Human Rights in Vietnam: A Debatable Issue A thesis presented to the faculty of the Center for International Studies of Ohio University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts Tam Thi Hong Mai June 2008 2 This thesis titled Human Rights in Vietnam: A Debatable Issue by TAM THI HONG MAI has been approved for the Center for International Studies by Elizabeth F. Collins Associate Professor of Classics and World Religions Gene Ammarell Director, Southeast Asian Studies Drew McDaniel Director, Center for International Studies 3 Abstract MAI, TAM THI HONG, M.A., June 2008, Southeast Asian Studies Human Rights in Vietnam: A Debatable Issue (108 pp.) Director of Thesis: Elizabeth F. Collins “Human rights,” the common value of human beings, are based on human wants- on those things necessary. The scopes of dialogue over human rights have become global, and the challenge of understanding human rights from these perspectives has never been greater. For human rights in Vietnam, many scholars and activists had different approaches, ideas, and conceptions. However, their approaches used to be one-sided; one side could support human rights in Vietnam, the other side could criticize human rights in Vietnam. From Vietnam’s case, by using a historical, comparative method and my personal experiences in international relations, I want to prove that human rights have been used as a political tool and contend it is wrong to use human rights as a means to oppose each other. I call for all sides to carry out constructive dialogues to narrow differences in human rights. Approved: _____________________________________________________________ Elizabeth F. Collins Associate Professor of Classics and World Religions 4 Table of Contents ABSTRACT...................................................................................................................................................3 LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................................................5 LIST OF FIGURES ......................................................................................................................................6 INTRODUCTION.........................................................................................................................................7 CHAPTER I.................................................................................................................................................13 HISTORY OF HUMAN RIGHTS.....................................................................................................................13 Human Rights ......................................................................................................................................13 1. Declaration of the United States Independence (1776) ...................................................................13 2. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (1789)...............................................................14 3. Rights of Women (1792) ..................................................................................................................14 4. United Nations Declaration of Universal Human Rights (1948).....................................................15 5. International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (1966) .....................................17 6. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966)..........................................................17 7. International NGOs of Human Rights .............................................................................................18 8. Human Rights Conventions Signed by Vietnam...............................................................................20 CHAPTER II ...............................................................................................................................................21 VIETNAM’S POSITION ON HUMAN RIGHTS ................................................................................................21 1. Freedom of Religion and Belief .......................................................................................................27 2. Ensuring equal rights among Ethnic Groups (Montagnard)...........................................................35 3. The rights of the child ......................................................................................................................45 4. Freedoms of speech and the press and the right to information......................................................49 5. Women’s rights and elimination of all forms of discrimination against women..............................52 CHAPTER III..............................................................................................................................................56 THE POLITICS OF HUMAN RIGHTS .............................................................................................................56 1. Lobby Groups Protesting the Violation of Human Rights by the Vietnamese Government.............56 2. Criticism of the Vietnamese Government for Violations of Human Rights......................................59 CHAPTER IV..............................................................................................................................................92 ANALYSIS..................................................................................................................................................92 1. Economic Rights and Common Good vs. Political and Social Rights and Individualism ...............92 2. Asian Values ....................................................................................................................................94 3. Politics of Human Rights with Reference to Vietnam ......................................................................95 CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................................................99 BIBLIOGRAPHY .....................................................................................................................................105 5 List of Tables Table 1. Ratio of Ethnic Minority Members at National Assembly and People’s Councils ..........................................................................................................................................36 Table 2. Education Features.............................................................................................43 Table 3. The Number of Street Children in Some Southeast Asian Countries................49 Table 4. Female Percentage in Administration Agencies................................................54 Table 5. Number of Religious Followers in Vietnam (2003 Census)..............................61 Table 6. Comparison in Terms of Educational Attainment and Position ........................88 6 List of Figures Figure 1. Access to television on Ethnic Minority Areas................................................38 Figure 2: Female percentage in People’s Council Elections...........................................55 Figure 3. Pictures of religions in Vietnam.......................................................................62 Figure 4. Thich Quang Duc.............................................................................................65 Figure 5. UBCV Leaders.................................................................................................68 Figure 6. Father Ly.........................................................................................................73 7 Introduction Before I came to Ohio University to pursue a Master in International Studies provided by the Fulbright Fellowship, I worked as a researcher for the International Relations and External Affairs Commission of the Communist Party in Vietnam. I graduated from the Institute for International Relations specializing in international relations and human rights and continued my Master in International Relations at this institute. Every Thursday the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Vietnam holds a press conference in which a spokesperson answers questions from the press. Whenever there were accusations that the Vietnamese government had violated human rights, the spokesperson defended the government’s policies. Through my work, I had a chance to understand Vietnam’s position on human rights. I decided on the title “Human Rights in Vietnam: A Debatable Issue” for my thesis because of the different perspectives on human rights of my government, lobby groups, human rights organizations and the United States government. Vietnamese people are grouped as “insiders” and lobby groups, human rights organizations and the United States government are grouped as “outsiders.” My purpose is to understand why my country is accused of human rights violations and why today human rights exert an increasingly powerful impact on world politics. More importantly, given the contradiction between insiders and lobby groups called outsiders of Vietnam in human rights, I want to first understand their contradictions and then make a small contribution to harmonizing their relationship in order to avoid old hostilities as the result of many years of war. 8 The concept of “human rights” has a political history. According to Richard A. Wilson (1997), human rights are the product of the rise of modern nation-states and are embedded in a chequered history