NGO cites arbitrary rights violations in Vietnam
Vietnam systematically violates civil rights, using arbitrary detention
against anyone believed getting out of line and allowing deplorable
prison
camp conditions, a human rights body charged.
The Vietnamese Committee for Defence of Human Rights said anyone even
suspected in any way of threatening national security could be kept in
custody for two years without trial. Detention could be extended
indefinitely for cases deemed "complicated."
The panel, testifying before the United Nations human rights committee,
cited the example of Thich Huyen Quang, head of the outlawed Unified
Buddhist Church of Vietnam, who has been kept under house arrest for 20
years without charge.
The NGO also denounced "the deplorable detention conditions in
Vietnamese
re-education camps."
It cited examples of intellectuals and journalists kept in custody for
writing articles that did not follow the Communist Party line, or for
seeking official permission to set up organisations to fight corruption.
Some victims had remained in custody even after completing a prison
term.
These included Thich Quang Do, who had launched an appeal for democracy
in
Vietnam.
The rights panel said the Hanoi government maintained a severe system of
control of the population.
Since last month access to the Internet and satellite television had
been
confined to government and party cadres, with cybercafe managers ordered
to
control customers' use of the Internet.
The Vietnamese government was scheduled to present its case to the UN
panel
on Thursday.
Meanwhile in Hanoi the government Monday angrily rebutted charges from
international press watchdogs that it has stepped up media censorship in
reaction to a high-profile gangster scandal that has rocked the ruling
Communist Party.
The authorities dismissed as "slanderous" allegations from the New
York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and the Paris-based
Reporters Sans Frontieres that it was hindering press freedom.
Last week the CPJ sent an open letter to President Tran Duc Luong
expressing
its alarm over recent efforts to curtail freedom of expression in
Vietnam.
It pointed in particular to government-imposed restrictions on the
reporting
of a widening graft scandal involving a mafia boss.
Agence France Presse - July 09, 2002.
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