~ Le Viêt Nam, aujourd'hui. ~
The Vietnam News

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[Year 2001]

Vietnam slams US human rights criticism as blow to improved ties

HANOI - Vietnam reacted angrily Friday to a key US Congressinal panel's criticism of its human rights record saying that it went completely against the spirit of improving relations between Washington and Hanoi 25 years after the end of the Vietnam War.

"It's a gross interference in the internal affairs of Vietnam which deliberately distorts reality and goes against the process of improving relations between our two countries," foreign ministry spokesman Phan Thuy Thanh told AFP. "It goes against morality for a country which comitted the most horrific violations of the human rights of the Vietnamese people to set itself up as judge and lecturer on human rights in Vietnam," she said. Thanh repeated the authorities' standard rejection of human rights abuses in Vietnam. "There are no political prisoners and there is absolutely no repression of people for their political or religious beliefs," she said.

"Everyone has the same legal and constitutional rights and duties and transgressers are all prosecuted in accordance with the law." In a non-binding resolution Thursday ahead of this month's 25th anniversary of the end of the war, the House International Relations Committee criticized Vietnam for continuing human rights violations and political repression. The committee called on Hanoi to "cease violations of religious freedom," free all political prisoners, and cease punishing "Vietnamese citizens who have exercised their legitimate rights to freedom of belief, expression and association."

It also urged Vietnam to set a timetable for open and fair elections and called on US President Bill Clinton to tell Vietnamese leaders that US citizens "are firmly committed to political, religious, and economic freedom" in Vietnam. Washington established diplomatic ties with Vietnam in 1995 but a full normalization of relations is still some way off with a long-awaited trade accord between the two former foes yet to be finalized.

An annual human rights report by the US State Department in February also angered the Vietnamese authorities. It described Hanoi's record as "poor" and said that small improvements in some areas had been offset by backsliding in others. Vietnamese officials say Washington should do more to pave the way for a complete rapprochement in view of the two million Vietnamese civilians who lost their lives in the war.

"As we do out best to help the United States with soldiers who went missing in action, so the United States should also do their best to help Vietnam overcome the absolutely enormous consequences of the war," the architect of Hanoi's victory, General Vo Nguyen Giap, said at a rare public appearance last week.

AFP - April 14, 2000.