Vietnam Govt Delays Draft Law on Demonstration until Late 2016

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The delay will enable the ministry to collect more ideas and experience from domestic and foreign experts, Minister of Justice Ha Hung Cuong told the NA’s Standing Committee at a meeting on March 16.

In response to the proposal, the NA’s Legal Committee asked the ministry to make efforts to complete the draft law on schedule, avoiding postponement for another time.

By KTT | Mar 17, 2015

Vietnam’s government would submit a draft law on demonstration to the National Assembly (NA), the country’s highest legislative body, in late 2016, instead of the coming plenary meeting in May 2015.

The Ministry of Justice proposed the NA extend time for the submission for one year and a half to the second plenary meeting of the NA’s 14th session in October 2016 for better preparations.

The delay will enable the ministry to collect more ideas and experience from domestic and foreign experts, Minister of Justice Ha Hung Cuong told the NA’s Standing Committee at a meeting on March 16.

In response to the proposal, the NA’s Legal Committee asked the ministry to make efforts to complete the draft law on schedule, avoiding postponement for another time.

Phan Xuan Dung, head of the NA’s Committee for Science, Technology and Environment, said that the draft law must be submitted soon to satisfy people’s rights to expression.

In 2011, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung asked the Ministry of Pubic Security to compile the draft law, saying that the move will meet the actual demand.

Rights to gathering and expression are stipulated in the Vietnamese constitution but no law made to implement such a right.

People in Vietnam, mostly intellectuals and activists who advocate for democracy, have demonstrated to protest against Chinese tensions in Vietnamese waters in the East Sea, or poor implementation of fundamental human rights by the Vietnamese communist leadership. But most of the cases are violently dispersed.

Demonstrators are subjected to legal violators due to lack of law.