International NGOs Criticize Vietnam for Deporting Dissident to France

by Defend the Defenders, June 27, 2017

Many international non-government organizations, including the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), have continued to slam Vietnam’s deportation of political dissident Pham Minh Hoang to France.

The RSF said it is shocked with Vietnam’s move to expel Mr. Hoang from the country of his birth after revoking his Vietnamese citizenship.

“Stripping a government opponent of his nationality in order to expel him and silence him is absolutely shocking,” RSF Secretary-General Christophe Deloire said.

“What has happened to Pham Minh Hoang, a well-known independent and courageous defender of free speech, is shameful, especially for Vietnam,” Mr. Deloire added.

RSF also reminds that Vietnam has one of the worst scores of any country in RSF’s 2017 World Press Freedom Index, in which it is ranked 175th out of 180.

Meanwhile, HRW said Vietnam’s acts against human rights defender Hoang went beyond the red line regarding the basic rights of freedom of expression, the right of having citizenship, and basic political and civil rights.

The deportation which will divide Mr. Hoang with his family is illegal and violates human rights, said Phil Robertson, deputy head of Asia desk of Human Rights Watch.

Last week, the Dublin-based NGO Front Line Defenders also condemned the Vietnamese act against Hoang who was educated in France and worked as mathematics lecturer in Saigon Polytechnic University in Ho Chi Minh City.

Hoang’s deportation is not an act of a respected country but an authoritarian regime with the worst human rights record in Southeast Asia, he said.

Hoang, who spent 17 months in prison in Vietnam few years ago for online posting about education, the environment and the threats to Vietnamese sovereignty from China, arrived in Paris yesterday. He lived in France for 28 years before returning in Vietnam in 2000.