MOTION FOR A RESOLUTION on Human rights situation in Vietnam, in particular the case of human rights journalists Pham Chi Dung, Nguyen Tuong Thuy and Le Huu Minh Tuan

19.1.2021 - (2021/2507(RSP))

with request for inclusion in the agenda for a debate on cases of breaches of human rights, democracy and the rule of law
pursuant to Rule 144 of the Rules of Procedure

Mick Wallace
on behalf of The Left Group

B9‑0076/2021

European Parliament resolution on Human rights situation in Vietnam, in particular the case of human rights journalists Pham Chi Dung, Nguyen Tuong Thuy and Le Huu Minh Tuan

(2021/2507(RSP))

The European Parliament,

-  having regard to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948;
 

-  having regard to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) of 16 December 1966;
 

-  having regard to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Geneva Convention of 1951 and its Additional Protocol;

-  having regard to the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights Defenders of 1998;
 

-  having regard to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights of 2011;
 

-  having regard to OHCHR Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination reviews the report of China of 13 August 2018;
 

-  having regard to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (UN CERD) follow up letter on China, which focuses on the four Concluding Observations identified as critical during the 2018 review from the 24th of November 2020;
 

-  having regard to UN General Assembly Resolution 2131 (xx) entitled Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention in the Domestic Affairs of States and the Protection of their Independence and Sovereignty;

 

-  having regard to Article 2 (4) of the Charter of the United Nations;

 

-  having regard to UN General Assembly Resolution 1514 (xv) entitled Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples;

-  having regard to Articles 79, 88, and 117 of the Vietnam Penal Code which explicitly outlaw participation in organisations aiming to overthrow the government, and the dissemination of fake news or propaganda targeted at the government;

-  having regard to Rule 144 of its Rules of Procedure;

a.  whereas by international standards Vietnam has particularly regressive legislation around press freedoms and freedom of expression;

b.  whereas on January 5th a Vietnamese court sentenced Pham Chi Dung to 15 years in prison, and Nguyen Tuong Thuy and Le Huu Minh Tuan to 11 years in prison. They were charged under section 117 of the 2015 penal code of Vietnam for the crime of “making, storing, disseminating or propagating information, documents and articles to oppose the State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam”, they were also accused of retrospectively returning royalties identified as illicit profits;

 

c.  whereas Through the trial, the Vietnamese authorities determined that there were 25 articles by Pham Chi Dung, 5 articles by Nguyen Tuong Thuy and 6 articles by Le Huu Minh Tuan written under a variety of pseudonyms with contents propagating distortion and defamation of the administration, fabricating information in order to destroy the reputation of the Communist Party of Vietnam, and opposing the State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam;

 

d.  whereas Pham Chi Dung, Nguyen Tuong Thuy and Le Huu Minh Tuan were the administrators of the "Vietnam Association of Independent Journalists" which received substantial funding from foreign, and non-state domestic sources;

 

e.  whereas Pham Chi Dung, Nguyen Tuong Thuy and Le Huu Minh Tuan worked with Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, both of which are US State Department funded propaganda outlets that are controlled by The US Agency for Global Media who explicitly state that their broadcasting standards must “be consistent with the broad foreign policy objectives of the United States”;

 

f.  whereas according to the latest figures Vietnam ranks 118th in terms of global rates of incarceration per population, having a less punitive carceral system than the United States, Israel, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Saudi Arabia, Poland, Slovakia, Moldova, Estonia, Latvia, Hungary, Australia, England and Wales, Scotland, and Malta among 102 others;

 

g.  whereas the carceral system worldwide is an outmoded and inhumane system of criminal punishment that does not serve society but further entrenches repression and inequality, and increases human suffering; denounces in this regard the inhumane treatments which are prevalent in the Vietnamese carceral system;

 

h. Whereas on February 12 2020, the European Parliament gave its consent to the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement and Investment Protection Agreement ;

 

I.  whereas through swift governmental actions and the effective mobilisation of public resources in the interests of the wellbeing of the Vietnaese people, Vietnam has emerged as one of the world's leading success stories in responding to the Covid-19 pandemic; whereas in a country of more than 95 million people Vietnam’s death toll from Covid-19 has stood at 35 since September 2020, the country reports a total of 1,531 cases, of which 90 percent have recovered; whereas the health authorities are developing a vaccine with the goal to provide it at an affordable price, making it also accessible to developing countries; whereas research on four national vaccines against the disease is advancing, two of which are already being tried on humans with successful results;

 

J. whereas the US war against the people of Vietnam between 1955 and 1975 was one of the most devastating and criminal wars of aggression in human history; whereas the war and the illegal US imposed post-war sanctions regime have had a lasting impact on the individual and social life of almost every Vietnamese citizen and the fate of their families; whereas it must be recognised that this historical context has had a profound impact on the political and social agenda of the today's Vietnam;

 

K. whereas to this day, Vietnamese farmers continue to find unexploded U.S. ordnance;

 

L. whereas between 1962 and 1971, the US military airlifted some 80 million liters of “Agent Orange” on forests and crops in South Vietnam to prevent feeding the population and the progress of the national movement of liberation; whereas the Pentagon’s use of Agent Orange would lead to the deforestation of about 18 percent of Vietnam’s entire forested area; whereas Agent Orange seeped into groundwater and rivers, causing serious physical and mental disabilities to around three million Vietnamese; whereas one million still suffer from serious consequences today, including 150,000 congenital malformations;

 

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1. Deplores the sentences against Le Huu Minh Tuan and Nguyen Tuong Thuy and Pham Chi Dung to 11 and 15 years in prison respectively on 5 January 2021; urges the Vietnamese authorities to ensure that all the judicial processes are made in accordance to the rule of law and international standards;

 

2. Calls on the EU to lead by example and move towards decarceration, that is, through research and concrete actions to find progressive alternatives to carceral punishment, reduce prison populations and ultimately work towards the abolition of prison systems;

 

3. underlines that UN Human Rights Council denounced the Penal code and in particular article 109, 117 and 331, used routinely to harass, arrest, charge and prosecute activists and journalists alike ; Recommends a swift reform of the Penal code and the immediate lifting of charges against these journalists as well as their liberation ;

 

4. Condemns the use by the government of social networks to repress freedom of speech; Stresses that social networks are not zone excluded from the responsibility to respect human rights; 

 

5. commends the actions of the Vietnamese authorities in their efforts to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic and develop a vaccine for developing countries; reiterates it’s call to the European Commission and Member States to support the demands of developing countries to make vaccines and anti-Covid treatments for the common good of humanity by breaking with the logic of patents; recommends that EU Member States engage with the Vietnamese authorities in order to exchange best practices in upholding the human right to health and study how the Vietnamese government so effectively shielded their people during to the Covid-19 pandemic

 

6. denounces the instrumentalisation of human rights for geopolitical interests; condemns in the same way imperialist policies and intentions to destabilise the South East Asian region, in particular anti-China activities of the United States as detailed in the 2018 ‘U.S. Strategic Framework for the Indo-Pacific’ which was declassified by the Trump administration on January 5th;

 

7. reiterates the inalienable right of countries under numerous UN resolutions and the Charter to conduct their own constitutional processes free of any external interference; reaffirms the inalienable right of peoples to choose their economic, political and social system without interference of any kind;

 

8. stresses that responsibility must be taken for the crimes it perpetrated during its colonial occupation of Vietnam, in particular the confinement of 20,000 Vietnamese resistance fighters in the prison of Poulo-Condore; considers that any agreement with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam must imply that the French authorities provide a list of all Vietnamese resistance fighters detained and deceased on the island of Côn Dao during the French occupation;

 

9. stresses that the fight for justice for the millions of victims of Agent Orange and soil detoxification should be a top priority of the EU-Vietnam dialogues; notes that the verdict delivered by the San Francisco court on 10 August 2018 against Montsanto created a solid legal basis for the settlement of similar lawsuits; reaffirms therefore that the EU should do everything to support a substantial action plan to deal with not just the environmental but seriously address and compensate for the human damages linked to Agent Orange, in particular by supporting the Association of Victims of Agent Orange / Dioxin of Vietnam (VAVA) in the lawsuit against US chemical companies producing Agent Orange;

 

10. Underlines that, besides its consent to the FTA with Vietnam, Parliament highlighted concerns regarding the situation of Human rights in Vietnam, notably with respect to the reform of the penal legislation, the death penalty, political prisoners and fundamental freedoms ;

 

11. Denounces that the FTA was signed despite the fact that Vietnam did not ratify ILO Convention 87 on Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention, 1948 ; expects the government to do so as a matter of urgency ;

 

12. underlines the risk of social dumping and relocation that bears this FTA agreement for European workers, in particular in sectors of activity in difficulty such as textiles or timber;

 

13. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, the Secretary-General of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Government and National Assembly of Vietnam, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Secretary-General of the United Nations.