Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-11-26-Speech-4-239"
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"en.20091126.23.4-239"2
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"Mr President, the human rights situation in Vietnam is disturbing. Religious persecution, in particular of Christians and Buddhists, is the order of the day. Anyone who speaks out in favour of freedom and human rights is intimidated and kept under systematic surveillance. At the end of September, hundreds of monks from the Bat Nha monastery were attacked. Major damage was caused to the entire monastery complex while the police simply sat by and watched. The monks who sought refuge in the nearby Phuoc Hue temple were beaten up. This sort of abuse must not be tolerated. It is outrageous that the numerous calls from the European Union and other parts of the world for improvements in the human rights situation have simply been ignored. There are hundreds of reasons for at last introducing changes, particularly as next year, Vietnam will hold the presidency of the ASEAN group of countries.
The situation in Laos is not much better. At the beginning of November, more than 300 peaceful demonstrators calling for more pluralism and democracy were brutally beaten up by the secret police. All efforts to bring about a political dialogue in this country are crushed immediately by the single ruling party.
The 5 000 Hmong refugees who are currently living in camps in northern Thailand and who are a persecuted minority are also in an appalling situation. They have not been granted the status of refugees. The organisation ‘Doctors without Borders’, which was represented here in Parliament this week, has said that it is almost impossible for it to provide humanitarian aid in the camps because people are constantly and generally completely arbitrarily being arrested and forced to return to Laos. Any claims that these people are returning voluntarily are simply not true.
We Members of Parliament call on the Commission and the Council to give us accurate information about which of the agreements reached with these two countries on human rights and democracy are being observed. Which of the agreements have been consistently blocked? For the sake of the citizens of Vietnam and Laos, it must be possible to exert pressure on the governments of these two countries."@en1
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