June 15, 2007

 President Bush: Walk the walk on human rights

Two weeks ago, United States President George W. Bush gave an eloquent speech promoting freedom in the Czech Republic's Prague's Czernin Palace during his European trip to attend the G-8 meeting of industrial nations in Germany. He reiterated his previous pledge to the assembled dissidents that the United States "will never excuse your oppressors" and that "if you stand for freedom, the United States stands with you."

On June 12, at the dedication of the Victims of Communism Memorial, Mr. Bush said, "... freedom is precious and cannot be taken for granted; that evil is real and must be confronted; and that given the chance, men commanded by harsh and hateful ideologies will commit unspeakable crimes and take the lives of millions."

On Friday, June 22, 2007, he will again meet with such a man: the State President of Communist Vietnam, Nguyen Minh Triet, who heads one of remaining communist states on earth. It originated as a Stalinist regime in North Vietnam that fanatically sought to impose communism on the southern half in accordance with the directions from the communist international movement, aided and abetted by the former Soviet Union and China. The resultant 15-year Vietnam War took the lives of more than 2 million Vietnamese and around 58,000 Americans. Yet, after the communists took South Vietnam in 1975, the orthodox communist policies had further put Vietnam through her worst enslavement and forced a few million Vietnamese to flee the country every which way they could. According to the United Nations High Comissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)'s estimates, the Vietnamese boat people exodus of 1970s and 1980s also saw about half a million victims dying at sea or in the jungles of Cambodia during their search of freedom.

Mr. Nguyen Minh Triet is coming to the United States at the invitation of U.S. President George W. Bush at the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in November 2006. However, just a few weeks ago, the visit was still in doubt after Vietnam engaged in one of the most brutal crackdowns during the last ten years on the nascent democracy movement in Vietnam. 

During APEC, the Hanoi communists made solemn promises to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and President George W. Bush about human rights improvements in exchange for the U.S. assistance to join the World Trade Organization (WTO). Yet, after APEC and Vietnam's accession to the WTO in January, coupled with the Permanent Normal Trade Relation (PNTR) from the U.S., Hanoi thought they were free to return to their barbaric selves. Since January 2007, they have arrested 37 human rights activists, democracy campaigners, independent union organizers and 11 of them were brought to kangaroo courts to be sentenced to 3-8 years in prison and 3-5 years house arrest afterward. World opinion was especially disgusted  recoiled at the photograph of a Catholic priest, Father Thadeus Nguyen Van Ly, being muzzled during his trial in a courtroom and right in front of international media. The U.S. expressed concerns at these brutal crackdowns and threatened to postpone the trip; yet, when Hanoi released a dissident, Mr. Triet was on his way to Washington.

The Vietnamese communists, indeed, are every good pupils of the Russians in the former Soviet Union: "Throw them a dissident and that's all it needs."

Before his trip, Mr. Triet gave an interview to emphasize that the focus of his trip to the U.S. is trade and investments. He hopes that the pressures of the American business community will silence Mr. Bush and make him choose commercial deals than mention American ideals. Contracts in airplanes purchase and investment deals in financial services are all dangled in front of American businessmen so that the brutality and oppressive nature of the regime are swept under rug by Hanoi sympathizers in academia and media.

The emphasis on trade and investment deals is particularly demeaning to the Vietnamese people because everyone now recognizes that a better-fed is still a slave, no more, no less.

If Mr. Bush goes along with this cynical attempt to justify the trade deals with the red devil without putting his foot down on the systemic abuses of human rights and the relentless persecutions of democracy activists in Vietnam, he stands the chance of permanent ridicule of talking the talk and never walk the walk on American ideals of freedom and democracy.

Instead he should make it clear to Mr. Triet that U.S. - Vietnam relations will depend on the conditions of human rights of the Vietnamese people. The U.S. only asks Vietnam to honor the fundamental, universal human rights as codified in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, which Vietnam signed on in 1982.

It should not be too much to ask a country to honor its signature.

Without Vietnam's respect for those universal human rights, relations between he U.S. and Vietnam shall never be normal. President Bush should insist that Vietnam respect freedom of religion, expression, and association, that human rights are universal and Vietnam cannot expect to a full, comprehensive relations with the U.S. so long as people in Vietnam are arrested and imprisoned simply for exercising the rights even sanctioned in the Vietnamese constitution. If Mr. Triet repeats the brain-dead mantra from the regime, "There are no political prisoners in Vietnam, only violators of the law." Then tell him to change the laws.

If the argument between two countries is only about economic matters, the American revolution in 1776 would never have taken place and today, America would still be a colony of England. The American people cannot have a memory that short and Mr. Bush will go down in history as a president who put deals over ideals.

If Mr. Bush keeps mum this time, nobody will believe in American promotion of freedom and democracy any more and the tyrants will all be laughing their ways to the banks and at the same time taunting the hypocrisy of the United States of America, under George W. Bush.

Hai V. Tran

Virginia