Big Macs won’t satisfy Vietnamese desire for human rights

SAN FRANCISCO — Vietnam specializes in irony. Its president, Truong Tan Sang, is due to visit the White House this Thursday, where he’s expected to request a lifting of the U.S. ban on lethal weapons sales to his country while also seeking support for a bid to join the U.N. Human Rights Council.

The irony? 

Besides trying to buy weapons from the United States, a country it defeated four decades ago, Hanoi also continues to trample on human rights, and in the last few years has stepped up arrests of dissidents with no fear of international criticism or, for that matter, U.S. rebuke.

Oh, and it’s also preparing to open its first ever McDonald’s, which, glancing at media headlines here, seems to be the real story. Never mind the persecution.

Vietnam today has more money than ever, and is seeking an international status equal to its newfound wealth. It also needs advanced weapons to counter the looming threat from China, which has laid claim to more or less the entire South China Sea. 

“If Vietnam wants to stand on the world stage, its government should repudiate its crackdown on dissidents and embrace reform,” John Sifton, Asia Advocacy Director with Human Rights Watch, said in a statement released this week. “The arc of history may be long, but it certainly bends away from authoritarian retrenchment.” 

Sifton added, “President Sang cannot publicly justify his government’s crackdown and should use (his meeting with Obama) to repudiate it.”

U.S. Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, echoed HRW’s concern in an open letter this week to President Barack Obama, urging him to make human rights a top priority during the Vietnamese president’s visit. 

“Vietnam has long been one of the most oppressive societies in Southeast Asia,” Royce wrote. “Democratic aspirations, human rights advocacy, and grassroots mobilization are met with police brutality and result in show trials where defendants are denied their rights to open and fair proceedings as guaranteed by the Vietnamese Constitution.”

Indeed, dissident bloggers have been arrested routinely, with 50 democracy advocates having been rounded up this year alone. Languishing in its gulags, too, are dozens of prominent clergymen, some of whom, like Father Nguyen Van Ly, 67, are in failing health. Father Ly, a Catholic priest sentenced to 15 years in prison for demanding religious freedom in the country (and whose causes are being championed by Amnesty International), suffered a stroke in 2009 and is in dire need of medical care.

Another prominent dissident, Nguyen Van Hai, popularly known as Dieu Cay, is currently staging a hunger strike after he was sentenced to 12 years in solitary confinement for his “propaganda against the state.” His crime: blogging about government corruption and demands for democracy. As of this writing, Nguyen has been on hunger strike for 32 days. 

But unlike in Myanmar, the United States has been hush on the issue of human rights abuse in Vietnam, where for the past decade it has stepped up investments. Hanoi claims that in two years, the United States will become the biggest investor in Vietnam, overtaking Japan and South Korea.

Military ties, too, are deepening. Since 2010 the two nations have engaged in joint military exercises. Last year, Hanoi went as far as dropping a hint to visiting Secretary of Defense Leon Penetta that it would like to resume talks about renting out Cam Ranh Bay, America’s old naval station during the war.

So why, in this era of seeming openness and economic progress, has Hanoi stepped up its oppression? The short answer is because it can, for now. 

Despite its dismal human rights records, Vietnam has been awarded for opening up economically. It was granted membership in the World Trade Organization and made its entrance to the world’s economic stage in 2006 when it hosted its first Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference. Its Gross National Product has been growing at a steady and impressive seven percent for almost the last decade. 

And while political dissent is not allowed, its population is experiencing far greater personal freedoms. Many are allowed to travel overseas, while movement within Vietnam is permitted freely. There’s a burgeoning middle class with disposable income and access to the Internet.

And therein lies the problem. 

As we’ve seen most recently in Brazil, increased wealth brings with it expectations of increased political freedom. Indeed, despite the arrests more Vietnamese are blogging online, demanding greater respect for human rights and condemning Hanoi for, as they see it, kowtowing to China. 

Hanoi’s efforts to control this rising tide of discontent, moreover, are being stymied by the boom in communications technology. Vietnam has 132 million active cellphones in a country of 93 million, or about 2 phones per adult. Facebook entered Vietnam last October and by March had over 12 million users. 

Concerned over a potential Arab Spring-style revolt, Hanoi’s response to date has been arrests and more arrests. 

That it can do this without fear of international condemnation is due in large part to American indifference. President George W. Bush visited Vietnam in 2006 for the APEC summit, and promptly dropped it from the list of nations that severely curtail religious freedom. Under Obama, the United States is licking its chops as it perceives an opening for a grand re-entry into the Pacific Rim theatre.

“It’s hard to be seen as deeply concerned about human rights when you are in bed with the politburos selling Big Macs and Starbucks,” noted one Vietnamese American living in Hanoi.

No wonder, then, that those fighting for democracy in Vietnam no longer look to the United States as their major supporter. In online chatrooms, dissidents are increasingly finding inspiration in protest movements in Tunisia, Egypt and Myanmar, also known as Burma. 

It would be a tragedy, however, if Uncle Sam, while publicly voicing concern about human rights, lifts the ban on lethal weapons sales and supports Vietnam’s bid for a seat on the UN Human Rights Council. That tragedy would turn to irony should a Vietnamese Spring erupt, only to be put down with American bullets and guns.