Reply #: They said this [View All]

http://www.bigeye.com/jj082502.htm


I had planned on writing about this last fall, after Kerry and McCain were honored at a gala dinner by the World Affairs Council for their role in normalizing relations between Vietnam and the United States. I was going to point out that just a few days earlier, a leader of Vietnam's independent Buddhist church had publicly immolated himself in Danang to protest the government's denial of religious freedom. I was going to urge Kerry, who chairs the Senate's East Asian and Pacific Affairs Subcommittee, to take the lead in moving the Vietnam Human Rights Bill through the Senate. That bill, which would link non-humanitarian aid to progress on human rights, had just passed the House, 410-1.

But the dinner took place on Sept. 10, and the next day there were more pressing matters to write about.

Almost a year later, however, the issue hasn't gone away. Although normalization is now a done deal, Kerry still says very little about human rights in Vietnam. Far from taking the lead on the Vietnam Human Rights Bill, he has prevented it from coming to a vote. He claims that making an issue of Hanoi's repression would be counterproductive. "Freedom and democracy in that country will continue to come through engagement," he says, "not through symbolic self-defeating acts in the United States." Any sanctions -- even the mild slap on the wrist allowed by this bill -- would "strengthen the hand of Vietnamese hardliners" and set back the cause of human rights.

But Kerry has it backward. By refusing to make an issue of Vietnam's denial of human rights, he encourages the despots in Hanoi to continue denying them. After all, why should they have second thoughts about jailing people for their beliefs or blocking free elections if a key member of the US Senate is ensuring that there will be no penalties for doing so?