Day: August 17, 2021

The families of political prisoners in Vietnam have written an open letter to U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris prior to her visit to the Southeast Asian country later this month, asking her to pressure Hanoi to release them from their lengthy sentences.

When she arrives on Aug. 24, Harris will become the first U.S. Vice President to travel to Vietnam since the unification of the country under the Communist North in 1975.

The letter, signed by four prisoners’ wives, informs Harris that many prisoners of conscience are jailed for publicly disagreeing with the government, “which does not happen in a democratic country like the United States.”

“We write this letter to plead with you, to please spend some of your invaluable time to consider our request, to speak to the government of Vietnam, asking them to reconsider the injustices, to release these prisoners of conscience during the surge of COVID-19,” read the letter.

They sought the release of prisoners “so the old mother may still see her son, the young wife can again cry on her husband’s shoulder, so the two-digit-prison-terms will not take away the life of one man and the livelihood of his whole family. All because they dare to speak the truth, a very normal action in any democratic nation,” the letter said.

“We, the families of the political prisoners see that our husbands and sons are suffering in prisons,” Nguyen Thi Kim Thanh, the wife of political prisoner Truong Minh Duc told RFA’s Vietnamese Service.

Duc, a journalist, labor rights activist, and member of the Brotherhood of Democracy advocacy group, is serving 12 years for “attempting to overthrow the government,” under article 79 of the 1999 penal code.

Thanh said that life in prison was very harsh and takes a toll on the health of prisoners, especially on those, like her husband, who were jailed with preexisting health conditions and are at increased risk as the country continues to fight against the coronavirus pandemic.

While in prison, Duc has joined several hunger strikes to protest living conditions like extreme heat and poor hygiene. He has suffered a stroke and is believed to have high blood pressure and heart disease, according to the 88 Project website.

“We posted this letter online with the wish that the vice president could see it and would urge Vietnam to release our husbands and sons to reunite with their families,” Thanh said.

“Secondly, I hope that she will urge the government of Vietnam to provide the COVID-19 vaccine to prisoners just like everyone on the outside. We also hope that the vice president could make the Vietnamese government change their prison policies so that their families could call them twice a month instead of once a month, like now,” she said.

The letter was also signed by the wives of Nguyen Nang Tinh, serving 11 years for his Facebook posts critical of the government; Luu Van Vinh, serving 15 years for spreading information about a 2016 toxic chemical spill at the Formosa steel plant; and Tran Duc Thach, an author serving 12 years for his writings that expose the corruption, injustice and human rights abuses of the Vietnamese government.

It was initially shared by the families on social media and circulated among the activist community in Vietnam. An English translation addressed to the Office of Vice President in Washington provides contact information for the Virginia-based Voice of Vietnamese Americans advocacy group.

On Tuesday, 60 Vietnamese-American pro-democracy, religious, media, and community organizations co-signed a letter to Harris emphasizing grave concerns about the overall human rights situation in Vietnam.”

“During the pandemic, the Vietnamese government detained over 50 bloggers, journalists, and human rights defenders,” the letter said. Hanoi put these people at risk by “placing them in unhygienic, confined places,” it added.

According to the California-based Vietnam Human Rights Network, Vietnam is currently detaining around 300 political prisoners.

The letters join several others from U.S. lawmakers and rights groups focusing on Vietnam that urge Harris as well as the State Department not to ignore human rights issues in dialogue with Hanoi.

In an Aug. 4 letter to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, Sen. John Cornyn acknowledged Vietnam’s strategic role in the Asia-Pacific region, but also raised Hanoi’s “troubling” record on rights and freedoms, as captured in the 2021 State Department’s Country Report on Vietnam.

“It is of paramount importance that we hold the Vietnamese government accountable for its responsibility to guarantee human rights, religious freedom, and property security for its citizens. To that end, I ask that you provide an explanation for what the State Department is doing to engage with Vietnam on these issues.”

Harris is scheduled visit Vietnam from Aug. 24-26, with talks expected to focus on regional security in the South China Sea, where China has encroached on territorial waters and maritime resources claimed by Vietnam, the Philippines, and other countries in the region.

Talks will also cover U.S. assistance to Vietnam in containing the spread of COVID-19 amid a new surge of infections in the country of 99 million people.

Reported and translated by RFA’s Vietnamese Service. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam on Tuesday warned a lawyers’ professional association that it should stay out of politics, while calling on civil society organizations to disband if they cross political “red lines” laid down by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

“Professional organizations should engage in activities related to their professions … but if they get hijacked or taken over by politics, then the Hong Kong government will have no choice but to terminate its relationship with that organization,” Lam told reporters.

“If politics is allowed to override professionalism, including at the Law Society, then the government will consider terminating the relationship,” she said.

The Hong Kong government has typically sought legal opinions from both the Law Society, which represents solicitors, and the Bar Association, which represents barristers, during consultation exercises.

The professional bodies also play a role in recommending legal professionals for certain top jobs in statutory bodies or consultancies.

But Lam’s comments came after the CCP’s official mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, referred to the Law Society as a “running rat,” warning it not to allow itself to get “politicized” ahead of Aug. 24 leadership elections.

‘Disbandment’ threat

The paper warned the Law Society in an editorial that it should “draw a clear line” between itself and “anti-China elements” to avoid meeting the same fate as the Professional Teachers’ Union (PTU), which disbanded last week after being criticized in CCP-backed media.

Lam also extended a warning to other civil organizations, following the dissolution of protest march organizers the Civil Human Rights Front (CHRF) on Sunday.

“We have seen organizations and individuals crossing these red lines. In my opinion, the only choice at this point is disbandment,” she said, warning that organizations that disband could still face criminal prosecution under a draconian national security law imposed on Hong Kong by the CCP from July 1, 2020.

In April, Lam also targeted the Bar Association, whose chairman Paul Harris has been labeled “anti-China” by Beijing officials for criticizing jail terms handed down to opposition politicians.

The Law Society said it is, and continues to be, politically neutral.

“We are in constant communication with relevant governmental departments, expressing opinion to improve the practice environment and regularly responds, from the legal perspective, to consultations on different issues,” Law Society President Melissa Pang said.

Ivan Choy, senior politics lecturer at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), said the dissolution of the CHRF likely spelled the end of large-scale political mobilization in the city.

“I think the government is happy to see fewer voices of opposition,” he said in response to the demise of the CHRF. “For every group that disbands, that’s one less they have to deal with.”

‘White terror’

He said the fact that such organizations are expected to disband following denunciation in the Chinese media was a form of “white terror.”

The CHRF, which once organized annual mass rallies on July 1 marking the 1997 handover of the city to Beijing, announced it would disband at the weekend following repeated denunciations in CCP-backed media.

The front, which was never registered as an organization, served as a communication platform for civil society groups to promote human rights and democratic freedom in Hong Kong, according to its Facebook page.

Its job was mostly to organize large-scale, peaceful protest marches to ensure that citizens’ voices were heard, it said. Police have warned that a criminal investigation is still under way.

Hong Kong’s biggest teaching union, the Professional Teachers’ Union (PTU), announced it was disbanding on Aug. 10, after being described as a “malignant tumor” in need of eradication by CCP mouthpiece the People’s Daily.

The Hong Kong Journalists’ Association (HKJA) has said it fears it could be next on the government’s blacklist of civil groups, along with the pro-democracy Confederation of Trade Unions (CTU).

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

Political analyst Bradley Jardine is winding up a two-year fellowship at the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Wilson Center in Washington, with a focus on China’s expanding economic and political presence in the countries of the former Soviet Union, and Sino-Russian security issues in Central Asia. He spoke to Qurban Niyaz of RFA’s Uyghur Service about the impact on the Uyghurs in Afghanistan and Xinjiang of the fall of the Afghan government to the Taliban.

RFA: Taliban forces and the Chinese government have long held talks in Beijing. With the country under Taliban control, what impact will this have in the future? 

Jardine: Yes. The situation in Afghanistan is certainly critical for Uyghurs. The Taliban’s engagement with China expands back into the late 1990s, when they first began engagement. It continued this engagement with China’s long-running underground diplomacy with the Taliban, but become much more public-facing. The Chinese government essentially had assumed that the Taliban will have some sort of governing role in Afghanistan, so they hedged their bets in a way that they can cooperate with them.

This poses a danger for Uyghurs. Historically, the Taliban have tried to move Uyghur populations in Afghanistan to monitor them. There are also cases of the Taliban deporting Uyghurs from the regions that they’ve controlled in Afghanistan. Increasingly, there are talks between the Chinese side and the Taliban representatives. 

From sources on the ground, I contacted Afghan Uyghurs. I’m informed that their ID documents mentioned that they are quote, unquote, “Chinese Immigrants,” even though many of these have Afghan citizenship. They are very worried right now that as the Taliban seizes important government buildings, it will get access to records and it could potentially give China access to ID cards which would be able to identify Uyghurs and have them deported back to China. So increasingly as the government collapses and the Taliban gain more access to information in the country, particularly the national security services of Afghanistan, some of the registration documents as well, could be used to target Uyghurs. 

RFA: As Taliban forces control Kabul and the entire country, in your eyes, is it an opportunity or risk for China, especially right now? 

Jardine: I don’t think China views it as an opportunity so much as China views Afghanistan as a risk that needs to be managed. I think that it wasn’t an ideal situation for America to have left in China’s view, especially so haphazardly, which has given the Taliban what appears to be a major victory. This could bolster Islamist forces — not just Taliban, (but) more radical factions within the group. China worries that the Taliban won’t be able to restrain the use of Afghanistan as a safe haven for such groups and organizations might pose a threat to China in the long run. So Afghanistan is one of the few areas where Chinese and American and Western, more broadly, interests actually align to a greater degree. 

The problem China will have now is taking a very real approach and understand that the Taliban probably will be controlling, governing the majority of Afghanistan for the foreseeable future. It’s trying to work out relations within that that will serve its own very narrowly defined interests which are stopping militant groups hostile to China from operating within its borders. Whether the Taliban can actually ensure this is an open question. They’ve been unable to prevent this kind of radicalism from festering within the country, and it seems unlikely that the Chinese approach is going to succeed in the long run. 

RFA: We have learned that the Afghan government had arrested dozens of Chinese spies early this year, and their mission was to show the world the existence of the ETIM. So do you think a similar story may happen now that the Taliban has taken control of the capital? 

Jardine: Well, I think the example of the Chinese group that was impersonating a terror recruitment organization is interesting because it shows it’s a much more aggressive form of security than China has been known to pursue in the past outside its borders or in its immediate region, particularly in Central Asia, Afghanistan, Pakistan. So that showed a real forward-oriented security approach similar to around Badakhshan Province where you’re having China with its military and strategic facilities being set up in recent years, military facilities in Tajikistan’s Pamir Mountain region, for example, which overlook the border in Afghanistan. 

So I expect we will see more. China is very cautious about Afghanistan when you follow the community of foreign policy observers, it talks a lot to use the cliché of Afghanistan as the graveyard of empires, etc. So China is going to be hesitant to get involved on a mass scale in terms of the security situation in Afghanistan. I do expect that we’ll see a lot more of these small-scale engagements, operations of setting up possible reconnaissance facilities, more cooperation with the security services in the region, but lower-scale target is and it will be focused primarily on the idea of eradicating anything that China deems to be an Uyghur militancy within the region.