Trading with the Adversary (Part III): Vietnam Be-Trade Again
By Rep. Thaddeus McCotter Posted in Congressional Contributors | Economy — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
This week, let us move on to examine another communist regime rife with economic opportunities for Westerners inured to human misery: the workers’ paradise of communist Vietnam.
Rising from its death bed with a fitful and fitting final gasp, the Congressional Republican majority passed H.R. 6111, a free trade agreement with communist Vietnam; and, on December 20, 2006, Republican President George W. Bush signed the bill into law. It is unknown whether or not Jane Fonda hailed this Republican legislation, though she likely took a guilty pleasure in its enactment. It was, after all, one more American betrayal of the Vietnamese people.
Read on . . .
Perhaps no single incident more poignantly reveals this betrayal than does the tragedy of Father Thaddeus Nguyen Van Ly and his fellow human and democratic rights activists, Nguyen Van Dai and Le Thi Cong Nhan, which is recounted by one of the world’s staunchest champions of human rights, Representative Chris Smith, in his H. Res. 243.
Less than two months after America approved a free trade agreement with communist Vietnam, on February 18, 2007, Vietnamese police raided the parish house of Father Thaddeus Nguyen Van Ly and confiscated computers, telephones, more than 100 mobile phone cards, and more than 200 kilograms of documents. The police then moved Father Ly to the remote location of Ben Cui in central Vietnam, where he is under house arrest.
Father Ly’s pro-democracy activities were a continuing source of vexation to Vietnam’s communist tyrants. Father Ly, a former and present prisoner of conscience, spent a total of over 13 years in prison since 1983, due to his advocacy of religious freedom and democracy in Vietnam. He was a co-founder of `Block 8406', a democracy movement commenced in April 2006, during which hundreds of people throughout Vietnam signed public petitions calling for democracy and human rights. Father Ly also is a founder of the Vietnam Progression Party, and serves as one of the primary editors of `Freedom of Speech' magazine. To Vietnam’s atheist masters, this was a cardinal sin in a totalitarian nation where, according to the U.S. Department of State, only members of the Communist party or their designees are allowed to participate in elections; these elections are not free and “political opposition movements (are) officially prohibited and some activists arrested”; and the “government’s human rights record remain(s) unsatisfactory.”
This may be news to the Western investors intent on exploiting the Vietnam gold rush, but it surely wasn’t to one of Vietnam's few practicing human rights lawyers, Nguyen Van Dai, who was arrested by Vietnamese police on March 6, 2007. Mr. Dai is a defense attorney for individuals arrested for their human rights and religious activities, a co-founder of the Committee for Human Rights in Vietnam, and one of the principal organizers of the Block 8406 democracy movement. Nor was it news to another arrestee on March 6, 2007, Le Thi Cong Nhan, a human rights lawyer, member of `Block 8406', the principal spokesperson for the Progression Party, and a co-founder of the Vietnamese Labor Movement.
Under communist Vietnam’s article 88 of its Penal Code, Father Ly, Nguyen Van Dai, and Le Thi Cong Nhan have been charged with disseminating propaganda against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and, if convicted, could each be sentenced for up to 20 years in prison.
Now their defense lawyer, assuming they get one, will have plenty to argue in their defense. First, in none of their activities have Father Ly, Nguyen Van Dai, or Le Thi Cong Nhan advocated or engaged in violence in their opposition to the communist Vietnamese government or its policies. Secondly, the arrest of and charges against the three men violated Article 69 of the Vietnamese Constitution, which states: “The citizen shall enjoy freedom of opinion and speech, freedom of the press, the right to be informed and the right to assemble, form associations and hold demonstrations in accordance with the provisions of the law.” Thirdly, the three men have been arrested and charged in contravention of the rights enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) to which Vietnam is a state party, specifically Article 18 (freedom of religion), Article 19 (freedom of expression) and Article 22 (freedom of association).
Also, there are some extra-legal arguments which could be brought to persuade the Vietnamese communists not to, well, act like communists. Didn’t the United States Congress agree to Vietnam becoming an official member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2006, based largely upon assurances by the Vietnamese government it was steadily improving its human rights record and would continue to do so? Didn’t the group of Asian countries at the United Nations nominate Vietnam as the sole regional candidate for a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council for the 2008-2009 biennium and, thereby, assume how, pursuant to the United Nations Charter, Vietnam would be required to discharge its duties in accordance with the purposes of the United Nations, including the promotion and encouragement of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms for all? Don’t the arbitrary imprisonment and the violation of the human rights of citizens of Vietnam like Father Ly, Nguyen Van Dai, and Le Thi Cong Nhan belie the above referenced hopes an indulged communist Vietnam would cease its increasing oppression of human rights advocates?
To all these defenses, the Vietnamese communists would answer: “No. This is why we arrested them after you allowed us into the WTO and our neighbors nominated us for a nonpermanent seat on the U.N. Security Council. Your empty protests are too late, and we both know it.”
No doubt Father Thaddeus Nguyen Van Ly, Nguyen Van Dai and Le Thi Cong Nhan know it, too.
But there is, perhaps, one group of people who also have yet to get the memo the Republican Party and, thus, the United States of America is no longer anti-communist. Last month, on the Washington Mall just beyond the west steps to the Capitol, a small group of Vietnamese-Americans were asking their United States Congress to do something to stop human rights abuses in communist Vietnam. They never got an answer.
Or did they? A few weeks before the Vietnamese-Americans’ lonely vigil, a crowd of over one hundred thousand heirs of the American Revolution gathered on the Washington Mall to cheer Jane Fonda’s demand the United States to abandon the Iraqis, too. Is this a harbinger of Republicans proposing a free trade agreement to solve all our problems with Iraqi insurgents and Iran?
[To be continued…]
Vietnam, Communist though they may yet be, is exactly the kind of place we need to be investing. Free Trade is just the start.
They are right on the cusp of tipping over from the last vestiges of Communism and engaging in the beginnings of democracy. American dollars flowing freely into this nation alongside the Vietnamese and their children who fled their homes in the 70s will bring power and American ideals to a population that only opposed us because after 5000 years, they wanted Vietnam for the Vietnamese.
This is a nation filled with millions of people who want what Americans have and as their relatives continue to return home after decades of exile and bring with them the spoils of capitalism and democracy and the stories of what freedom is, they will only want it more.
And just as a kicker to the chance to accomplish in Vietnam what our predeccessors failed to accomplish 30 years ago, despite our history, Vietnam is friendlier to our national interests than even almost any of our allies.
We made a promise to the Vietnamese people 40 years ago and failed to keep it then. We have a chance now to go back and correct that failure. Don't ruin that chance.
There are those who look on Dresden and Tokyo and Hiroshima as some of the greatest evils ever perpetrated by man. I look on them and thank the perpetrators for saving millions.