Vietnam Reverting to Human Rights Abuses, GOP Members Say
By Payton Hoegh - CNSNews.com Correspondent - March 15, 2007

(CNSNews.com) - Despite its removal from the list of countries with major human rights violations, communist Vietnam should be the subject of renewed pressure to improve its allegedly abusive policies, Rep. Christopher Smith (R-N.J.) said Wednesday.

Decades after U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, Smith said he still approaches the issue with "a great deal of sadness and a great deal of anger."

"We're not taking [this] anymore. Enough is enough ... the game is over ... Human rights need to flourish in Vietnam," he added.

Smith said Vietnam has been "putting on a face" that things have changed in the country in order to be removed from the Country of Particular Concern (CPC) list and gain Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) with the United States.

After the regime accomplishes these tasks, however, Smith said "they revert back to form" in continuing oppression.

Many in the U.S. believed Vietnam was improving its human rights policies in recent months, and late last year the country was dropped from the CPC list and granted admission to the World Trade Organization. This afforded Vietnam improved trade relations with numerous countries including the U.S. after receiving PNTR status.

Now that the country is starting to reap the economic benefits of these improvements, Smith suggested that Vietnam has reverted to its former methods of repression and abuse.

Smith is proposing a resolution calling for the release of Vietnam's political prisoners and states that the House of Representatives, "condemns and deplores the violations of the freedoms of speech, religion, movement association, and the lack of due process afforded to individuals in Vietnam."

The New Jersey congressman is backed by several other Republican House members, including Ed Royce and Dana Rohrabacher of California and Frank Wolf of Virginia.

On Wednesday, Royce echoed Smith, saying that "any progress that had been
made [in Vietnam], has now been erased in a renewed movement of oppression."

Vietnam's policies, Royce said, "run counter to American values and frankly the universal values for human rights."

Rohrabacher compared the Vietnam government to a group of gangsters, alleging that it has "revealed [itself] as the tyrannical and gangster regime that [it is]."

"The communist government is acting like a communist government," Rohrabacher said. "We should not be surprised."

Human rights activists and supporters of reform in Vietnam also appeared with the Republicans, declaring growing instances of unjust arrest and human rights violations by the communist government.

A report by a number of reform organizations was released during the conference outlining the alleged continued oppression in the country.

"After a period of lying low in an effort to curry favor with the U.S., obtain PNTR status and secure entrance into WTO," the release stated, "the authorities in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) in recent days have shown their true nature by launching a brutal campaign of repression characterized by the Human Rights Watch as 'one of the worst crackdowns on peaceful dissidents in 20 years.

" It is for [these] reasons that we, a broad coalition of overseas Vietnamese mass and community organizations that span the world hereby call on the Pope, the Secretary General of the United Nations and leaders of governments throughout the world to urgently intervene with the SRV," the report added.