Vietnam: EU Domestic Advisory Group (DAG) denounces activists’ arrests
FIDH | 2021-07-15
The EU Domestic Advisory Group (DAG) set up under Chapter 13 of the EU-Vietnam
Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) received from VCHR and FIDH, a member of the EU
DAG, a concerning report of
the arrest, announced on 2nd July 2021 by Security Police in Hanoi, of two
prominent civil society activists, journalist Mai Phan Lợi, chair of the
Scientific Board of the Centre
for Media in Educating Community (MEC) and lawyer Đặng Đình Bách,
director of the Law
and Policy for Sustainable Development (LPSD).
They are both Executive Board members of VNGO-EVFTA Network, a group of
seven development and environmental CSOs established last November to raise
awareness about EVFTA and its civil society component in Vietnam, the Vietnam
Domestic Advisory Group (DAG). All seven of the organisations (including MEC and
LPSD) submitted applications for membership of the Vietnam DAG, but have
received no reply. The Vietnamese DAG was not set-up and the first Trade and
Sustainable Development Committee and the first Joint forum had to be cancelled.
Now, two of the members having applied to be part of this monitoring group have
been arrested.
We fear that Vietnam, already known for harassing and silencing human rights
defenders, will oppose and obstruct any independent, free and fruitful
monitoring of the trade agreement. Nor is it the first time. Phạm Chí Dũng and
his colleagues Nguyễn Tường Thụy and Lê Hữu Minh Tuấn were
sentenced to prison terms of up to 15 years in January 2021 after having asked
the European Parliament to postpone EVFTA’s consent pending concrete human
rights progress in Vietnam.
The European Commission has the responsibility to ensure the full implementation
of the agreement. Last month, deploring this failure, the EU DAG already stressed that
the “Civil society engagement and scrutiny of the EVFTA is not an optional
element of the agreement”. This time the EU DAG, stressed that it is not
only not an optional element, “but is actually an essential element of the
agreement [1]”.
Indeed, the respect of human rights is an essential part of the agreement, and
their violation could lead the EU to take all appropriate measures.
Finally, the EU DAG urged the European Commission and its Chief Trade
Enforcement officer (CTEO) to investigate and raise the issue at the meeting
with the Vietnamese authorities that will take place next Monday. It was also
the message
sent by Saskia Bricmont, member of the European parliament (EP). She
reminded the European Commission that the Parliament gave its consent to the
free trade agreement but with conditions, namely the swift establishment of the
DAGs that include independent organisations and human rights defenders. MEP
Bricmont asked for the release of all the prisoners mentioned in the EP Resolution adopted
last January after the condemnation of Phạm Chí Dũng and his colleagues.
FIDH and VCHR welcome this mobilisation and will pursue their efforts to make
sure that trade agreements go hand-in-hand with human rights
Footnotes
[1] See
chapter 13 as well as article 17.22 and 17.18 of the EU-Vietnam FTA
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