|
Provided by Chat Dang |
| World news on Nguyen Dac Kien |
The Washington Post:
In Vietnam, journalist hits limits of
government’s willingness to debate new constitution
By Associated Press,
HANOI, Vietnam— Vietnam’s government has asked its citizens to
debate planned revisions to the country’s constitution. But when
journalist Nguyen Dac Kien weighed in on his blog, he quickly discovered
the limits of its willingness for discussion. His state-run paper fired
him the next day.
Kien had taken issue with a
statement by the Communist Party chief in which he said discussions over
the revisions should not include questions over the role of the party.
In a post Monday that
rapidly went viral, he wrote that the party chief had no right to talk
to the people of Vietnam like this, and that state corruption was the
real problem.
Kien said he wasn’t
surprised by his firing, which was announced Wednesday in an article on
page 2 of the Family and Society, the paper where he worked.
“I knew that there would be
consequences,” Kien said by telephone. “I have always expected bad
things to happen to me. The struggle for freedom and democracy is very
long and I want to go to the end of that road, and I hope I can.”
Vietnam opened up its
economy in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union deprived it
of a vital economic partner and ally, but under an authoritarian regime,
government critics, free speech activists and other people the party
regards as dissidents can be locked up for many years. The emergence of
the Internet as an arena of free and uncontrollable expression, coupled
with a stuttering economy, has led to new pressures on the regime, but
few think its grip on power is seriously weakening.
The government is revising
the constitution for the first time since 1992, citing the need to speed
up the country’s development.
The government has asked
for public discussion on the revisions, even opening up its website for
comments, a move that carried some risk. In response, a group of several
hundred well-known intellectuals, including a former justice minister,
have circulated an online petition calling for multiparty elections,
private land ownership, respect for human rights and the separation of
the branches of government. More than 5,000 people have signed it.
Vietnam’s state-owned
television station quoted the Communist Party’s general secretary,
Nguyen Phu Trong, as saying those ideas amounted to the abolishment of
article 4 of the constitution, which guarantees the political dominance
of the party. He said that was a “political, ideological and ethical
deterioration” and should be opposed.
Kien immediately took to
his blog, writing “you are the general secretary of the Communist Party
of Vietnam. If you want to use the word deterioration, you can only use
it in relation to Communist Party members. You can’t say that about
Vietnamese people.” He said there was nothing wrong with wanting
political pluralism, and that “embezzlement and corruption” by party
members was a bigger problem.
The Family and Society
newspaper, which is owned by the ministry of health, said in the article
that it fired Kien for “violating the operating rules of the newspaper
and his labor contract,” adding that he alone was “accountable before
the law for his behavior.”
In a posting on his
Facebook page after his firing, Kien said “whatever happens, I just want
you to understand that I don’t want to be a hero, I don’t want to be an
idol. I just think that once our country has freedom and democracy, you
will find out that my articles are very normal, really normal, and
nothing big.”
He also said he understood
the decision of the paper’s editors, saying “if I were in their
position, I may have acted the same.”
|
