A Call for Human Rights in Vietnam

Vietnamese Americans gathered Saturday as they have for the last eight years in an annual ceremony to draw attention to the human rights violations occurring under the Communist regime in Vietnam.

Waving yellow-and-red flags of the former South Vietnamese government and holding placards that read “Human Rights for Vietnam,” about 150 people joined in protest at a Little Saigon shopping mall parking lot.

“Every year we have this rally to remind people that human rights are still being violated in Vietnam and that we cannot forget our people,” said rally organizer Hung Nguyen.

Organizers highlighted the fact that it was the 49th anniversary of the United Nations’ International Human Rights Declaration, a treaty Hanoi signed.

“Even after nearly 50 years, there are still countries that never respect basic human rights for its people, and Vietnam is among the worst,” said community organizer Ha Son Tran.

Two other large demonstrations have been held within the last several months to draw attention to alleged widespread religious persecution and political oppression.

Saturday gave community members a chance to show solidarity with their countrymen in the wake of protests in Vietnam.

In July, Vietnamese security forces arrested hundreds of demonstrators protesting high taxes, official corruption and land grabs from Catholic churches in the two provinces of Thai Binh in the north and Xuan Loc in the south.

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The local rally drew young and old, from veterans who fought the French occupation in the 1940s and ‘50s to those who were only children by the war’s end in 1975.

“We want the people in our country to realize we stand behind them,” Tran said. “They are not alone in this.”

But government oppression continues, and the latest example is the recent announcement that the Vietnamese government will be creating a center to control media coverage related to security issues, Tran said.

According to the official People’s Army newspaper, the Interior Ministry, which handles internal security, will run the center.

“It has always been hard for the media. But now with the uprisings, the government realizes how dangerous information is, and they’re trying to suppress everything,” said journalist Cat Ha, who writes for Westminster-based Nguoi Viet Daily News, the largest Vietnamese-language newspaper in the country.

The Vietnamese American community needs to continue to demand that the U.S. make human rights a priority before any trade agreements take place with Vietnam, said Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove), who attended the rally.

Sanchez had helped set up a November forum here between Pete Peterson, the first U.S. ambassador to Vietnam since the end of the war, and the Vietnamese American community.

“I wanted him to see how strongly the community felt about this,” she said. “I asked him to slow down progress on talks until human rights are adequately addressed.”