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Civil & Human Rights - Vietnam

Zam-Zam

Senator
Vietnam continued to systematically violate basic civil and political rights in 2020. The government, under the one-party rule of the Communist Party of Vietnam, tightened restrictions on freedom of expression, association, peaceful assembly, movement, and religion. Prohibitions remained on the formation or operation of independent unions and any other organizations or groups considered to be a threat to the Communist Party’s monopoly of power. Authorities blocked access to several websites and social media pages and pressured social media and telecommunications companies to remove or restrict content critical of the government or the ruling party.

Those who criticized the government or party faced police intimidation, harassment, restricted movement, physical assault, arbitrary arrest and detention, and imprisonment. Police detained political detainees for months without access to legal counsel and subjected them to abusive interrogations. Party-controlled courts sentenced bloggers and activists on fabricated national security charges.

Vietnamese authorities appeared to have had some successes in combating the Covid-19 pandemic. After adopting aggressive contact tracing, mass testing, public campaigns on hygiene, early border closures, social-distancing, and mandatory centralized quarantines, Vietnam by late 2020 reported only about 1,000 confirmed cases and 35 deaths. However, Vietnam’s successes came at the cost of increasing violations of rights: restrictions on freedom of speech; failure to protect the right of privacy; and inequity in access to social services and government support.

Freedom of Expression, Opinion, and Speech
Online dissidents faced routine harassment and intimidation in 2020. Several were arrested and charged under Vietnam’s penal code, which criminalizes speech critical of the government or which promotes “reactionary” ideas. The government prosecuted numerous dissidents throughout the year.

In April, June, and July, courts tried Phan Cong Hai, Nguyen Van Nghiem, Dinh Van Phu, and Nguyen Quoc Duc Vuong and sentenced them to between five and eight years each in prison for criticizing the party and the state.

Police arrested Nguyen Tuong Thuy in May and Le Huu Minh Tuan in June for involvement with the Independent Journalists Association of Vietnam (IJAVN) and charged them with anti-state propaganda under article 117 of the penal code. The organization’s president, Dr. Pham Chi Dung, was arrested in November 2019, apparently in connection to his vocal opposition to the European Union-Vietnam free trade agreement. Between April and August, police arrested nine other people including independent blogger Pham Chi Thanh, land rights activists Nguyen Thi Tam, and former political prisoner Can Thi Theu and her sons Trinh Ba Phuong and Trinh Ba Tu. In October, police arrested prominent rights blogger Pham Doan Trang. All 10 were charged with anti-state propaganda under article 117 of the penal code.



Complete text: World Report 2021: Vietnam | Human Rights Watch (hrw.org)

Also:

Everything you need to know about human rights in Viet Nam 2020 - Amnesty International Amnesty International

Wherever Communism goes, oppression follows.
 

EatTheRich

President
Compare the human rights record of today’s Vietnam to the Republic of Vietnam, no contest which is worse in terms of human rights. But of course the class struggle, in which the Stalinist government of Vietnam is on the anticommunist side, goes on.
 

Zam-Zam

Senator
Compare the human rights record of today’s Vietnam to the Republic of Vietnam, no contest which is worse in terms of human rights. But of course the class struggle, in which the Stalinist government of Vietnam is on the anticommunist side, goes on.
Once communism takes hold, brutal oppression follows.

Every. Single. Time.

No exceptions.
 

EatTheRich

President
I never claimed that.

If a man is beaten, and then beaten again by someone else, does the first beating somehow justify the second? Of course not.

More facts you will be unable to dispute:

2020 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Vietnam

Vietnam - United States Department of State
No, the point is that Vietnam’s socialist revolution greatly improved the human rights situation and the standard of living compared with the capitalist baseline, even if it didn’t create the utopia against which you judge socialist, and only socialist, countries.
 

Zam-Zam

Senator
No, the point is that Vietnam’s socialist revolution greatly improved the human rights situation and the standard of living compared with the capitalist baseline, even if it didn’t create the utopia against which you judge socialist, and only socialist, countries.
My point is that wherever communism exists, brutal oppression exists.

So far, you've done nothing to dispute that.
 

EatTheRich

President
My point is that wherever communism exists, brutal oppression exists.

So far, you've done nothing to dispute that.
Yes, in a world dominated by capitalism, brutal oppression exists everywhere, including where communists have begun … begun! … the process of dismantling the machinery of said oppression.
 

Zam-Zam

Senator
Getting worse:

Why Is Repression Rising in Vietnam?
A deeper look at a worsening trend.

For Vietnam watchers, the sheer number of political prisoners is hard to keep up with. The 88 Project’s database of “persecuted activists” counts 263 activists currently in prison, and 101 at risk, while Amnesty International reckons there were 128 prisoners of conscience, according to a report from May. Another name to add to those lists is Michael Phuong Minh Nguyen, a U.S. citizen who was sentenced to 12 years in prison on Monday for “attempting to overthrow the state,” a charge typically leveled against anyone who protests against the ruling Communist Party, particularly in large demonstrations.




Complete text: Why Is Repression Rising in Vietnam? – The Diplomat
 

EatTheRich

President
Yup. With China already having reverted to capitalism and deep privatization of sectors of the economy in Vietnam, the counterrevolutionaries are becoming bolder with their attacks on the masses.
 

EatTheRich

President
List of Every Communist Country in the World as of 2021:
  • China
  • Cuba
  • Laos (Lao People's Democratic Republic)
  • North Korea
  • Vietnam

Communist Countries 2021 (worldpopulationreview.com)

So, no.
I would characterize Cuba, N. Korea, and Vietnam as socialist countries. China is a capitalist country with considerable socialist and state capitalist sectors and a vaguely “communist” ideology due to previously having been socialist. Laos is a capitalist country that pays lip service to “communist” ideology due to being a puppet state of socialist Vietnam. A “communist country” is nonsensical.
 

Zam-Zam

Senator
I would characterize Cuba, N. Korea, and Vietnam as socialist countries. China is a capitalist country with considerable socialist and state capitalist sectors and a vaguely “communist” ideology due to previously having been socialist. Laos is a capitalist country that pays lip service to “communist” ideology due to being a puppet state of socialist Vietnam. A “communist country” is nonsensical.
You can characterize them anyway you wish. Call them utopians if you want, it doesn't matter.

I'll go with the sourced facts. The more reliable sources list them as communist.
 

EatTheRich

President
You can characterize them anyway you wish. Call them utopians if you want, it doesn't matter.

I'll go with the sourced facts. The more reliable sources list them as communist.
Then they aren’t the most reliable sources. If professed communist ideology is the criterion (as if we could change reality just by calling it different names), why aren’t Cambodia, Mongolia, and Belarus included? What objective grounds do any of your sources give for their characterization?
 

Zam-Zam

Senator
Then they aren’t the most reliable sources. If professed communist ideology is the criterion (as if we could change reality just by calling it different names), why aren’t Cambodia, Mongolia, and Belarus included? What objective grounds do any of your sources give for their characterization?
They are all more reliable than your source.
 

EatTheRich

President
They are all more reliable than your source.
What are the objective grounds for their characterization? If they are using an idiosyncratic definition of “communist” that has little to nothing to do with the communism of Marx and Lenin, what does that have to do with the politics I defend?
 

Zam-Zam

Senator
What are the objective grounds for their characterization? If they are using an idiosyncratic definition of “communist” that has little to nothing to do with the communism of Marx and Lenin, what does that have to do with the politics I defend?
Since you consistently provide no source for any of your claims, an actual source is superior by default.
 

EatTheRich

President
Since you consistently provide no source for any of your claims, an actual source is superior by default.
Yours is an appeal to authority. Mine is an evidence-based argument. Do you actually dispute that for example China has privatized the commanding heights of industry? Or that Marx, Engels, Lenin, etc., clearly stated over and over that under communism there would be no state?
 

Zam-Zam

Senator
Yours is an appeal to authority. Mine is an evidence-based argument. Do you actually dispute that for example China has privatized the commanding heights of industry? Or that Marx, Engels, Lenin, etc., clearly stated over and over that under communism there would be no state?
Yours is made-up gibberish that you can't back with anything.
 
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