Touring Asia in November, Barack Obama hit all the usual presidential themes, including free trade, investment, and strategic alliances, except for one: human rights. During a scripted press conference in Beijing, Obama barely mentioned it. In Shanghai he offered only mild criticism of China's Internet blocks, saying he was a "big supporter of noncensorship." Obama's nonstatements amount to a clear break from nearly three decades of U.S. policy. From its engagement with the brutal Burmese junta to its decision to avoid the Dalai Lama when he first visited Washington during Obama's tenure to its silence over the initial outbreak of protests in Iran, Obama's administration has taken a much quieter approach to rights advocacy than his predecessors George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. "Conceding to China upfront doesn't buy you better cooperation further down the track," says Sophie Richardson of Human Rights Watch.
The U.S. State Department will soon release its annual list of countries of particular concern for religious-rights violations. Hanoi's recent crackdown on a Buddhist community shows why the authoritarian government needs to be ...
Bloggers and online journalists beware. Big Brother is watching
Monday, 21 September 2009 - For vocal critics of the Chinese
government, there's only one place where it's more dangerous to speak
out than in mother China and that's Vietnam.
Although many Vietnamese remain highly suspicious of China, which ruled
Vietnam for 1,000 years and launched a short but bloody border war
against it in 1979, the Communist government has become increasingly
nervous about criticism of its northern neighbor. The rationale for
this crackdown is not communist solidarity or a new drive to stamp out
xenophobia but cold, hard cash.
IN
A country as fiercely patriotic as Vietnam, you would expect the
government to cheer a plan by citizens to distribute T-shirts bearing
nationalistic slogans. However, the T-shirts in question carried
messages of hostility towards China, Vietnam’s biggest trading partner.
Worse, their pedlars were popular and sometimes critical bloggers.
Two
well-known bloggers and an online reporter have been detained after the
police uncovered an apparent attempt to print T-shirts opposing Chinese
investment in a controversial new bauxite-mining project in Vietnam’s
Central Highlands and casting doubt on China’s claims to disputed
islands in the South China Sea.
New York, September 8, 2009--The Committee to Protect Journalists calls
on Vietnamese authorities to release immediately and unconditionally
Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, a blogger who writes under the pen name Me Nam,
or Mother Mushroom.
IN
A country as fiercely patriotic as Vietnam, you would expect the
government to cheer a plan by citizens to distribute T-shirts bearing
nationalistic slogans. However, the T-shirts in question carried
messages of hostility towards China, Vietnam’s biggest trading partner.
Worse, their pedlars were popular and sometimes critical bloggers.
