Activists call on Vietnam’s top leader to honor rights commitment

By RFA Vietnamese2024.10.23

Read more on this topic in Vietnamese

Activists living in Vietnam and abroad have sent a letter to Communist Party General Secretary To Lam asking him to honor the United Nations Charter and its commitment to “fundamental human rights” and “the dignity and worth of the human person.”

The call, signed by dozens of people and groups, was posted on the change.org site on Oct. 20, after Lam’s official visits to the U.S. and France.

In meetings with President Joe Biden and France’s Emmanuel Macron, and in an address to the U.N. General Assembly, Lam spoke of a new era for Vietnam with the government promoting and protecting human rights.

“We, the Vietnamese people at home and abroad who aspire for freedom, democracy and human rights, acknowledge the above statement and believe that these commitments must be materialized in practical actions,” the activists said in their open letter.

“Vietnam’s development cannot be based solely on political or diplomatic declarations, but must be based on respecting and implementing the fundamental rights of all people.”

The letter called on the government to: release all political prisoners; protect fundamental freedoms of speech, the press, association, assembly, demonstration, religion and movement; carry out legal reforms to protect people’s rights and comply with international agreements; reform political institutions by bringing in a multi-party system; and organize free and internationally supervised elections.

“This is an opportunity for Vietnam to have a transition under the leadership of General Secretary To Lam,” U.S.-based engineer Nguyen Dai Ngu, one of the letter’s initiators, told Radio Free Asia.

“We expect and demand that Vietnam’s leaders will grant the legal rights and all the things To Lam almost officially promised to respect.”

Activist Nguyen Tien Trung, who signed the statement, said he realized the demands were unrealistic because the forces of democracy were weak compared with the power of the Communist Party.

“However, we still have to continuously speak up so that the Vietnamese people can see, so that the Communist Party of Vietnam can see and see that the opposition always exists and that we continue the process of democratizing the country even though we are in a weak position,” said the former political prisoner, who fled Vietnam to avoid rearrest, and now lives with his family in Germany.

Translated by RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Mike Firn.