ÿþ<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE> Doi Thoai - Tu Do Dan Chu cho To Quoc Viet Nam - Vu An Nguyen Khac Toan</TITLE> <META NAME="Generator" CONTENT=""> <META NAME="Author" CONTENT="doithoai"> <META NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="Viet Nam, Viet, vietnam, vietnamese,free press for vietnam, Democracy, Freedom, Nguoi Viet, Vietnamese Dissidents, Dau Tranh, Que Huong, Tin tuc, tac gia, van chuong viet nam, vietnamese culture, Saigon, Hanoi, Hue, vietnamien, vietnamiens, Vietnamien, Vietnamiens,nguyen khac toan, News, news,Community, community, communauté, Communauté, Phuong Nam."> <META NAME="Description" CONTENT="Vietnamese newspaper fighting for free press in vietnam, the voice of freedom writers being oppressed by the Vietnamese communist party. "> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <link rel="stylesheet" href="doithoai.css"></link> </HEAD> <body bgcolor="#F0F8FF"> <div align="justify"> <!-- bài b¯t §u të ây....--> <table width="100%" bgColor="#CCCCFF" border=2> <tr><td width="100%"> <h2 align=center><font color="red">Vå Án NguyÅn Kh¯c Toàn </font></h2> </td></tr></table> <!-- bài b¯t §u të ây....--> <h3 align=center>THE VIETNAMESE AUTHORITIES' REFUSAL TO IMPLEMENT LEGAL REFORMS AND THE EUROPEAN UNION'S INCLINATION TO BE HOODWINKED !</h3> <p>Brussels, 27 December 2002. Despite Vietnam's commitment to move towards the Rule of Law in accordance with an internationally-funded 10-year "Legal Reform Strategy" programme, the Vietnamese government has: <ul> <li>continued to introduce extensive legislation which seriously restricts human rights and criminalizes the peaceful exercise of freedom of opinion, expression, religion, association and the press. Recent legislation includes increased controls on the Internet (June 2002), a prohibition on satellite TV for all citizens except top Communist Party officials and foreigners (June, 2002), directives on residence prohibition and house arrest for released prisoners (Decree 53/ND-CP, August 2001), in flagrant violation of the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Vietnam acceded in September 1982; <li>refused to rescind arbitrary legislation such as Decree 31/CP on "administrative detention", which empowers local Security Police to detain citizens without a Court order for up to 2 years; to review the broadly-defined "national security" clauses in the revised 2000 Criminal Code under which thousands of citizens are currently detained for the peaceful expression of their political opinions and religious beliefs; <li>taken no steps to implement recommendations made by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (1995), the UN Special Rapporteur on Religious Intolerance (1999) and the UN Committee on Human Rights (2002) to urgently bring domestic legislation into line with international human rights law. After examining Vietnam's Report on the ICCPR in July 2002, the UN Human Rights Committee expressed particular concern that provisions in the Vietnamese Constitution subjugated individual rights to the interest and policies of the one-Party State (e.g. Art. 4 of the Constitution on the mastery of the Communist Party) and were thus totally incompatible with the ICCPR. </ul> <p><b>Question of Olivier Dupuis, secretary of the Transnational Radical Party and member of the European Parliament, to the European Commission</b> <p><i>"Is the Commission aware that Vietnam continues to adopt such restrictive legislation in flagrant violation of its commitments to the international community ? Could this affect the development of bilateral EU-Vietnam relations, given that the 1995 EU-Vietnam Cooperation Agreement is based on the respect of human rights and democratic principles ? In the light of EU support for the Legal Reform Strategy, would the Commission consider blocking funding to LRS until Vietnam incorporates UN human rights provisions into its legal system and rescinds all legislation which impedes the enjoyment of civil and political rights in Vietnam ?"</i></p> <p><b><i>Olivier Dupuis</i></b><br> Member of the European Parliament<br> <a href="http://www.radicalparty.org/" target="_blank"><b>www.radicalparty.org</b></a></p> <hr></hr> <p align=right><a href="vuan_nguyenkhactoan.html"><b>Vå Án NguyÅn Kh¯c Toàn</b></a></p> </div> </BODY> </HTML>