Since January, Vietnam has held two bilateral human rights dialogues, hosted a summit of world parliamentarians and is negotiating a major free trade agreement with the United States. It has made high-level official visits to or received foreign officials from countries that made human rights recommendations to Vietnam in its 2014 Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the UN Human Rights Council. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is due to visit Hanoi tomorrow (22 May) while Nguyen Phu Trong, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, is scheduled to visit the US later this year. The 12th Australia-Vietnam human rights dialogue is due to take place in Canberra this year.
“While Vietnamese officials trot the globe to laud the country’s human rights record, the government is repeatedly failing to take effective action at home to protect activists from brazen attacks and hold perpetrators to account,” said Marie Månson, Human Rights Defenders at Risk Programme Director at Civil Rights Defenders.