Vo Van Ai<\/strong>, details a range of violations of the rights of and discrimination against ethnic minorities in both law and practice, despite constitutional prohibition of discrimination and Vietnam\u2019s obligations under the human rights conventions it has ratified. The indigenous Montagnards and the Hmongs are among the ethnic groups who have borne the brunt of the Vietnamese government\u2019s discriminatory policies.<\/p>\nThe report points to the wide disparities between the majority Kinh people and the various ethnic minorities in terms of their enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights, within a one-party authoritarian system that also denies citizens basic civil and political rights to participate in decision-making that affect their livelihood and standard of living. Wealth disparities are \u201cincreasingly alarmingly\u201d<\/em> and government programmes supposedly aimed at reducing poverty \u201coften include campaigns to eradicate the culture, traditional lifestyle, religious beliefs and practices of minority peoples, resulting in even greater marginalization,\u201d<\/em> the report said.<\/p>\n\u201cVietnam\u2019s economic growth has often been touted by the government internationally as a human rights \u2018achievement\u2019; a closer look at disaggregated data, however, would reveal that the benefits of such growth has not been evenly enjoyed by the wider population, especially among ethnic minorities, who remain far behind their Kinh counterparts in areas such as health, education, and employment,\u201d<\/strong><\/em> said Souhayr Belhassen, President of FIDH. \u201cThis cannot be attributed solely to \u2018market forces\u2019 but is in fact also a result of the implementation of a range of discriminatory institutional, legislative and policy tools for control that are inconsistent with international human rights standards.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\nActivities of ethnic minorities, including their religious practices, are subject to extensive and arbitrary controls by numerous government regulations, decisions and directives, which in practice also seriously undermine the fundamental civil rights, such as the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association; to freedom of movement and residence; to leave and return to one\u2019s country; and to own property and to inherit. Members of religious minority groups such as the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam (UBCV), the Hoa Hao, Cao Dai and Khmer Krom Buddhists are subjected to systematic repression including imprisonment, torture, house arrest, police surveillance, intimidation and harassments in all aspects of their daily lives.<\/p>\n
The judiciary is not independent in Vietnam and is thus unable to adjudicate against discriminations and guarantee the right to equality before the law. In one glaring example of the judicial persecution of ethnic minorities, the VCHR report stated that \u201cmore than 350 Montagnards have been sentenced to long prison sentences since 2001 for participating in demonstrations, attempting to flee the country or attending prayers in \u201cunrecognized\u201d house churches\u201d<\/em>. In just one trial in April 2011, eight Montagnards were sentenced to a total of 75 years in prison and 24 years house arrest.<\/p>\n\u201cAs our report reveals, ethnic and religious minorities in Vietnam suffer serious violations of their political and economic rights, such as expropriation from ancestral lands, population displacement, State-sponsored migration of Kinh people into minority regions, religious persecution, arbitrary arrest and disappearances\u201d<\/strong><\/em> said Vo Van Ai, President of the VCHR and recent laureate of the Societ\u00e0 Libera Special Prize for Freedom.<\/p>\nMr. Ai also stressed the importance of political reforms in addressing these problems. \u201cFor the past 36 years, a 3-million minority of Communist Party members has imposed a policy of discrimination against the majority of 89 million people in Vietnam. It is time that this discrimination is put to an end, and the Party and Government effectively protect the rights of all their citizens, and guarantee the freedoms of ethnic and religious minorities in Vietnam\u201d.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\nFIDH and VCHR call on CERD to urge the Vietnamese government to:<\/p>\n
– Implement urgent reforms in Vietnam\u2019s legal system to combat racial discrimination and bring domestic laws and practices into line with the international human rights instruments which it has ratified;<\/span><\/p>\n– Cease religious persecution, including forced renunciations of faith and detention of religious followers on trumped-up \u201cpolitical\u201d accusations;<\/p>\n
– Dismantle the discriminatory household registration system, or ho khau;<\/p>\n
– Take effective steps to eradicate misperceptions and negative stereotypes that stigmatise and marginalise ethnic minorities; and<\/p>\n
– Recognise the competence of the CERD Committee to receive individual complaints from victims of racial discrimination in accordance with article 14, paragraph 1, of the Convention.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Press contact:<\/strong>
\nFIDH:<\/strong> Karine Appy\/Arthur Manet, + 33 1 43 55 14 12 \/ + 33 1 43 55 25 18
\nVCHR:<\/strong> Vo Tran Nhat, +33 1 45 98 30 85 \/ + 33 6 62 17 42 29<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" GENEVA-PARIS-BANGKOK, 20 February 2012. The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and its member league the Vietnam Committee on Human Rights (VCHR) urge the Vietnamese authorities, when they go before the UN Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination this week, to make firm commitments to address persistent discriminatory practices against religious and ethnic minorities …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":375,"featured_media":36610,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[113,98,64],"tags":[417],"class_list":["post-1781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-news","category-press-release","category-vchr","tag-cerd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/375"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1781\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/queme.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"VCHR](\"http:\/\/queme.org\/\/app\/uploads\/2012\/02\/VCHR_CERD_2012.jpg\")
<\/a>VCHR\u2019s report, which will be presented to the CERD today (Monday 20th February) by VCHR President Vo Van Ai<\/strong>, details a range of violations of the rights of and discrimination against ethnic minorities in both law and practice, despite constitutional prohibition of discrimination and Vietnam\u2019s obligations under the human rights conventions it has ratified. The indigenous Montagnards and the Hmongs are among the ethnic groups who have borne the brunt of the Vietnamese government\u2019s discriminatory policies.<\/p>\n