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Lieutenant
Joined: 03 Aug 2004
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 Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2005 9:33 pm Post subject: Message to Hanoi: Human rights matter |
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I wonder what SKerry, Fonda, and all other antiwar ilk of the 60's - 70's think about this situation. They should all go live there and see how long before they are locked up after they run their mouths.
| Quote: | Message to Hanoi: Human rights matter
By Robert J. Caldwell
June 12, 2005
President Bush, meet Li Thi Hong Lien. You may not recall her name but pressure from your administration helped get her released from prison in Vietnam on April 28. Ms. Lien's "crime" was being a Mennonite, a devout Christian denomination harshly suppressed by the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
Compass Direct
Li Thi Hong Lien, a resident of the former Saigon, after being rearrested and interrogated because of her Christian faith.
During almost a year of imprisonment, this 21-year old Sunday school teacher was so badly beaten by her jailers that her jaw was broken and she suffered a mental breakdown. As World magazine reporter Priya Abraham wrote recently, Ms. Lien has thus become a poster child for persecuted Christians in Vietnam.
The plight of Li Thi Hong Lien and of hundreds of thousands of other persecuted believers, Christian and non-Christian alike, in Vietnam is emminently newsworty on its own. It's especially notable now on the eve of a milestone in U.S.-Vietnam relations.
On June 21, President Bush is to welcome Vietnam's prime minister, Phan Van Khai, to the White House. It will mark the highest level visit of a Vietnamese official since the Vietnam War ended in 1975. Khai's visit will also denote the 10th anniversary of the official normalization of diplomatic relations between Washington and Hanoi.
With U.S.-Vietnam trade topping $6 billion a year, the U.S. Navy paying ceremonial port visits and Hanoi welcoming senior Pentagon officials for talks on improving military relations, one might assume the Khai visit's simple message would be the budding rapprochement between two old enemies. Li Thi Hong Lien symbolizes why it isn't so simple, and shouldn't be.
For Americans, Vietnam is not just another country. It's where we fought for a decade to defend an independent South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos against a communist tide running across Indochina. Whatever the wisdom of that war, it left the United States with a moral obligation to our defeated, and abandoned, allies. Honor alone compels Washington to keep human rights on the agenda even as U.S.-Vietnam relations improve.
Lamentably, there is no shortage of material for the human rights portion of that agenda.
The U.S. State Department's official 2004 report on Vietnam's violations of human rights runs 22 single-spaced pages. Washington's detailed reporting on Hanoi's repression is broadly confirmed by independent groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Human Rights Watch's 2005 World Report section on Vietnam begins with this blunt summary:
"Human rights conditions in Vietnam, already dismal, worsened in 2004. The government tolerates little public criticism of the Communist Party or statements calling for pluralism, democracy, or a free press. Dissidents are harassed, isolated, placed under house arrest, and in many cases, charged with crimes and imprisoned. Among those singled out are prominent intellectuals, writers, and former Communist Party stalwarts."
Vietnam's suppression of religious freedom, a fundamental right enshrined in the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is particularly repugnant. Despite a constitution that ostensibly provides for freedom of worship, the Vietnamese government vigorously suppresses churches and religious movements it doesn't recognize and control. Among these, as cited by the State Department, are: "independent Buddhists, Baptists, Mennonites, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Baha'i, independent Cao Dai and Hoa Hao groups, independent Sunni Muslims, and ethnic Cham Hindus."
Hundreds of local Protestant churches, Ms. Lien's Mennonite congregation included, have been driven underground where the faithful gather in secret to worship.
Hanoi's repression of Christianity among the ethnic Montagnards, who inhabit the Central Highlands of former South Vietnam and the northwest provinces in northern Vietnam, has been especially cruel and brutal.
Montagnard refugees fleeing into Cambodia last year reported that entire Montagnard villages were forced at gunpoint to renounce Christianity. When the Montagnards – independent-minded mountain people who sided with the Americans during the Vietnam War – staged mass protests in April 2004, Vietnamese police and soldiers opened fire, killing scores and wounding hundreds more.
If President Bush and Secretary of State Rice are looking for symbolic cases to raise with Prime Minister Khai, they should include these cited by Amnesty International as prisoners of conscience:
Nguyen Hong Quang, a Mennonite pastor and human rights activist, arrested last November and sentenced to three years imprisonment.
Father Nguyen Van Ly, a Catholic priest, sentenced in 2001 as an alleged threat to Vietnam's security to 15 years in prison; a sentence since reduced to five years after international protests.
Dr. Nguyen Dan Que, 62 and in failing health, a human rights activist sentenced in 2003 to 30 months in prison after a three-hour trial at which he had no legal representation.
Could pressure from the United States ease political and religious repression in Vietnam? Absolutely.
Hanoi is eagerly seeking foreign investment for its version of a China-style "socialist-market" economy. It also appears to want improved relations with the United States as a counterweight to China's growing military power. Vietnam's prospects for getting both would be enhanced by treating its own people better, thereby becoming less of a human rights pariah.
No one imagines that Hanoi can be induced to give up its one-party dictatorship anytime soon. That will require a longer-term evolutionary process inside Vietnam. In the meantime, however, selective American pressure can make an important difference.
Others are helping. Japan, Vietnam's largest aid donor, announced last year that henceforth its development assistance would be linked, in part, to Hanoi's respect for human rights and steps toward democracy. Sweden, long a source of economic assistance to Hanoi, recently granted political asylum to a dissident Buddhist monk imprisoned by Vietnam.
The postscript to Li Thi Hong Lien's ordeal is a single measure of how desperately this international pressure is needed. Two days after her release from prison on April 28, Lien was rearrested and roughly interrogated for hours. Her offense? Attending a Bible study at the home of her imprisoned pastor, Nguyen Hong Quang.
Add that to Bush's talking points for his meeting with Mr. Khai on June 21.
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Caldwell is editor of the Insight section and can be reached via e-mail at robert.caldwell@uniontrib.com. |
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blue9t3
Admiral
Joined: 23 Aug 2004
Posts: 1246
Location: oregon
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| Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2005 11:18 pm Post subject: |
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Hanoi jane would say we caused it because of Iraq, lurch would say I was for human rights-just before I was against it! 
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Bob51
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Joined: 13 Jan 2005
Posts: 156
Location: Belfast
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Joined: 03 Aug 2004
Posts: 213
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| Posted: Thu Jun 16, 2005 7:57 am Post subject: |
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Wish I could confront Hanoi John & Jane about what they really think about all these people just wanting to be left alone in their worship. Where are their cries of abuse and atrocities that they so selectively shout. The continued torture and killing goes on and on all these years and all the antiwar bleeding heart liberals want to wrongly blame our troops of flushing Korans, and undercutting them at every chance. The liberal, queer, communist, socialist, are the most mixed up two faced coward maggots on the face of the earth. My personal opinion is these same antiwar idiots are veiling themselves under left wing variations of religious affiliations. I say, Onward Christian Soldiers.
I will personally encourage every returning warrior possible to become active in politics and seek government positions. Our government has almost become overrun by politically correct pantywaisted do nothing chickens. Never ever again should a returning warrior have to hide their heroic service to our country. The time to speak out was before we committed our troops.
Sorry for the rant, but I do feel that way.
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http://thebattleofkontum.com/stars/29.html
Friday, May 12, 1972
2 French Priests Reported Crucified by Communists
PLEIKU, Vietnam (AP) --The senior U.S. adviser for the central highlands said Wednesday night he had received reports that Vietnamese Communists crucified two French priests in Kontum Province.
John Paul Vann told a news conference the reports said the Communists had committed atrocities in areas of Kontum Province which they occupied during their 42-day offensive.
He said that according to the reports, two French priests who stayed with their congregations in the tiny village of Kon Horing, 26 miles northwest of Kontum City, were crucified in the past week. He gave no further details. He did not identify the sources of his reports or the French priests.
At least 78 civilians were killed and 100 wounded at Kon Horing on Feb. 23, 1969, when Communist-led forces shelled and launched a ground assault on the village, burning down 125 homes.
Vann said that in another atrocity, the family of one of his Vietnamese interpreters was murdered and a sign put over the door of their house asking what the interpreter, an [sic] employe of the allies, could do for his family now.
The senior U.S. adviser was asked about reports that pilots of South Vietnamese Air Force helicopters carrying small numbers of refugees from Kontum to Pleiku had charged amounts equal to that of airline fares.
"Some have obviously done it but the majority have not done it," Vann said. "There are always some unscrupulous people who are going to benefit in a situation like this. We have had numerous reports and we have handed them over to the appropriate authorities to investigate."
Vann said that about 21,000 civilians still remain in the threatened provincial capital of Kontum City, but that evacuation would continue "to the maximum of our ability." All civilians must be evacuated by air since Highway 14 between Kontum and Pleiku has been closed by fighting during the past week.
Vann said he expects that the long awaited attack on Kontum City will begin by shelling which will gradually increase.
"Sometime in the middle of the night, he (the enemy) will have his tanks come out from wherever they are and with his infantry go crashing into some vital part (of the city)," he said.
Vann also said that no major change in the Communist command's battlefield plan can be expected in the next six months because of President Nixon's orders to mine North Vietnamese ports.
He said his long experience in Vietnam leads him to believe that the Communists "will adhere to plans developed months and months in advance."
Vann told the news conference the mining could affect enemy supplies on the northern front below the Demilitarized Zone within a month, but in areas farther south there probably would be no marked effect for a considerably longer time, because of the length of the overland supply lines.
"To cut his water off like this might be more effective than anything else to cut off his supply lines," Vann declared. "If this had been done in the past, there would not be any tanks rumbling southward now."
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"2 French Priests Reported Crucified by Communists", PLEIKU, Vietnam (AP), published in the Pacific Stars and Stripes on Friday, May 12, 1972 and reprinted with permission from European and Pacific Stars and Stripes, a Department of Defense publication copyright, 2002 European and Pacific Stars and Stripes. |
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