pressure the Vietnamese government to release Nguyen Hoang Quoc Hung and Doan Huy Chuong, who are only advocates helping to protect worker rights. I also urge you to compel the Government of Vietnam to release hundreds of other political prisoners.
The rights to establish independent trade unions are granted rights of the workers, but in Vietnam it is prohibited and punishable.
I also call on governments and investors, in their negotiations and relations with the Government of Vietnam, to set conditions permitting the establishment of an independent union representing real workers, not the tool of the Communist Party that the labour confederation of Vietnam is today.
I would like to thank you and wish you all good health today.