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US sẽ ngưng viện trợ VN v́ nhân quyền tự do
Chào toàn thể,
Vừa qua Mỹ đă quyết định cho hội nhân quyền quyết định Mỹ viện trợ cho VN không cho tới khi thấy VN có nhân quyền và tự dọ, thả những người tù nhân chi'nh trị
Xin các bạn xem bản tin như sau
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Jul 24, 2004
Fight looms over US curbs on aid to Vietnam By Alan Boyd
SYDNEY - Former US president Bill Clinton called it one of his greatest diplomatic triumphs, in an administration with an unremarkable foreign-policy record. But it was only a matter of time before the 1994 normalization of relations with Vietnam, a red rag for conservatives and Vietnamese exiles alike, would be put to the blowtorch in Washington.
The House of Representatives voted 323-45 this week for a Vietnam Human Rights Act that will curb all non-humanitarian aid from Washington until Hanoi demonstrates a stronger commitment to democracy and individual freedoms.
According to the legislation, which was sponsored by Republican Representative Chris Smith from New Jersey, the Vietnamese government "pursues a policy of harassment, discrimination, and intimidation ... against those who peacefully express dissent from government or party policy".
The legislation prevents Washington from increasing non-humanitarian assistance to Vietnam beyond the existing level of US$40 million unless Hanoi sets political and religious prisoners free and improves its overall human-rights record, in the judgment of the US president.
Significantly, the bill exerts indirect economic pressure by authorizing the US president to block any non-humanitarian loans or assistance from the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank, both of which are heavily committed to development assistance in Vietnam.
One exception to the aid curbs from Washington is a cash fund of $4 million that the White House is permitted to distribute in 2004-05 to Vietnamese dissidents and groups that "promote internationally recognized human rights". A further $10 million will be spent upgrading transmissions from Radio Free Asia and preventing Vietnam from jamming signals from the pro-democracy network, which is directly funded by Washington.
Smith is vice chairman of the powerful House Committee on International Relations and has spent three years pushing the bill. Although it has passed in the House, it still has to be passed by the Senate, and is not assured of any easy ride.
As Smith himself has admitted, the reason it took so long to reach this stage is because it was opposed at every step by a group of liberal senators led by John Kerry, whose 1990s campaigns were instrumental in forcing Clinton's hand. Kerry, a naval commander in Indochina in the 1960s before he switched sides to the anti-war movement in the latter stages of the conflict, has now emerged as the likely Democratic presidential candidate.
Getting bills rescinded is a tall order. But there is one let-out: the legislation empowers Kerry, if he is elected in November, to offer a partial or full waiver on the grounds that closer relations are considered vital for US national-security interests.
Many US strategists are not convinced of the merits of the bill, which runs counter to the Pentagon's efforts to reestablish a naval presence in southern Vietnam as part of a quick-reaction force capable of responding to tensions in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea.
A careful process of confidence-building culminated in the visit of a US warship to Ho Chi Minh City in November, the first direct contact between the two armed forces for almost three decades. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, one of the leading hawks in the Bush administration, met his Vietnamese counterpart Pham Van Tra at the Pentagon that same week, in what was portrayed by Washington as a symbolic burying of postwar strains.
More than 58,000 US troops and 3 million Vietnamese were killed in the 20-year conflict, but 60% of present-day Vietnamese were born after the war ended, a point that has been made many times by another war veteran, Secretary of State Colin Powell.
The State Department has become a reluctant participant in the political debate because the bill rests heavily on testimony by US diplomats of Vietnam's suppression of political dissent and a heavy-handed - and clumsy - approach to religious freedom, as well as the brutal containment of ethnic tensions in highland regions.
In February, assistant secretary of state Matthew Daley reported to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Hanoi would need to do more to honor its commitments to boost individual liberties if it wanted better ties with Washington.
While Vietnam was "a less repressive society now than 10 or five years ago", Daley said, there were continuing curbs on free speech, the press and assembly, and the government's overall human-rights record was poor. Daley, however, cautioned against an over-reaction by legislators, noting that many of the positive trends now evident in Vietnam were a result of the country's reintegration into the international community.
"Continued interaction by the US government and other American institutions will continue to play a pivotal role in the further expansion of these positive trends. Efforts to reisolate Vietnam or to 'punish' it with new sanctions will likely prove counterproductive to our long-term goals and interests in Vietnam," he said.
Hanoi evidently views the bill as a threat. This month it freed two elderly dissidents, Colonel Pham Que Duong and Professor Tran Khue, in an apparent bid to convince US legislators it was taking the accusations seriously.
The ruling Communist Party described the House vote as "untimely and detrimental to bilateral relations" in an editorial carried by the Nhan Dan newspaper. But its response was surprisingly restrained, possibly reflecting a concern that economic links might be hurt.
US investments are modest by regional standards: about 350 US firms are registered in Vietnamese business ventures, but their combined capital is only about $1.5 billion. Yet 70% of all Vietnamese exports are likely to be shipped to US markets this year, up from nothing in 1994, when Clinton lifted a trade embargo that had existed since the end of the Indochina conflict in 1975. Since a bilateral trade agreement (BTA) took effect in December 2001, US sales to Vietnam, including such big-budget items as aircraft and farm equipment, have risen by more than 150%, with two-way commerce reaching an estimated $6 billion in 2003.
Vietnam is obliged under the BTA to open its markets more to US goods and undertake a wide range of structural reforms. It is lagging behind, but Daley argued nonetheless that "issues we address together show that both of our countries are now concentrating on our future together rather than simply looking to the past".
Economic relations were already suffering before the latest curbs, partly because Vietnam has become too successful as an exporter, but also due to its failure to meet qualifying standards for membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Anti-dumping duties and quotas have been imposed by Washington on a range of Vietnamese exports that had threatened the market share of US producers, including shrimps, textiles and garments. The textile quotas would have been lifted in January if Vietnam had been accepted into the WTO. Having missed out, it will effectively be sidelined from a trade that netted Vietnamese firms $2.5 billion in 2003.
A bruising battle now looms over the bill in the Senate, with Smith vowing to put the advancement of democracy and American ideals firmly on the conservative agenda as the United States gears up for the presidential election in November.
In the meantime, Hanoi has already had its say on the US approach to individual liberties: "Their war of aggression in Vietnam was the height of their violations of human rights and national self-determination," the Nhan Dan editorial commented.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
-- Kẻ Sĩ Bắc Hà (ke_si_bac_ha@yahoo.com), July 24, 2004
20 Tháng 7 2004 - Cập nhật 20h59 GMT (BBC)
Hạ viện Mỹ thông qua dự luật nhân quyền Hạ nghị viện Hoa Kỳ biểu quyết hạn chế mức cung cấp viện trợ phi nhân đạo cho Việt Nam, đồng thời lại thông qua việc trợ giúp những nhóm ly khai, để phản đối cái mà họ mô tả là "chính sách nhũng nhiễu, phân biệt và đe doạ" những người dám phản đối chính phủ.
Với tỉ lệ biểu quyết 323-45, Hạ viện Mỹ thông qua Dự luật Nhân quyền Việt Nam, ngăn cấm chính phủ Mỹ gia tăng viện trợ phi nhân đạo quá mức 40 triệu đôla/năm, trừ phi Tổng thống xác nhận rằng Hà Nội đã thả các tù nhân chính trị và có các bước cải thiện hồ sơ nhân quyền của Việt Nam.
Việt Nam đã phản đối quyết định này của Mỹ và cảnh báo nó sẽ làm tổn hại tới quan hệ song phương.
Báo Nhân Dân của đảng Cộng sản Việt Nam nói rằng Dự luật Nhân quyền đã đi ngược lại những nỗ lực bình thường hoá quan hệ giữa hai cựu thù.
Bài xã luận tiếng Anh trên báo Nhân Dân điện tử có đoạn: "Việc đưa cái gọi là Dự luật Nhân quyền Việt Nam vào thời điểm quan hệ Việt Mỹ đang tiến triển tốt đẹp và rộng mở là không đúng lúc và gây tác hại tới quan hệ song phương".
Các nhóm nhân quyền quốc tế thường cáo buộc nhà nước cộng sản Việt Nam là đàn áp những người bất đồng chính kiến, ủng hộ dân chủ và hoạt động vì nhân quyền.
Vào đầu tháng này, hai người bất đồng chính kiến là Phạm Quế Dương và Trần Khuê đã bị đưa ra xét xử, mỗi người chịu 19 tháng tù.
Dự luật nhân quyền của Mỹ còn cho phép Tổng thống ngăn cản bất cứ khoản cho vay phi nhân đạo nào cho Việt Nam từ các tổ chức Quỹ Tiền Tệ Quốc tế và Ngân hàng Thế giới.
Việt Nam cáo buộc Hoa Kỳ là đạo đức giả, nói rằng Hoa Kỳ không có quyền can thiệp vào Việt Nam, nếu còn chưa tính đến chuyện Mỹ đã tàn phá đất nước và con người Việt Nam trong chiến tranh.
Theo dự luật này, các cá nhân và tổ chức phi chính phủ ủng hộ dân chủ và nhân quyền sẽ nhận được bốn triệu đôla trong các năm tài chính 2004 và 2005.
Người ta còn đề nghị cung cấp cho đài châu Á tự do hơn 10 triệu đôla trong cùng giai đoạn này. Châu Á tự do là đài phát thanh được Quốc hội Mỹ cấp tài chính và phát các chương trình của Mỹ về khu vực châu Á.
Tuy nhiên, dự luật này sẽ còn phải để cho Thượng Nghị viện Mỹ quyết định.
Năm 2001, Hạ Nghị viện Mỹ có một dự luật tương tự, thế nhưng không được Thượng viện thông qua sau khi Thượng nghị sĩ John Kerry, ứng cử viên chức Tổng thống của đảng Dân chủ hiện thời, và các thượng nghị sĩ khác không cho biểu quyết.
-- Vo Danh (Vo_Danh@yahoo.com), July 24, 2004.
-- Nong Duc Manh (vietnamcongsans@yahoo.com), July 25, 2004.
-- Nong Duc Manh (vietnamcongsans@yahoo.com), July 25, 2004.