Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam See Continued Rights Abuses, Restrictions on Free
Expression: Report
By Richard Finney – RFA | 2021-03-30
Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam imposed serious restrictions on freedom of expression
and the press over the last year, with all three countries also holding
political prisoners and interfering with the rights of citizens to peacefully
protest, according to an annual State Department report released on Tuesday.
Cases of arbitrary arrest, unlawful killings, and torture in police custody were
also reported during the year, the State Department said in its annual report to
the U.S. Congress on the human rights record of countries around the world.
In Laos, the ruling party’s Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications issued
instructions in August warning social media users against posting content or
comments criticizing the country’s government, and “articles or comments on
articles critical of the government suddenly disappeared from social media
sites,” according to the report.
Lack of accountability in cases of abuse by police or other officials remained a
problem in Laos during the year, the State Department said.
“[And] while the government prosecuted officials for corruption, there were no
prosecutions of punishments for officials who committed other abuses, and police
and security forces committed human rights abuses with impunity.”
No new cases of forced disappearance were reported during the year, but no
progress was made in uncovering the fate of Sombath Somphone, a prominent Lao
civil society leader who was abducted in 2012 after what appeared to be “an
orchestrated stop of his vehicle by traffic police in Vientiane.”
Opposition figures jailed
Notable human rights abuses reported in Cambodia during the year during the year
included torture and degrading punishment at government hands, unjustified or
arbitrary arrests, and “severe restrictions on political participation,” with at
least 40 political prisoners or detainees held in the country as of August, the
State Department said.
Twenty-three of these were officials or supporters of the opposition Cambodia
National Rescue Party (CNRP), which was dissolved by Cambodia’s ruling
party-compliant Supreme Court in November 2017, two months after the arrest of
CNRP leader Kem Sokha.
More than 80 CNRP supporters and activists arrested in 2019 were meanwhile
released on bail during the year, but still faced charges and possible
re-arrest, the State Department said.
Government control of Cambodia’s judiciary saw the country’s Supreme Court on
Oct. 27 reject an appeal by former Radio Free Asia reporters Yeang Sothearin and
Uon Chhin, allowing an investigation into charges of espionage against them to
proceed, according to the report.
“NGOs and observers argued that the case was politically motivated and pointed
to the prolonged trial and confiscation of the journalists’ passports as proof
of government intimidation of media,” the State Department said.
And though prepublication censorship of Cambodian media is forbidden by law, the
government “used other means to censor media, most notably through its control
of permits and licenses for journalists and media outlets not controlled
directly by the government or the [ruling Cambodian People’s Party],” according
to the report.
“Private media admitted to practicing self-censorship, in part from fear of
government reprisal.”
Significant, ongoing abuses
In Vietnam, significant abuses continued through the year, the State Department
said.
Problems included arbitrary arrests, detentions, and killings by the government;
“serious restrictions” on free expression, the press, and the internet; and the
holding of political prisoners in the country’s jails, according to the report.
Restrictions on political participation and a lack of independence of the
judiciary were also seen, the State Department said, adding, “The government
occasionally took corrective action, including prosecutions against officials
who violated the law, but police officers and state officials frequently acted
with impunity.”
Ministry of Public Security officials reportedly assaulted political prisoners
to extract confessions or encouraged fellow prisoners to attack them, and human
rights monitoring groups said police regularly used excessive force while on
duty, with investigators often torturing detainees.
The State Department noted that on Sept. 14, the trial of 29 residents of the
Dong Tam commune—the scene of a violent Jan. 9 clash between armed police and
commune residents over the government seizure of farmland for military use—ended
with convictions, with one Dong Tam resident saying later the 29 had been
tortured in custody.
Legal scholars, activists, and rights activists later noted “serious
irregularities” in the conduct of the trial, which ended with two villagers
sentenced to death and others handed lengthy terms in prison.
Vietnam’s already low tolerance of dissent meanwhile deteriorated sharply during
the year with a spate of arrests of independent journalists, publishers, and
Facebook personalities as authorities continued to stifle critics in the run-up
to the ruling Communist Party Congress in January 2021.
In March, Truong Duy Nhat—an RFA blogger who had been taken back to Vietnam by
force from Thailand after applying for U.N. refugee status the year before—was
tried and sentenced to a 10-year prison term on charges related to an alleged
land-fraud case.
And in May and June, independent journalists Pham Chi Thanh, Nguyen Tuong Tuy,
and Le Huu Minh Tuan were first detained and then arrested on charges of
propagandizing against the state, the State Department said.
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