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On June 16,2013 Vietnamese police defrocked/tortured Khmer-Krom monk Ven. Ly Chanda of Prey Chop Temple in Lai Hoa, Vinh Chau, Soc Trang province. June 20,2013 Venerable Thach Thuol and Abbot Temple Lieu Ny of Ta Set temple (Soc Trang-Khleang province) defrocked and imprisoned in Prey Nokor (Saigon) city by the Viet authorities. In Phnor Dach (Cau Ngang) district, Preah Trapang/Tra Vinh) Khmer Krom prohibited from watching Cambodian TV signals.

US: Vietnam backsliding on human rights

By By MATTHEW PENNINGTON, Associated Press
March 21,2013

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration expressed concern Thursday about Vietnam's "backsliding" on human rights and asserted that advancing individual freedoms is key to U.S. policy in Asia.

One example cited is Hanoi's treatment of bloggers who have faced prosecution under national security laws. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Dan Baer told a congressional panel that Vietnam's authoritarian government is rightly proud of expanding Internet use, but it has diminished the value by curbing free exchange of ideas. Baer described those national security laws as draconian.

U.S. senators urged the administration to emphasize the promotion of human rights and democracy as part of its strategic pivot to Asia, which has primarily been cast as an attempt to increase America's military presence and boost trade in response to China's rise.

"What would set us apart from authoritarian competitors and would lay the groundwork for a truly American legacy in East Asia is a strong commitment to advancing individual freedoms," said Republican Sen. Marco Rubio.

Vietnam is one focus of Washington's outreach but Hanoi's poor human rights record has made that awkward. Vietnam began opening its economy in the late 1980s and wants to integrate with the world, but it remains a one-party state with strict controls on freedom of speech and political expression. Activists, including bloggers, are routinely arrested and imprisoned.

"The government needs to come around to seeing that the Internet penetration they are proud of isn't fully valuable without people being able to exchange ideas," said Baer, whose portfolio covers human rights, democracy and labor standards. He also noted that Vietnam's progress of a few years ago in religious freedom has stagnated.

There's been some brighter news. Hanoi freed American-Vietnamese democracy activist Nguyen Quoc Quan in January and U.S.-trained human rights lawyer Le Cong Dinh in February. That progress, however, has been overshadowed by recent convictions of dozens of other Vietnamese activists who have recent stiff jail terms.

Frustration over Vietnam's failure to improve its rights record prompted the U.S. to postpone an annual human rights dialogue that was due in late 2012. Officials tell The Associated Press the next dialogue has now been set, and will be held in Hanoi in mid-April.

Baer said the U.S. will "continue to make its case firmly" to Hanoi on various rights concerns, and will also raise Internet freedom and labor conditions in negotiations on the U.S.-backed Trans-Pacific Partnership, a regional trade pact that involves Vietnam.

Addressing the situation across the broader region, acting Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia Joe Yun asserted that advancing democracy and human rights "binds together" the Asia rebalance strategy.
He expressed deep concern about deteriorating human rights in China, and said the U.S. has told Beijing it regards its repatriation of refugees and asylum-seekers fleeing to China from North Korea as a violation of its international obligations.

On North Korea, which is reputed to hold up to 200,000 people in prison camps, Yun said that improving dire conditions there is an "essential goal" of U.S. policy. Washington has mostly been focused on the threat posed by the North's nuclear weapons program, but it supported a resolution approved Thursday by the U.N.'s highest human rights body to establish an international commission of inquiry into grave abuses there.

Yun voiced optimism about reforms in Myanmar, but said the situation in the country — which is shifting from five decades of direct military rule — would remain difficult until long-running ethnic conflicts are settled. With critical national elections due in 2015, Yun also described the constitutionally mandated presence of 25 percent military appointees in the nation's legislature as "unsustainable."
Referring to neighboring Laos, Yun raised concern over the disappearance of award-winning social activist Sombath Somphone and the situation faced by Cambodian opposition leader Sam Rainsy, who lives in exile to avoid imprisonment on what Yun said were politically motivated charges.
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Human rights activists push U.N. for action over Vietnam’s treatment of cyber-protesters

By Agence France-Presse
Friday, March 8, 2013


Campaigners urged the UN Human Rights Council Friday to take Vietnam to task over its jailing of dozens of cyber-dissidents, claiming Hanoi was in breach of international law.

“We call upon the Council to press Vietnam to put an end to this repression,” said Vo Van Ai, speaking on behalf of Vietnamese campaigners and the International Federation of Human Rights.

In a speech to the UN body — which is halfway through a monthlong session addressing a raft of global rights concerns — he said a total of 32 bloggers and other cyber-dissidents were behind bars in Vietnam, either sentenced or awaiting trial.

They face prison terms of up to 16 years, he added.

“Such repression does not serve to protect national security, as the Vietnamese authorities claim, but to stifle the voices of an emerging civil society speaking out on corruption, power abuse, the plight of dispossessed peasants and farmers, human rights and democratic reforms,” he said.

He condemned Vietnam’s use of Ordinance 44, a 2002 ruling which authorises the detention of suspected national security offenders without due process of the law.

It increasingly has been deployed against bloggers, sometimes in psychiatric hospitals, he said.

“Vietnam must abrogate Ordinance 44 and all other legislation incompatible with international human rights law,” he said.

Fellow-campaigner Penelope Faulker, with the French-based group Work Together for Human Rights, noted that after a 2009 United Nations review, Hanoi had pledged to uphold freedom of information.

“However, in the past year alone, scores of bloggers, online journalists and human rights defenders in Vietnam have been harassed, intimated, subjected to police abuse, or condemned to extremely harsh prison sentences simply for expressing their peaceful views on the Internet,” she told the Council.

Vietnam is not currently one of the 47 member states of the Human Rights Council.

The southeast Asian country has been branded an “enemy of the Internet” by freedom of expression watchdog Reporters Without Borders.
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Amnesty International Visits Vietnam – First Since 1970s

Contact: Sharon Singh, ssingh@aiusa.org, 202-675-8579, @AIUSAmedia

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) – A representative from Amnesty International has visited Vietnam to open up channels for dialogue with the government on the human rights situation in the country. The visit was the first made by the organization since the late 1970s.

"We were pleased to accept the invitation from Vietnam's authorities to visit the country to discuss Amnesty International's work and approaches, which includes engaging with governments all over the world," said Frank Jannuzi, Amnesty International USA's deputy executive director, who spent six days in the Southeast Asian country. "We also used the opportunity to raise our concerns about the human rights situation in Vietnam, including the severe restrictions on the right to freedom of expression."

Over the past two years, the Vietnamese authorities have locked up dozens of human rights defenders, including bloggers, songwriters, lawyers, labor activists, members of religious groups, democracy activists and others, even as the government bids for a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council for the term 2014-2016.

Amnesty International visited Vietnam's capital Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City in the south of the country, meeting with officials responsible for human rights, foreign affairs, public security, labor rights issues and religious affairs.

Amnesty International held private meetings with foreign diplomats in Hanoi and met with academics, some religious leaders and former prisoners of conscience, Pham Hong Son and Nguyen Van Dai.

"This visit provided a preliminary opportunity to discuss our work and concerns with Vietnam's government," said Isabelle Arradon, Amnesty International's deputy Asia-Pacific director, who oversees the organization's work on Vietnam. "We very much hope that Amnesty International representatives will be allowed to make further visits to the country this year, and we will have ongoing constructive dialogue with the government on human rights in Vietnam."

Amnesty International is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning grassroots activist organization with more than 3 million supporters, activists and volunteers in more than 150 countries campaigning for human rights worldwide. The organization investigates and exposes abuses, educates and mobilizes the public, and works to protect people wherever justice, freedom, truth and dignity are denied.
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Khmer Krom living on the edge of the rising sea

With half of their land now swallowed up by the ocean, some poor families are trying their best to survive against the continuing seawater intrusion in Viet Nam’s Mekong Delta, but their struggle is far from over.

Danh Hau, a shrimp farmer, has lost half of his land and shrimp to the rising sea level


KIEN GIANG, The Mekong Delta—Along a muddy and windswept beach in a remote seaside village in the south-western province of the Mekong Delta, a one-lane dirt road divides the green arable land on one side and a beach-front on the other. It seems like any other road, but for villagers here, this is simply a much-needed lifeline, a buffer that prevents the rising seawater from swamping their homes.

Those who live behind the dyke, built by the Vietnamese government, have seen their rice fields and houses rescued from saltwater intrusion. Not so fortunate, are the families whose houses and lands are sandwiched between the wall and the sea.

“If the salty sea water goes into rice fields for even just one night, it would seem like you poured boiling water onto the rice crops, instantly killing them,” said Danh Huong, 75, who is among a number of people in Binh Giang village whose compounds are located outside ‘the safe zone’, and who have few options to live elsewhere.

Many years ago, they planted mangroves as natural protection against the saltwater.

“Now the sea comes closer and has claimed the mangroves first, and then the eucalyptuses. Now, they are all gone,” said Mr. Huong.

Beach-front residents here said they lost some of their farms to the accumulated 100-metre sea intrusion. Threatened by the rising tide, locals have invented home-grown strategies to cope with what they fear that the worst is yet to come.

Danh Hau, a 33-year-old shrimp farmer, who had lost half of his land and shrimp to the insatiable sea, decided to build two-tier dykes around fish and shrimp compounds located next to his one-storey house, where he lives with his wife and child.

“I have to make this secondary dyke because I am afraid that the waves will come back (and break the first dyke),” he said, adding that he was not sure whether this method would work out in the long run.

Dykes and mangrove forests give shelter for now. But Mr Huong and his neighbours said they live with uncertainty, fearing that they will soon be defeated by higher tides.

“We have some solutions, but the sea now is more powerful than before,” he said. “In the past during the high-tide season the sea water was much lower. Now the sea is higher and higher.”

Home to more than 17 million people, the low-lying Mekong Delta, Viet Nam’s rice bowl, is one of the world’s most vulnerable areas to rising sea levels caused by climate change.

Kien Tran-Mai, a climate change specialist at the Mekong River Commission, points out that without effective solutions, the sea level would increase by 0.8 to one metre by 2100, in which up to 38% of the Mekong Delta could end up under water. As a result, around 30% of the population will be affected and many will be forced to migrate to other areas, he said.

“These predictions are quite conservative and moderate with a certain extent of uncertainty. Other forecasts afford much worse scenarios,” he said.

The Mekong River Commission (MRC) is currently working with international and regional experts, national and local authorities, affected communities and other partner organisations in the Lower Mekong Basin to gather lessons learnt and local wisdom—how people manage to deal with more storms, floods and higher sea levels. This will enable all parties to consider applying such practical knowledge in their towns and villages.

Ky Quang Vinh, a climate change specialist of Can Tho City’s Department of Natural Resources and Environment (DONRE) and a researcher at Can Tho University, is among academics who share insights regularly with the MRC. He points out that the region is becoming much more vulnerable than before. There are now more storms and stronger typhoons and increasing erosion on the sea side.

The area is already exposed to other threats, such as rapidly growing development and urbanisation, which will likely change river flow routines, he said.

Water fluctuation changes combined with salt water intrusion will negatively affect rice farming and fishing activities, said Mr. Vinh.

“The majority of people in the Mekong Delta are rice farmers. If we don’t have solutions to actively catch up with the (growing) impact, productivity will be reduced and poverty increased,” said Mr. Vinh, adding that this will trigger increased migration from affected areas to cities.

Methods that local people are applying to deal with rising sea level and unusual floods are very basic, he said. People in this area, for example, lift their houses off the ground by attaching poles to the foundations.

“In the past there was fresh water flooding and this was a food resource for the people. But now there’s saltwater flooding, and with this things will become very different and very negative,” he said.

source: http://www.mrcmekong.org/the-mekong-basin/stories-from-the-mekong/living-on-the-edge-of-the-rising-sea/
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