Author: Lucie Sýkorová, HlidaciPes.org
COMMENTARY. In January, the Czech government entered into a strategic partnership with Vietnam. The fact that international organizations warn of a deteriorating human rights situation in the country was clearly not an obstacle, as illustrated by Internal Directive 24, which was revealed last year. According to analysts, this directive proves that Vietnam has no intention of fulfilling its human rights obligations, quite the contrary. In Prague, Czech communists also agreed with the Vietnamese delegation.
The situation is strikingly reminiscent of the courtship between Czech social democrats and Chinese communists about ten years ago. Even then, in the name of business, people turned a blind eye to the issue of human rights, cultural rapprochement took place, and cities and regions were recruited to enter into mutual partnerships.
This January’s visit by the Vietnamese prime minister to Prague was also attended by some “old acquaintances.” – Pavel Tykač, a member of Zeman’s entourage traveling to meet with the Chinese president, representatives of the PPF Group, which at one time hired a company to improve the image of communist China in Czechia, and people from Volkswagen, which until the end of last year manufactured cars in Xinjiang province, where the genocide of the Uyghurs is taking place.
In addition to government politicians and businesspeople, the Vietnamese delegation also met with Andrej Babiš and President Petr Pavel. They also met with Czech communists led by Kateřina Konečná, which was only reported by the communist website Naše Pravda.
The main topic of the meeting with Konečná was supposed to be “the current situation in the Czech Republic and in the world and the need for deeper mutual cooperation not only at the international bilateral level, but also between the two communist parties.”
“We appreciate the cooperation and support between our communist parties. And we look forward to the continued exchange of experiences and the development of socialist ideas and principles in the world,” the Vietnamese prime minister reportedly told Kateřina Konečná.
He added that although bilateral cooperation between the two countries has changed over many decades, the KSČM has always supported Vietnam in its struggle for freedom and development.
“I believe that you will continue to develop your party and, after what will surely be a successful election to the Chamber of Deputies, you will have the opportunity to successfully develop cooperation between our countries, even in view of the many problematic situations in the world.”
And what did Konečná say? “Vietnam is an inspiration to us and we are learning from its reforms. I believe that the KSČM will return to the Parliament of the Czech Republic and will have a positive influence on the development of Czech-Vietnamese relations in the future.” Above all, the mention of inspiration and learning from Vietnam’s reforms is very telling for the direction of the KSČM in the context of recent events in the Asian country and should also be a warning to the citizens of the Czech Republic. We will explain why in the following lines.
Vietnam in China’s footsteps
At the end of February last year, Project88 published a leaked internal document from the Politburo of the Central Committee, Vietnam’s highest decision-making body, entitled Directive 24, which was to be issued in July 2023.
“The aim of the Directive is to undermine democratic control over public policy and the economy, while strengthening one-party rule. If implemented as intended, it will lead to systematic and widespread human rights violations, including unacceptable restrictions on assembly, association, expression, media, and movement. It will also lead to violations of the right to participate in public affairs and the right of employees to form independent trade unions and syndicates,” the organization said.
According to analysts at Project88, Vietnam’s Directive 24 bears a striking resemblance to Document No. 9 of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from April 2013, which lists seven trends and activities that the CCP considers a threat to the party.
“Like Directive 24, Document No. 9 clearly stated that the unified party apparatus would exercise control over all expressions in the country and restrict the ability of civil society to operate in China. Ten years later, Vietnam appears to be following in China’s footsteps. The mask has fallen. Vietnamese leaders are saying that they intend to violate human rights as a matter of official policy… The international community should isolate them, not accept them,” said Ben Swanton, co-director of Project88.
According to data collected by Project88, 192 activists are in prison in Vietnam and another 400 are at risk of imprisonment.
“The latest US State Department report on human rights in Vietnam states that, in addition to restrictions on speech and association, there are credible reports of ‘arbitrary or unlawful killings by the government’ and ‘torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by government officials,'” writes Deutsche Welle.
Crackdowns on journalists continue
The current situation in the country was described last November in an interview with Czech Radio by an opposition Vietnamese journalist who cannot reveal his identity.
“The democratic movement in our country has died… We have no freedom of the press. The media is strictly controlled by the government, which claims that journalists must work for the benefit of the party and the government and protect its interests…,” he said, among other things.
The journalist also described what would happen to him if the Vietnamese government discovered that he was working as a journalist and talking to foreign media.
“The police would arrest me. They would interrogate me and ask me what I was trying to achieve by talking to you. And then they could send me to prison for it. There is a section in the Vietnamese criminal code that allows interviews with foreign journalists to be classified as a criminal offense… The police can go to your landlord and order him to evict you from your apartment. They could tell your employer to fire you. They could kidnap you on the street, take you to the jungle, and beat you up. And if that doesn’t work, they’ll just arrest you and sentence you to many years in prison.”
According to him, the Vietnamese government has also learned to use the internet and social networks to control the environment.
“For example, they have a huge army of online soldiers, or trolls. They offer loyal Vietnamese people good money to spread state propaganda on social media and undermine opposition activities. Many teachers, for example, do this as a side job: after work, they sit down at their computers and write posts and comments, questioning the opposition and disrupting the discussion.”
During Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh’s visit to Prague, the organization People in Need drew the attention of Czech politicians to the continuing and escalating human rights violations in Vietnam.
“The restrictive hand of the Vietnamese government is similar to the totalitarian regime that ruled our country before 1989, when many people were arrested and persecuted simply for publicly expressing their opinions and opposing restrictions. After the recent crackdown on the last independent non-governmental organizations and civil society organizations, Vietnamese citizens are essentially left with no way to express their critical opinions. The situation has not improved even after the new General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, To Lam, took office. Crackdowns on critical voices of journalists and independent media continue,” the organization said.
For the Czech Republic, this is an exceptional opportunity to demonstrate its commitment to the universal protection of human rights as one of the fundamental values of its foreign policy.
Brussels’ call: reevaluate agreements
Brussels politicians came under fire from human rights organizations last year because of the situation in Vietnam. In recent years, they ratified the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) and the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA), which entered into force in 2020.
Organizations such as Human Rights Watch are demanding that the agreements with Vietnam be reevaluated and that Brussels threaten to suspend them “given that Article 1 of the PCA states that respect for democratic principles and human rights is a fundamental element of the agreement.”
The group also calls on the European Union to adopt “targeted sanctions against Vietnamese officials and entities responsible for systematic repression in the country.”
Deutsche Welle quoted EU officials who, according to the website, agreed that the human rights situation in Vietnam had not improved.
“We are seeing an improvement in economic relations with Vietnam, but unfortunately the opposite is true when it comes to human rights conditions. Critics of the government are imprisoned, workers’ rights are ignored, and independent trade unions are not even on the table,” Deutsche Welle quotes German MEP Udo Bullmann (S&D), chair of the European Parliament’s Subcommittee on Human Rights.
“The free trade agreement with Vietnam was ratified with the expectation that the human rights situation would improve. We are disappointed that this has not happened.”
Independent unions do not exist
Last May, Human Rights Watch also warned that Vietnam was providing false or misleading information to the United States and other economic partners in the area of labor law in order to secure or maintain trade preferences.
“It is clearly false to claim that Vietnamese workers can organize unions or that their wages are the result of free negotiations between workers and management,” said John Sifton, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch.
“There is not a single independent trade union in Vietnam, and there are no labor laws for forming unions or for workers to enforce labor rights.”
Multiple sources confirmed to Human Rights Watch that in late April last year, Vietnamese police arrested Nguyen Van Binh, a senior official at the Vietnamese Ministry of Labor who advocated for more meaningful labor reforms and some independence for unions.
The American daily Washington Post recalled that in December 2022, Vietnam concluded an ambitious agreement with the European Union, the Group of Seven (France, Italy, Japan, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States), and Norway to help Vietnam meet its commitment to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
“The European Union and other foreign governments have agreed to mobilize at least $15.5 billion from public and private investors to help Vietnam meet its climate goals. However, the agreement stipulated that in order for the transition to be fair and equitable, regular consultations are necessary, including consultations with the media, non-governmental organizations, and other stakeholders to ensure broad social consensus,” the Washington Post quotes.
“Now Directive 24 suggests that Vietnam secretly does not want to comply with the terms of the climate change pact. Do the authoritarians in the Vietnamese Politburo think that no one will notice that they are repressing people inside the country while promising the opposite to foreigners? Vietnam’s future partners should not allow such duplicity to pass,” writes the Washington Post.
The BBC notes that Vietnam is one of only five communist states in the world where there is only one political party.
“No political opposition is allowed. Dissidents are routinely imprisoned, and repression has intensified in recent years. Decision-making in the highest party bodies is shrouded in secrecy.”
