Sure.
Thank you very much for this opportunity. We definitely appreciate the opportunity to testify before you today. Last year we had the opportunity to testify with three former prisoners of conscience. We're very happy that we get to continue this dialogue today. We really appreciate this.
And thank you, Mr. Chair, for the introduction. I can now skip that.
To start, I would like to say that the mechanisms of suppression employed by the Government of Vietnam are very sophisticated, vast, and varied. It's truly disappointing, in that if they were to use their creativity and ingenuity for social progress instead of suppressing dissent, Vietnam wouldn't be the dystopian society it is for many today.
I have time to address only two points. As we said, we would like to keep this short in order to have more questions and ideas at the end.
On the two points, I would like to start by giving you the most recent examples. The first is the government's continued and increasing use of thugs to suppress and subdue dissidents. Lately, because there have been many, many photographs, with videographic evidence, of policemen and policewomen attacking dissidents, they have now resorted to the increased use of hired thugs to carry out these acts of violence in order for the government to distance itself from these acts of violence. If they're not actual thugs, then they're actually state policemen who are not in uniform but wearing civilian clothing.
I actually have one photograph here that is quite graphic. I would request that it be shown for only a few seconds, if that's okay.
Briefly, the man on the left is Nguyen Chi Tuyen, and the man on the right—there are two pictures of him—is Dinh Quang Tuyen. They were savagely beaten for their peaceful activism. The man on the right actually had his cranium smashed in.
As I was just walking into this very room today, I heard news of Pastor Nguyen Hong Quang in Saigon from just a few hours ago, or maybe last night. His face now looks no different from that of the man on the left you see right there. This goes to show you the escalating use of violence. It's no longer about hitting people in the back; it's hitting them in the head.
Thank you: we don't need to see this picture for too long.
Although what you see is gruesome, I think we can argue that the treatment of dissidents doesn't quite compare with the cruel treatment of citizens who are not dissidents, who are not under the watchful public eye, the protective eye, of the international community. If I may be very frank, every time I learn about what happens to people in Vietnam, I see more and more how the police there regard human life as having less value than an ant's—easily crushable, easily killable. I think one reason for this is that the performance evaluation of police officers in Vietnam is based on how many people they can find guilty, which leads to intense interrogation and torture, which in turn results in civilian deaths.
In fact, two days ago I learned that two uncles were sentenced to prison for 15 months because they decried the brutal killing of their 14-year-old nephew at the hands of police. I think this speaks volumes about the conscience, or I should I say the lack thereof, of a regime when two people who were very sad, who decried the brutal killing of a young loved one, were sentenced to prison for that, just that.
The important thing that I would like to remind all diplomats of is that as per the Vietnamese government's style of deceiving the international community to maintain its image of a government that is trying to improve, the government also creates fake civil societies, also known as government-operated non-governmental organizations, which is humorous, in a way. I call them “GONGOs”. These fake civil societies meet with diplomats when they travel to the country, all meanwhile attacking real, genuine civil societies in the country. I must say that if they didn't need money from international trade or development, etc., they certainly would not bother with maintaining their international image.
I can go on with many examples, but I think I'll stop here.
The point I would like to emphasize is this. This totalitarian government does not hesitate to blatantly lie to the international community. Also, while it carries on its facade of improving its human rights record by, for example, releasing a small number of high-profile dissidents, which they do....
By the way, I should mention that they release many of the dissidents because they know the dissidents are on the verge of death, having been denied medical care in prison. So despite all that, they continue to arrest, imprison, and cause the “accidental” deaths of many more to prove they are a regime that is not to be questioned.
I think I'll end my remarks there.
We can move on, as you mentioned, Mr. Chair, to Mr. Nguyen Van Hai via video conference. He's a former prisoner of conscience who had been sentenced to 12 years in prison for his peaceful activism. Thank you very much.