Tag: News

On the night of November 17, 2022 the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), granted Legal Initiatives For Vietnam (LIV) co-founder, Pham Doan Trang, the 2022 International Press Freedom Award (IPFA) during its annual ceremony held in New York City. She shares the spotlight with three other awardees from Cuba, Iraqi Kurdistan, and Ukraine and all four were chosen for “[withstanding] immense challenges, including government crackdowns, aggression, and imprisonment to bring the public independent reporting amid rampant disinformation and war.”

CPJ President, Jodie Ginsberg, holds the IPFA awardees in high regard. She praises them and says, “Our award winners exemplify the best of journalism: work that shines a light on the impacts of war, corruption, and abuse of power on everyday lives.” She adds that the awardees “demonstrate the central role journalism plays in serving the public good.”

Before her arrest and imprisonment, LIV co-founder, Pham Doan Trang, was part of the main editorial bodies of independent Vietnamese media outlets, Luat Khoa and The Vietnamese Magazine.

On October 6, 2020 at around 11:30 pm, Hanoi police and state authorities raided Trangs’s apartment and arrested her. After a year of being held incommunicado and being denied the liberty to speak to her lawyers and her family, she was convicted in December 2021 at the conclusion of a one-day trial under Article 88 of Vietnam’s 1999 Penal Code for “making, storing, distributing or disseminating information, documents and items against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.” Pham Doan Trang is currently serving a nine-year long sentence and joins the ranks of the growing number of Vietnamese journalists and dissidents who have been imprisoned for speaking out against the Vietnamese government.

Pham Doan Trang was unable to attend the ceremony and accept her award due to her imprisonment. She was presented onstage by CNN correspondent Omar Jimenez who used this opportunity to demand for her freedom. He says, “…Pham Doan Trang is serving a nine year sentence for the crime of spreading news against the state but the only crime here is her imprisonment. So, I want you to help us turn her story into a demand for her release.”

A mock newspaper, which also doubled as a petition to call for Pham Doan Trang’s release, was given to the ceremony attendees during the pre-dinner reception and post-dinner reception. Vietnam has released prisoners due to international outcry in the past, such as Nguyễn Văn Hải and Nguyễn Ngọc Như Quỳnh, who is also known as “Mother Mushroom.” Both were released after receiving the IPFA in 2013 and 2018, respectively.

The Luật Khoa Magazine, one of the two main projects of Taiwan-based non-governmental organization Legal Initiatives for Vietnam (LIV), published its Taiwan Special issue on October 6, 2022. This marks the magazine’s second release within its new operating model. Each month, Luật Khoa will release a periodical that contains introductory and analytical articles about a chosen topic. These can range anywhere from political, social, or legal issues in Vietnam to areas of international concern that may provide insight or lessons that may aid in Vietnam’s democratization process.

This month’s release focuses on Taiwan. This small island nation is different, if not the direct opposite, of Vietnam’s neighbor, China. Similar to Vietnam, the people of Taiwan also lived under a dictatorship for some time. In fact, just a few decades ago, many Taiwanese citizens lived in constant fear from their government and could not freely express criticism or dissent both in public and in the sanctity of their own homes.

However, the Taiwan of today is drastically different from how they were in the past. The advent of democracy has led to a transformation within the Taiwanese people, government, and society. Taiwan currently stands as a bastion of a functioning democratic state and its citizens have also started to develop their own sense of identity, despite the constant threats to its freedom and sovereignty from its communist counterpart.

LIV and the Luật Khoa staff hope that the articles, stories, and words in this October publication will serve as a source of inspiration and hope to its Vietnamese audience and readers.

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Luật Khoa’s Taiwan Special Issue is written in Vietnamese and can be purchased here for 5 USD.

Legal Initiatives for Vietnam’s (LIV) collection of books, banned or restricted by the Vietnamese government, was featured by Radio Free Asia (RFA) in its April 29, 2022 article titled, “Thế hệ hậu chiến với nỗ lực bảo tồn và quảng bá sách thời Việt Nam Cộng Hoà.” RFA also spoke with LIV co-director, Trinh Huu Long, and a video recording of this interview has been uploaded on Youtube.

A significant number of these books were written before the collapse of the Republic of Vietnam, before the fall of Saigon city. Trinh Huu Long believes that, during this time, education under the Republic of Vietnam was “the most brilliant in Vietnamese history.” He adds that autonomy and liberal education were the two core values embedded in the educational system of that era.

In the interview, he also elaborates on why LIV is collecting and preserving these written works. Trinh Huu Long provides two reasons. The first is that these books are banned in Vietnam, making them very difficult for the general public to access. The second is that if these books continue to age and degrade, the knowledge and information contained within their pages will cease to exist.

Even though LIV’s collection is fairly broad, Trinh Huu Long states there are many other books, written under the Republic of Vietnam, that are not part of the LIV library. He adds that many of these remain scattered all over the world and it will take a significant amount of money and effort to purchase and preserve them.

As an active democracy activist, he believes that these books are essential in Vietnam’s process of democratization and that the study and analysis of these written works is necessary in order to prepare for a political reform in the country.

The LIV library is home to about 250 titles, written between 1955-1975 in Southern Vietnam, and includes works from famous Vietnamese authors such as Professor Nguyen Van Bong and the former Prime Minister of the Republic of Vietnam, Vu Van Mau. The books have also been digitized and are planned to be publicized in the future.

The library is located in the main office of LIV at the 4th Floor, RIIC Building, National Chengchi University, No. 64, Sec. 2, Zhinan Rd., Wenshan Dist., Taipei City, Taiwan (ROC) 116.

On June 2, the Martin Ennals Award Ceremony 2022 took place in Geneva, Switzerland to honor three human rights defenders for their “courage and unique contributions” to the international human rights movement. The ceremony was hosted and live-streamed directly from Salle Communale de Plainpalais, Geneva.

The Martin Ennals Award laureates in 2022 are Pham Doan Trang from Vietnam, Dr. Daouda Diallo from Burkina Faso, and Abdul-Hadi Al-Khawaja from Bahrain. Bui Thi Thien Can, Doan Trang’s mother, was present at the ceremony and received the award on her daughter’s behalf. Pham Doan Trang has been sentenced to nine years in prison for allegedly “distributing anti-State propaganda.”

In her speech, Can said she was “happy and proud” of Doan Trang’s achievement and that she thought her daughter is “a courageous woman who was persistent to follow the dangerous and arduous path [of being a human rights defender.]”

“As a mother, I have had to sacrifice a mother’s love so that my child could become an activist. I hope that one day, the sooner the better, Vietnam will have real democracy and human rights so that our people can truly be free and happy,” Can says, adding that she has not been able to see her daughter for nearly 20 months.

Just before the award ceremony, Michèle Taylor, U.S. ambassador at the UN Human Rights Council, met with Bui Thi Thien Can in the U.S. Mission in Geneva. “I was honored to have met with the mother of Pham Doan Trang, one of this year’s Martin Ennals Award recipients, an inspiring human rights defender & journalist who has been unjustly detained in Vietnam,” Ambassador Taylor wrote on Twitter. “Today was a vivid reminder of the importance of the work we do in Geneva,” she added.

In a short documentary about Doan Trang’s activism shown during the ceremony, the journalist explained that she chose to become an activist because “being a reporter or a journalist was still not enough” to push for social change in an authoritarian country like Vietnam. “[Being an activist] means that someone can take the matter into their own hands and not wait for someone else to pick up the fight,” she said.

In an opinion article published on the Martin Ennals Award website on May 30, Saman Zia-Zarifi, secretary-general of the International Court of Justice, wrote that the human rights situation in Vietnam “continues to degenerate despite the country’s increasing engagement with the global economy.”

Zia-Zarifi added that Vietnam “should be held accountable to its international human rights obligations” and he urged the Vietnamese government to “immediately release Pham Doan Trang and all political prisoners like her.”

The Vietnamese government’s mouthpieces, on the other hand, have criticized and defamed the Martin Ennals Award. An article in Nhan Dan, the official mouthpiece of the Vietnamese Communist Party, accused the Martin Ennals foundation of cooperating with other human rights organizations, such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, to “interfere in several countries’ internal affairs” and give the awards to those who “violated their country’s own laws and were given the prison sentences.”

Another article in the local Nghe An Newspaper wrote that there are “malicious purposes behind the human rights awards” and that these awards have been “used by hostile forces” to “inflict damages and interfere in the internal affairs of socialist countries, including Vietnam.” “The arguments and statements of the aforementioned organizations and individuals are groundless, unobjective, and blatantly distorted the situation in Vietnam,” it wrote.

Source: The Vietnamese

In preparation for the Martin Ennals Award (MEA) ceremony, a Vietnamese delegation arrived in Geneva, Switzerland to begin a two-week advocacy trip for the improvement of human rights in Vietnam and the release of Pham Doan Trang – one of the three laureates of the 2022 MEA.

The delegation includes:

• Mrs. Bui Thi Thien Can, mother of journalist Pham Doan Trang;
• Mr. Will Nguyen, a former political prisoner, and pro-democracy advocate; and
• Ms. Tran Quynh-Vi, Co-director of Legal Initiatives for Vietnam (LIV, the managerial body of The Vietnamese Magazine and Luat Khoa Magazine).

The Martin Ennals Award ceremony will take place on June 2 and Mrs. Bui Thi Thien Can will receive this award on behalf of her daughter.

Pham Doan Trang was arrested on October 7, 2020, and sentenced to nine years in prison on December 14, 2021, for “distributing anti-state propaganda.” She is one of the co-founders of The Vietnamese Magazine, Luat Khoa Magazine, and LIV.

The award is known as the “Nobel Prize of human rights” and is named after Martin Ennals, a British human rights activist who served as Secretary-General of Amnesty International from 1968 to 1980. The award ceremony is held annually to recognize the efforts of human rights defenders worldwide and advocate for their protection.

The judging panel is an independent committee composed of representatives from ten prestigious international human rights organizations. The Geneva Municipal Government co-hosts the award ceremony and the Martin Ennals Foundation.

Source: The Vietnamese