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Press Release
For Immediate Release
April 3, 2003
Contact: Nick Manetto (202) 225-3765
http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/nj04_smith/prvietnam.htm
Smith Introduces
Vietnam Human Rights Act
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Congressman Chris Smith, Vice Chairman of the House
Committee on International Relations, has been joined by 30 bipartisan
colleagues in reintroducing the Vietnam Human Rights Act today.
Smith’s legislation will prohibit the U.S. from providing any
non-humanitarian aid to Vietnam until Hanoi makes significant progress toward
releasing political and religious prisoners and respecting the human rights of
ethnic minorities.
The bill also authorizes funding to overcome Vietnam’s jamming of Radio Free
Asia, establishes a commission to monitor human rights, and expands outreach to
Vietnamese refugees to ensure they have access to resettlement programs.
“The Vietnam Human Rights Act will impose significant penalties on the dictators
in Hanoi for their ongoing and egregious persecution of their own people,” Smith
said today at a press conference attended by bill cosponsors and human rights
activists. “What this bill is all about is standing with the oppressed rather
than the oppressor.”
“Vietnam is a government that consistently employs a policy of harassment,
discrimination, intimidation, and -- increasingly in the last three years --
imprisonment and other forms of detention against those who peacefully express
opposition to Hanoi’s extreme policies against religion and freedom,” Smith
said. “This is a government that punishes not just individuals who oppose it,
but also often their family members.”
Smith introduced similar legislation during the last Congress. That bill passed
the House by a vote of 410-1 but died in the Senate because Sen. John Kerry of
Massachusetts placed a hold on the bill and prevented it from being brought to
the floor for a vote.
“I pledge to do everything in my power to ensure that this bill passes not only
the House but also the Senate and reaches the President’s desk as well,” Smith
said.
“Opponents of this measure often invoke the phrase ‘Vietnam is a country, not a
war.’ I agree that Vietnam is a country, but as such we expect Vietnam to behave
as a country that protects the rights of its citizens.”
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