Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on June 4th, 2015

[Dieu Cay]

Sir, as we have said, the communication and information system is completely under the control of the government, so it is impossible to print or distribute news not approved by the government.

We have to depend mainly on what we call the social network and also the cyber-network. For instance, in my case, when I was on a hunger strike, they completely isolated me in prison. No one knew about my hunger strike. Only when a family member happened to be visiting me and the news leaked out did the other bloggers begin to propagate the news.

Also, in the case of my friend who is imprisoned in Thanh Hoa, at 5 o'clock this morning a blogger sent the news that he had received from the brother of my friend, who had gone to visit her and discovered she was on a hunger strike and that her health had deteriorated. The bloggers could spread that news to the public.

At the moment in Vietnam there are about six million bloggers, and if only 1% of those bloggers cared about that kind of news and about the issues of freedom of expression and freedom of association, then I think we would have 60,000 bloggers to spread the news.

In addition to that, we have 25 million people using Facebook in Vietnam. If 1% of those people used that medium to pass on information, then we would have 250,000 people to spread the news. This is why for us, as I have said before in my presentation and want to stress it again, we would like to appeal to the Parliament of Canada and also other international agencies to make the issues of freedom of the press one of the key issues in their approach to helping us overcome the practice of violation of human rights in Vietnam.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Thank you very much.

That concludes the time we have for questions from members, and given the time, some of you may have to leave. But I want to give Ms. Nguyen the chance to go through the four suggestions she had.

Ms. Nguyen.

[Khue-Tu Nguyen]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I'll make it really brief and just list the four recommendations. Thank you for the time.

Our first one concerns adopting a prisoner of conscience. Our first recommendation is for the sub-committee to canvas for parliamentarians who would be willing to participate in this “adopt a prisoner of conscience” project. By adopt we mean that one parliamentarian would follow the circumstances of one imprisoned activist and make sure that he or she is treated decently in prison so as, first, to protect them while they are in prison and in the long term call for their unconditional release.

In short, that's what one can do. We can definitely provide you with a list of such prisoners of conscience, and we'll subtract those who have already been “adopted” by your counterparts in the United States and Germany and in Australia. This has already been done; it's already rolling.

Our second recommendation is for the sub-committee to request a report from the office of the Ambassador for Religious Freedom, Ambassador Andrew Bennett, whom Dr. Nguyen and Dr. Le and I had the privilege of meeting with yesterday, to be updated on the situation of religious freedoms in Vietnam.

Our third recommendation is to call for legal reforms in Vietnam, as has already been mentioned numerous times, to remove vague articles in the penal code that are used to criminalize peaceful dissent.

Our final recommendation pertains to the TPP, which Dr. Nguyen has addressed thoroughly for you.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Thank you.

Yes, I'd invite you to get a list of names to our clerk. I might suggest that you not to eliminate the names of those who have been paired with legislators elsewhere, but rather submit them to us along with the information as to who they've been paired with. That would be very helpful.

[Khue-Tu Nguyen]

Absolutely.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Thank you very much.

[Khue-Tu Nguyen]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Thank you to all of our witnesses today, both those who are here in person and our one witness from Los Angeles. We're very grateful indeed that you could be here, as well as members of the community.

I'm afraid I don't know the name of the translator, but thank you. We have translators of various levels of competence, and you've been particularly good. We're very grateful indeed that you were there to help us along.

And yes, Mr. Dewar, the opposition foreign affairs critic is here as well.

Thank you very much, everybody.

Given the time, we are now adjourned.