Calling on Vietnam to Immediately and Unconditionally Release Dr. Pham Hong Son and other Political Prisoners and Prisoners of Conscience

CALLING ON VIETNAM TO IMMEDIATELY AND UNCONDITIONALLY RELEASE DR. PHAM HONG SON AND OTHER POLITICAL PRISONERS AND PRISONERS OF CONSCIENCE -- (House of Representatives - April 05, 2006)

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 320) calling on the Government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam to immediately and unconditionally release Dr. Pham Hong Son and other political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, and for other purposes, as amended.

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Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to present this bill to my colleagues today in defense of a man who has fought for democracy in Vietnam at great personal cost. There has been a tremendous amount of publicity lately about Internet dissidents in China. As a matter of fact, we had a day-long hearing on this use of the Internet to capture and to really decapitate the dissidents and religious freedom movements in China, in Vietnam and Belarus and in other countries, but we now focus on one particular man, as well as others who have suffered because of that, in the case of Dr. Pham Hong Son of Vietnam.

In March 2002, Mr. Speaker, police arrested Dr. Son. He had translated an article from the Web site of the U.S. Embassy Hanoi that was entitled, ``What is democracy?'' and he sent it to some of his friends and senior Vietnamese officials. In addition, he had written an open letter, published on the Internet, protesting the fact that his house had been searched illegally and his computer and documents confiscated.

Dr. Son was charged with espionage by the government, which accused him of collecting and dispatching news and documents for a foreign country to be used against the Socialist State of Vietnam. Let us not forget who that foreign country is. It is us. It is the U.S. Embassy's Web site in Hanoi, and that is where he went to download that essay, ``What is democracy?''

After a closed trial and a closed appeal, from which Western reporters and diplomats from Europe, the United States and Canada were barred, Dr. Son was sentenced to 5 years, plus an additional 3 years of house arrest.

Dr. Son's case has been highlighted repeatedly by the U.S. Department of State's Human Rights Report for Vietnam and by Human Rights Watch, Reporters without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and Amnesty International.

Mr. Speaker, I went to Vietnam last year, accompanied by Eleanor Nagy, who is our Director of Policy on the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Operations, and met with some 60 dissidents in the course of the better part of a week in Hanoi, Hue and in Ho Chi Minh City. We met with Dr. Son's extraordinary and courageous wife, Vu Thuy Ha, who continues to campaign for her husband's freedom despite constant surveillance and harassment, which I personally witnessed. I knew that we could not let this brave woman battle alone.

As a matter of fact, when Eleanor and I, along with some people from the embassy, sat with his wife, right across from us at a hotel were some thugs from the secret police who were taking pictures of her and trying to intimidate her, which they have been doing day in and day out.

The State Department, to its credit, put Dr. Son at the head of their list of political prisoners who need to be released during the February Human Rights Dialogue with Vietnam. As Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Barry Lowenkron told the Vietnamese, and this is his quote, ``I bluntly told them that the American people will not understand why a country that wants to have better relations with us would imprison someone for translating an article on democracy.''

On Friday March 31, Vietnam flatly rejected Lowenkron's call to release Dr. Son and 20 other religious and political prisoners, saying it only jails criminals. In Vietnam, they said, there are no prisoners of conscience, and no one has been arrested for their viewpoints or their religion.

That is unmitigated nonsense and a big lie, Mr. Speaker, and that has to be confronted by this Congress.

Less than a day after the unanimous subcommittee markup of this resolution on December 9, plainclothes officers detained two other well-known Internet writers, Do Nam Hai, whom I met with in Vietnam and who is mentioned in our resolution. They were at a public Internet cafe. The police also forced Hai to open his personal e-mail account and printed about 30 of his sent messages.

The two writers were interrogated for 6 hours at the cafe and later at a police station in Hanoi. Both were released from police custody that day.

And the persecution continues, Mr. Speaker. On March 12, according to Reporters Without Borders, an Internet user calling himself ``Freedom For the Country,'' joined the discussion group ``Democracy and Freedom the Only Way for Vietnam.'' He went on-line in a Hanoi cyber cafe, and he discussed politics for about half an hour with two other people in the group. During the discussion, he said he was a member of a pro-democracy working group. The entire on-line conversation was recorded by the forum administrator, police entered the cyber cafe, and they arrested him.

On the recording, someone could be heard asking the Internet user to go with them, and then someone else shouting, hit him. The administrator continued recording after the police intervention, and no one came to disconnect the computer linked to Pal Talk. Afterwards, a man's voice is heard on the microphone introducing himself as the cyber cafe's owner and confirming that one of his customers had been taken away by the police. He added that he had been fined for violating Internet law. The Vietnamese denied the arrest, and the victim's identity is unknown. He joins three other cyber dissidents who were arrested in October and whose whereabouts remain unknown.

This sort of persecution, Mr. Speaker, will obviously not go away by itself. But tyranny hates and fears public exposure, and we need to keep attention focused on Vietnam's continuing violation of the rights that it claims to grant to its people.

Vietnam is at a critical crossroads. It wants to expand its burgeoning trade relations with the United States and seeks to join the WTO. There would be no better way to convince Vietnam of the seriousness of our human rights concerns and their centrality in any relation with the U.S. It seems to me you can't trust a country on intellectual property rights and copyright infringement if they jail, incarcerate, and beat their own people because they simply espouse basic fundamental human rights.

The European Parliament, I might add, has already passed a resolution calling for Vietnam to release all of its prisoners of conscience, allowing democracy and political pluralism and ensuring the human rights for Vietnam's Montagnards. It is appropriate that we do likewise and that we do it today.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I would close by especially thanking Dennis Curry, Eleanor Nagy, and Dan Freeman, our staff who have worked so hard on this resolution. The hearing that we held recently was a very insightful hearing that focused on the ongoing and persistent violations of fundamental human rights in Vietnam. Last year, right before Prime Minister Khai came to the United States, we held another Vietnam human rights hearing, and it was very telling.

We can't reduce human rights to an asterisk or a ``see page 3'' footnote in our relationship with the government of Vietnam. I would urge every Member, when and if they travel to Vietnam, that they prepare themselves by really understanding the nature of this government. Yes, there may be some modest progress being made in the area of religious freedom, and I underscore the word ``modest,'' but they still are a country of particular concern, so designated by the Department of State because of their egregious violations of religious freedom and the persecution of people, whether they be members of the Montagnards, the Evangelical Christians, or the Unified Buddhist Church, people like the Venerable Thich Quang Do, whom I met with.

Let me say finally that I met with the Venerable Thich Quang Do in his pagoda, as he is under house arrest. When we began to leave, all of a sudden he stopped, and he said, ``I take one step beyond this and the guys across the street will have me in handcuffs.'' That is the reality of what is going on in Vietnam today. I would hope Members, before they go to Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City, acquaint themselves very thoroughly with the human rights abuses the Vietnamese commit and raise those issues, particularly as it relates to trade.

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