FIFTY YEARS of VIOLATIONS of Human Rights in Communist Vietnam 1945-1995

This report was conducted under the auspices of the Vietnam Internet for the Advancement for Anthroposophy (To Chuc Nhan Chu Viet Nam). In particular, we wish to thank: Nguyen Thai Lan, Do Tien Duc, Dao Van Binh, Bui Dac Chuong, and Ngo Van Hieu for providing us with sources, documents, and materials; Nguyen Tri Nguyen and Nguyen Phuong Thao for their editorial help and word processing work; Pham Tu Lan, Nguyen Tu Anh, Nguyen Tu Uyen, and Nguyen Phuong Diem for their valuable moral and financial support; and fellow political prisoners for their precious assistance in the performance of the interviews. We also would like to express our gratitude to the authors of researches, writings, and articles that we used as documentation in this report. We owe them the greatest debt for our failure to obtain their permissions due to poor access to their destinations.

Over the past years, international human rights organizations and personalities have voiced their concerns over the human rights situations in Vietnam. The struggle for human rights of the Vietnamese has obtained compassion and support from public opinion worldwide. However, the violation of human rights on the Vietnam native soil is still unfolding as it was decades ago. The oppression of the underprivileged and depraved, the repression of advocates for freedom and democracy, and the persecution of patriots from all walks of life are still very much with us. We are witnessing the threat of potential extinction of the human person and human decency and civil and human rights, thus, the deprivation from man of his unalienable rights.

This report is destined to reflect the human condition and the brutalities that the Vietnamese have experienced under a totalitarian political regime throughout half a century. Vietnam Human Rights Watch has no wishes other than to contribute our unpresumptious part to the literature of human rights in Vietnam.

It is our hope that this report be shared by opinions from different points of views, particularly by the Vietnamese youth overseas whose background of the Vietnamese history and language is increasingly diminishing. It is our hope that this report be read by the Vietnamese people, inside the country as well as overseas, so that they would be able to exchange ideas on the issues in which they have gotten entangled and that they altogether would be able to unite their efforts to work toward a free, democratic, and humanistic Vietnam. It is also our hope that this report be implemented with ideas, documents, and evidences concerning the human rights situations in Vietnam from the readership so that it could be revised for the next edition.