Marietje Schaake, author. – Mr President, a staggering 160 human rights activists are in prison in Vietnam, reflecting the systematic repression in the country: from free expression to freedom of belief, all the way to the abysmal prison conditions and the application of the death penalty.

We call on the Vietnamese authorities to respect human rights and to release those only detained for exercising their human rights. We urge access for UN special rapporteurs on human rights defenders, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and the UN Special Rapporteur for freedom of expression. We remind the Vietnamese authorities that human rights are a clear conditionality when it comes to trade relations.

And I wanted to specifically zoom in on freedom of expression, online and offline, given the fact that Vietnam ranks 175th out of 180 countries on the Reporters Without Borders’ list of press freedom in the world. They really have to start respecting the rights of freedom of expression, online and offline, and the least we can do in Europe is to stop the export of surveillance systems that are used to track and trace human rights defenders.