Vietnam Denounces Human Rights Watch report on Treatment of Ethnic Groups

As reported by Vietnamese News Agency, Le Dung—Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokesman—has denounced the claims recently published in a HRW report. Although the report gives detailed information that Vietnamese officials have been abusing recent returnees from refugee camps in Cambodia, Le Dung denies any such maltreatment.

According to this piece,

“Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Dung on 14 Junedismissed a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report citing ill-treatment ofethnic minority people in the Central Highlands as a sheer fabrication.

“Speaking toreporters on 14 June, the spokesman said: 'HRW's report was built ondistorted information to smear the Vietnamese state's policy on ethnicminority people in the Central Highlands.

“ ‘For ethnic minority groups in the Central Highlands, as others, the state has paid attention to, and created all conditions for, the improvement of material and spiritual lives, and carried out policies to better people's lives in all fields. In Vietnam, there exists no repression of ethnic minority people, nor religious repression; nobody is detained for religious reasons.’

“The spokesman stressed: ‘The Vietnamese state respects and protectsfreedom of belief and religion and freedom of non-belief andnon-religion of all citizens. The enactment and implementation of thenew legal documents on religion have enabled clergies and followers,including ethnic minority people in the Central Highlands, to practisetheir religious faith in line with the law.’ ”


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